gTLD for developing regions

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 13 July 2012 11:22, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > Of course if you and MM are right, and no one in their right mind would
> > want one of these things anyway, then it might be a waste of time.
>
> [Milton L Mueller] That is not my position. At all. I see many reasons for
> a variety of players to have one, and believe that I was advocating that
> ICANN open the root to new additions since 1996 - before there was an ICANN.
>
> I have always maintained that IDN TLDs in particular refute any claims
> that there is no need for new TLDs.
>

I agree. My own position is that while the vast bulk of TLD applications
are needless extractions of value from the Internet, a handful are
genuinely useful. ESPECIALLY IDNs, there should be at least one (and
preferably two or three) in every script.

It will also be useful to have some TLDs that were *truly* based on
different business models that did not depend on speculators or defensive
registrations, or whose differentiator was more than its string being a new
category. I look forward to what Amazon and Google plan to do, since they
have far different motives for applying than most of the usual suspects. It
will be very interesting to see what happens to the business models of all
those speculators if Google maintains the path it has gone in other fields,
and starts handing out free second level domains to content providers.
Indeed, IMO the only silver lining of the entire gTLD application process
is the invitation to the likes of Google to disrupt the domain industry
(and possibly destroy much of it).

It will certainly be interesting to see what influence these new players,
which dwarf the former "giant" Verisign, exert in the GNSO going forward.

What I am saying is that new TLDs are a species of what economists call a
> "superior good"; i.e. goods which make up a larger proportion of
> consumption as income rises. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_good



In the extreme sense also known in the vernacular as a luxury item, a term
which I would certainly agree applies to most new gTLDs.

 To expect poorer and developing economies to exhibit as much demand per
> capita for new TLDs as highly developed and richer internet economies is
> just not realistic. That will, of course, change gradually over time as
> these economies catch up, perhaps faster than we think (given the way our
> own economies seem to be stagnant or sinking). I just don't believe we can
> or should force-feed it in order to make outcomes conform to unrealistic
> but ideologically attractive expectations.


I would go a step further and say that most new gTLDs are not just luxury
items but deliberate symbols of vanity and status -- adornments that
indicate the buyer's ability to afford something that would to most be
totally unnecessary (or obviously overpriced). See "conspicuous
consumption".

At a technical level, there's not much you can do with <.foo> that you
couldn't do with <.foo.com>. In conversations with applicants over the past
few years, I have been amazed by the number of community and geo TLDs whose
primary rationale seems to be "we deserve it" as opposed to "we need it",
furthering the concept of "TLD as collective status symbol" and without
heed of the needs of people who actually use the Internet.

- Evan
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