[NA-Discuss] Fwd: Edits and comments to NARALO/ALAC position statement on GAC scorecard

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 31 March 2011 18:46, Antony Van Couvering <avc at avc.vc> wrote:


> What about the the 600K registrants in .CO?  Are they all either profiteers
> or deluded by smoke and mirrors?
>

Perhaps. Let me know if you see any new content under .co that couldn't
exist under a different TLD.
Don't forget defensive registrations along with the speculative and
delusional.
And is that really 600K registrants, or 600K registrations by 14 people?
It would indeed be interesting to know how many .cos are actually used for
original content -- as opposed to immediately handed to Sedo or hosting PPC
park pages
(I've just gone to a dozen or so randomly-selected "generic-word.co" sites,
and all are park pages -- in fact cars.co is a park page hosted by Sedo!)
So much for claims of lowering the prices...

And finally, one can indeed speak partly to the delusion aspect.
How much .co marketing tells potential registrants that their domain is
ultimately under the control of -- and has traditionally been associated
with -- a specific nationality?

The word "Colombia" appears nowhere on the home page of
http://www.cointernet.co/
The "who we are" page exclaims "Powered by Colombia" but nowhere explains
quite what that means, except to mention that a partner in the venture is a
Columbian company. Nowhere (that I could easily find on the .co website) is
the link between ".co" and the country of Columbia made clear -- yet it's
right at the top of the WIkipedia entry, so it's important to the entry's
authors.

So...is the marketing closer to deception or full disclosure? Make up your
own mind.
(Of course, Verisign is no better with .tv, but the folks who run .nu are
more up-front)

- Evan