[governance] NTIA on certain geographic names...

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 10.07.13 19:30, Chaitanya Dhareshwar wrote:
> I disagree with you on some of this Daniel. While you're right in that 
> a domain per se has no value - that's like saying land per se has no 
> value, or proper nouns (eg. New York) per se have no value or like 
> silicon per se has no value.

We can not ignore the fact, that unlike the examples you gave, domain 
names are not ... real. Nor are they unique.

Imagine, we have two names, amazon.com in "this" Internet and amazon.com 
in someone else's Internet (alternative DNS root). Now, just like with 
the theory that we can have an unlimited number of parallel realities, 
we can also have unlimited number of virtual realities (Internet DNS roots).

We know, in this particular Internet, whose root is managed by the IANA 
and .COM by VeriSign, amazon.com does have some value. For Amazon at least.
But let's consider two other parallel Internet universes, that of John 
Public and that of Jane Masters.
It may turn out, that in John's Internet, amazon.com too has great value 
(it might sell health care services and be pretty popular worldwide). 
This is because whoever ran .com there and whoever ran amazon.com made 
sure it is well recognized. Provided value.
In Jane's Internet however, amazon.com might not have any value, for 
whatever unfortunate reason.
The same amazon.com domain name.

Comparing this with the items of your example, imagine we are 1000 years 
back and people have no idea what to do with silicon. For them, it does 
not have any value.
Or if New York happened to be in an country where there is an continuing 
civil war and everything is in ruins.

> Naturally creating the value depends on someone, somewhere - but the 
> fact is that these things exist and hence can be valued - given a 
> specific 'value' and traded for that value or the value 
> increased/diminished.

When it comes to domain names, they are just strings. These can exist in 
unlimited amounts and in any arrangement. If we restrict yourselves to 
"our" Internet then creating new TLDs will not impact the amazon.com's 
value. It has value because of that someone, somewhere.

> The context of amazon.com <http://amazon.com> - the value of that 
> domain name is a static zero. It's someone else's brand and would thus 
> be inappropriate to 'take' that (if it were available) perhaps even 
> illegal.

I could imagine it has high value for anything associated with "Amazon", 
for example an hypothetical "Amazon are preservation society" or even 
the some contemporary representatives of the Amazons 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons).

> Domain trading is more related to the perceived value of a domain, and 
> not necessarily actual marketable brand value. Perception that a .COM 
> domain is better for international business than a .IN domain, or that 
> a .WS website may prove to be a more effective online platform than 
> other things - purely perception - and people are willing to invest in 
> it to get that perceived boost.

The perception that a .COM domain is better than .XYZ domain comes only 
from the perception that the service offered by the .COM domain 
registration system (registry, registrars, resellers etc), available 
pricing etc. In this regard .COM is "better", simply because nothing 
about .XYZ is certain.
But if the .XYZ registration system proves to be superior, it might 
instead take the crown (which will take years to be beneficial, of course).

> If .COM and .IN ceases to exist as such, and you can have anything and 
> everything - there will be a loss of that perception, and thus a loss 
> of interest in registering specific more expensive TLDs - which in 
> turn would result in perceived losses to the root authorities of these 
> domains.

Not living in the US and not believing ever, that .COM is "my" domain, I 
tend to disagree. In fact, I have few .COM domains that match the .BG 
domains I use and those are simply.. not used. Perhaps I am biased, but 
"my" domain (TLD) is which I chose -- very similar to "my" country is 
which I chose --- with the caveat that it is much easier to chose a TLD, 
than to chose a country to live in...

If these TLDs however cease to exist, that will be huge disaster for 
anyone who chose them for their "home". Nothing to do with their value.
If they become unstable however, then their value will decrease.

Daniel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20130710/eb67bc8c/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t