[governance] NTIA on certain geographic names...

[Roland Perry]

In message <51DD4743.7070805 at digsys.bg>, at 14:36:35 on Wed, 10 Jul
2013, Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg> writes
>By the way, domain names (and IP addresses for that matter) never had
>any value as such. These are just strings of characters and numbers,
>respectively.
>
>It is the management of the domain that creates any value.

I disagree. What has value is the brand, and the expression of that
brand in a domain name has value just as the expression of a brand on a
sign over a shop, or $5 worth of paint on the side of an aircraft.

>From another perspective, amazon.com is only "good" because of all the
>infrastructure behind it.

The "good" derives from the brand behind it.

I suspect it's harder work creating a famous brand when the name appears
to have no obvious connection with the trading activity[1].

And of course I use the word "trading" in a broad sense. ISOC, ICANN and
NTIA are all brands, too.

>From Wikipedia:

        "Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that
        it would appear early in alphabetic order. He began looking
        through the dictionary and settled on "Amazon" because it was a
        place that was "exotic and different" and it was one of the
        biggest rivers in the world, as he hoped his company would be.

Which is interesting because people complaining about "Amazon" as a
pseudo-geographic name probably have in mind "Amazon Basin" rather than
just the river itself.

[1] Unlike, for example, my current brand and domain name:
    InternetPolicyAgency; or "MicroSoft" which is an exceedingly generic
    contraction of "Microcomputer Software".

    I've always thought that one should strive for a brand which is
    simultaneously:

    The company name, an easy to remember URL (for web and email), the
    marketing strap line, and a plausible description of what you do.
    One of my earliest in the Internet space was "UK Online".

    I was influenced a little by Regis McKenna, whose business card in
    the "Job title" field was "Himself", and I met back in those heady
    days.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_McKenna
-- 
Roland Perry

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