[NA-Discuss] demand for new TLDs or lack thereof, was On NASA and ICANN

John R. Levine johnl at iecc.com
Wed Mar 30 01:17:58 UTC 2011


> there's little demand for TLDs amongst those I meet, and I've never ever
> heard a call for TLDs from anyone outside the ICANN community. This is
> not to say we don't need them or that they wouldn't provide a good deal
> of benefit to society.

That's OK, I'll say it.  Every single sTLD has been a complete failure by 
any reasonable measure.

Compare. for example, the several million co-ops world-wide and the 
300,000 registrations the .COOP application predicted, to the reality of 
6400 registrations, and no growth in recent years.  I have nothing against 
co-ops, or the airline or travel industries, or the personnel business, or 
doctors/lawyers/accountants, or residents of Catalonia or Asia, or 
museums, but it's abundantly clear that the members of all those groups 
have voted with their feet and stayed away from the domains that 
putatively exist for them.  The only new domains that have a lot of 
registrations are .BIZ and .INFO, and that's because they're utterly 
generic and .INFO had a long running sale at 1/3 the price of the 
competition.

Similarly, I see no reason to think that the residents of New York or 
Berlin, or the music business, or the ecology community, or any of the 
other groups alleged to benefit from TLDs we've heard will apply in the 
new TLD process want them, either.  I suppose that if IBM applies for 
.IBM, they really want it, but it's hard to see any public benefit in 
creating a process of interest only to rich famous brands.

So speaking both for myself and CAUCE, any delay in the new TLD process is 
no problem.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly



More information about the NA-Discuss mailing list