[At-Large] FW: My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN

[Vittorio Bertola]

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy ha scritto:
> Hello Vittoria, Parminder,
> 
> I deviate from the encouraging messages that you have received so far,
> because I think it gets a little complicated when a gTLD is thought of as
> desirable to promote every cause. When it comes to languages there is an
> estimated 3000 to 8000 languages spoken in planet earth Apart from languages
> there are several different causes - for example, the hearing disabled have
> a cause to ask to for a separate domain.

Sure in the world there are several thousand languages and it could be
hard to imagine that each of them gets a TLD.

But in the world there are considerably more corporations that can
afford to spend $185'000 as part of their brand protection and promotion
strategy, so to have it as a TLD, and ICANN doesn't seem to be concerned
with that.

Either there is a consideration on whether the application is "worthy"
and "useful", or there isn't. However, what ICANN plans to do is that
they judge whether an application is "worthy" only by the fact that it
comes from a wealthy and well organized applicant that can afford a high
amount of money.

So any billionaire could have a personal "vanity TLD", but an NGO
working to protect an indigenous people could not: why? Is that a good
policy?

Finally, it seems to me that you entirely miss the symbolic value of a
TLD. I've heard objections like yours for years by the people who
created the Internet; I remember Vint Cerf telling in public to the
Nokia people "but why do you need .mobi? Couldn't you just give away
subdomains under mobi.com?". Yet the boost that .mobi has given to the
development of content specifically designed for mobile phones, and of
mobile-based Internet access in certain parts of the world, is undeniable.

This objection reminds me of when the engineers were complaining about
people insisting to see semantic value in domain names, and thus
requesting content-oriented policies, such as the UDRP. The engineers
kept saying "but it's just identifiers, like telephone numbers - it's
just your misperception". Yet, in reality, perception is everything; so
they failed to convince the other billion users of the Internet that
they should refrain from considering the semantic value of domain names,
and nowadays there is no question anymore: domain name policies must
keep into account semantic values.

So, TLDs can do a lot to promote a sense of identity among online
communities, and to provide credible online entry points for those who
are still offline; yes there's not much of a difference in practice,
it's just URLs, but it does a lot of a difference in terms of perception
and identity.

Ciao,
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
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