Well, I for one am not ready to retreat from a more global view, with a retreat to essentially balkanizing the Internet Name Space. I see nothing wrong with having a .IBM or a .AOL, or .MSN, or a .NMA for that matter. All these companies operate in International Cyberspace in terms of name recognition, and WIPO, in due course, is going to have to yield to market demands, regardless of how long it takes. To accept WIPO rule and control of global commerce language (and I do believe that DNS is a language which uses names to communicate concepts) is just not going to work, as WIPO is working to harness global control of naming systems in general. Give then an inch and they will take a mile. So, I see no point in retrograde suggestions such as your proposal that we all just lie down in our WIPO moulds, let them tighten the screws and turn up the heat, and soon we will all be just fine. No thank you for your kind offer of supposed comfort;-)...\Stef At 1:42 PM -0600 12/3/02, Stephen Sprunk wrote: >Thus spake "Einar Stefferud" <Steflist@thor.nma.com> > > In case you have not noticed, one possible solution is to eliminate all > > TLDs other than .COM, which is the only one that you say so may people > > believe exists. > > > > At which point someone will notice that all addresses have a > > redundant .COM (because all the other TLDs have been removed, and > > so the browsers and mail systems will offer to append (or just assume) > > the redundant .COM suffix for you, and voile!... > >No, keep the ccTLDs and let each country do with them as they wish. Most >countries have a hierarchical namespace within their ccTLD, though a few are >flat. > >Either way, I'll take 250+ flat namespaces (ccTLDs) over one flat namespace >(the root). > >COM is a failed experiment and needs to be closed and/or eliminated. > > > All all solved for the minor cost of forcing all non .COM domain name > > owners to find and register a new non-colliding domain name under > > .COM! > >While international trademark law is a joke at best, each country does have >a framework in place which can be used to resolve conflicts within their own >ccTLD. This is a lot easier than trying to manage a single global namespace >using the WTO's trademark "rules". > >S