[governance] NTIA on certain geographic names...

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 10.07.13 15:18, Roland Perry wrote:
> 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.

We seem to agree here, despite the difference in wording. What makes any 
brand any valuable is not the 'name', but all that is behind it.

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

Well... the brand is only any good, because of of what is delivered, not 
because of it's label. But as much the brand is backed by the delivered 
products and is represented by the brand label, then yes.

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

Good example is SONY.

However, despite being 'good name', SONY would have no value if that 
company does not do what they do -- and have done trough the years.
Of course a brand of 'SONY' is better than 'Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo', for 
many reasons.

But if for example, they chose to name their company SONAY, then today 
sonay.com would have some value, but sony.com -- probably not.
This is why the domain name as such has no value.

>
> 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.

It is also worth noting, that the interpretation of the name  is also 
related to the background of those who interpret it. For someone dealing 
with geography and rivers, that Amazon would definitely be the river. 
For the tourist, that would be the 'exotic' area, as you mentioned. 
Recently I found myself with an iPhone app named Amazon... only to 
discover it has nothing in common with the Amazon trading site I 
expected it to be, but with the touristic kind..
I also believe he wanted to have the connection with 'amazing' too..

But whatever it was, Bezos settled for it and today it is an famous 
brand, particularly tied to it's domain name.

> [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

Yes, it is interesting, that when we create new brands, we do consider 
the Internet domain names. What is even more interesting is that in 
recent times the whole domain name is considered, not just the label. 
This then changes the domain name industry focus, because for example 
not all attractive names end with .com or .net...

Many years ago, we had an request for the domain name aquarium.bg from 
Russia. Since that was an usual (at the time) request, I specifically 
contacted the applicants to inquire and better understand why they were 
interested in an .bg name. Their response was: "We are from the Russian 
rock band Aquarium and we want an .bg name, because we will give the 
domain as a birthday present to out lead singer Boris Grebenshchikov, 
whose initials are BG".

Because of all this, my opinion is that the introduction of many new 
"top-level" names will not destroy the domain industry, it will simply 
provide more choice. People will continue to find creative ways to map 
their brands to Internet names and create new brands using Internet domains.

Daniel

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