I thinks .arts would make a poor entry choice as it (with rules regarding
assignment) has limited appeal. There is also the problem of the challenge
against the right to use .arts by (I think) Skyscape.
issues raised?.
1) How can we check if renoir.arts is registered by the same organisation in
another TLD i.e. renior.co.id in Indonesia or renoir.tm in Turkmenistan) when
90% of TLDs don't issue WHOIS information and people can easily 'adapt'
their ownership information.
2) How can we check if it is in use elsewhere without substantial manual
intervention, adding significantly to the CORE fee thereby making the domain
unattractive to most people due to the high cost and unattractive to the registrars
due to the low profit margins.
3) Is .arts the best one to start with?, out of a substantial five figure number
of advance applications from clients, .arts is second only to .nom in least number
of applications. If 89 CORE members want to pay $10K each to be a minority
domain then thats their choice but personally we should be saying "We are
going ahead with seven new domains with International consensus" and if it
does get to a point where we are forced by technical and legal limitations to
choose only only then we should choose the one that will bring the most support,
publicity and concessionary attitude to CORE to aid our claim to be an authority
for providing new top level domains. In my experaince this is either .web, .shop
or marginally .info.
There seems to be an acceptance among CORE and PAB that the USG Green Paper
is going ahead whatever (with a couple of notable and appreciated exceptions),
if CORE is to work then we need to show that domain names and the DNS is bigger
than one government (even the USG) and that industry consensus and hard
work is what drives the Internet forward.
I think it is accepted that NSI will get to keep com/net/org as registry so why
aren't we concentrating on making sure CORE is the main competitor to NSI
and that CORE provides such a great service that people would be crazy to
register a NSI (for-profit) domain as opposed to a CORE (non-profit) domain.
Believe me, NSI are looking forward to an open market on domain names and are
ramping up for it, if CORE wants to survive it needs the same attitude.
I wan't CORE to succeed, NSI probably wants CORE to succeed as well as it will
reduce the attacks on it as a monopoly and give it a chance to show what it
can do as a company operating outside governmental restrictions.
Mark......
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Mark Henderson-Thynne : Domain Name Manager/ Domain Consultant