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Brad Templeton On New Mobile Domains

Posted by timothy on from the dot-lord dept.

nfocus writes "CircleID has an opinion piece by Brad Templeton, Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, offering an interesting follow up to the previous discussions here on Slashdot: New Net Battle Over ".mobile" Looming. Brad suggests that 'the only way to get a competitive innovative space is to slowly get rid of the generics and allow a competitive space of branded TLDs for resale. .yahoo, .dunn, .yellowpages, .google, .wipo, and a hundred other branded resellers competing on even footing to create value in their brand and win customers with innovative designs, better service, lower prices and all the usual things. I presume .wipo would offer trademark holders powerful protections within their domain. Let them. ...Let them all innovate, let them all compete.' Also in the article 'The domain will not actually be named .mobile, rumours are they are hoping for a coveted one-letter TLD like .m to make it easier to type on a mobile phone.'"

5 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. More money - Rah! by matthew.thompson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it me or does this just look like an attempt by the mobile service providers and hardware manufacturers to screw more money out of domain owners?

    Why would I want to get a .mob domain over my .com or .uk etc domain? Simple - to ensure that someone else doesn't. There will be a huge land grab and expensive litigation to follow.

    Stop the madness and stop creating new domains without a radical overhaul of the existing ones.

    --
    Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
  2. nuff said by Underholdning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    he only way to get a competitive innovative space is to slowly get rid of the generics and allow a competitive space of branded TLDs for resale. .yahoo, .dunn, .yellowpages, .google, .wipo, and a hundred other branded resellers
    Excuse me, but isn't that exactly what the domain names are for? I want yahoo in my country, I go to yahoo.dk. With a yahoo TLD I'd go to dk.yahoo. This just doesn't make sense. Can anyone think of a good application for a liberated TLD marked where everybody and his dog has their own TLD?

    --
    Underholdning.info
  3. its 1998 again ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


    if you think a domain extension is key to a successful service

  4. Top Level Domains by al.cx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When will people understand that the top level domain is supposed to indicate the type of organisation that holds the domain. They are not supposed to be a tool to classify content of servers, that's the job of search engines and directories.

    Allowing companies to create new top level domains will just result in a confused and crowded tld namespace similar to .com situation.

  5. Watch out! Here come the marketeers!!!! by pandrijeczko · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Is there actually anything wrong with DNS the way it is?

    Correct me if I'm wrong but a few years ago a few intelligent computer geek-types came up with a pretty neat way of ensuring that nobody has to remember computers by their IP addresses but by much easier to remember names. It works pretty well and they called it the Domain Name System.

    But as usual, because it's a good idea, someone's got to make money from it so in walk the regiment of marketing types with their buzzwords like "product branding", "innovation" and "customer" and try to hijack it.

    "Windows - an operating system designed by marketeers" - enough said.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.