[At-Large] Thoughts on Delaying New gTLDs

[John L]

>> The goal for some TLDs is to maximize revenue as a business model.
>> They don't care who owns IBM.<tld> so long as it's taken.
>
> I think that's a popular misconception.

It is clearly the case for .TRAVEL, which tried to sell me a bunch of 
squats when I registered AIRINFO.TRAVEL, and .AERO is increasingly looking 
that way, as they release formerly reserved names of airports and airlines 
to whoever wants them.  Certainly there are TLDs that have rules and stick 
to them, e.g. .COOP and .MUSEUM which had the advantage of not planning to 
make money in the first place, but it seems to me more likely that as 
domains' optimistic business plans fail and money gets tight, they'll go 
down the .PRO and .TRAVEL path of selling as many domains as possible to 
anyone who wants them.

I'm realizing that a large part of the reason I'm not thrilled about the 
new TLD process is that nearly all of the scenarios for new TLDs are so
unpersuasive, given the broad failure of both community TLDs and generic 
ones with a name that suggests something.  (How informative are .INFO 
domains?)

I can agree that there's a more plausible argument for IDNs, but given the 
lack of clarity on some fairly basic questions of who has rights to what, 
most of those just seem like lawsuits waiting to happen.

R's,
John