Andy Linton wrote:
Not necessarily. One way might be:
If there's no clash then give whoever has a name in .co/org/net/gen/school/cri/govt/iwi first refusal for say 30 days after the domain is created.
If there's a clash and there's clear data about when a domain was created then give the respective holders first refusal based on the initial date of their registration or other reasonable evidence (say archived email sent and received using the domain). If the first date-sorted holder doesn't want it then ask the second and so on.
Where there's still a clash (and I suspect by this stage the numbers are small) then come up with an arbitration process e.g. draw the names from a hat).
In all cases, if no one wants it, then open it up to first come first served.
At no stage is anyone compelled to jump into the new domain and if the old domains are going to die let them do so by natural atrophy. The time might come when people say "Oh you've go one of those early 'net.nz' domain names. How quaint!"
Hmmm - might increase the value of such domain names....
If we had put this scheme in place then the people who wanted 'maori.nz', 'bank.nz', 'celt.nz', 'geek.nz' and so on would simply have registered them and we wouldn't need to have this totally useless debate every few months when someone decides that using the DNS as a pseudo yellow pages is a good idea.
Then nznog would become a dull place... Seriously though the only downside I can see in Andy's sensible discussion is that by collapsing the names, it increases the opportunity for domain name disputes. Currently most issues don't become disputes when more than one party are seeking the same name - many are happy to take the alternative .net/org/gen etc instead of having a scrap over it. Given the UDRP for the gTLD's and the increasing tension over trademarks and copyright etc, isn't it better to have more choice rather than less?
The above may not be the ideal algorithm for sorting this thing out but I'm sure it's not beyond the wit of man/woman to devize something that works.
Devize? How American... I thought there were plans afoot to have other resolvers in place RealNames etc - is anything useful actually happening? Keith Davidson - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog