At 21:23 26/6/97, Stephen Baxter wrote:
>...
>
>Some people in ADNA see more 2LDs as a good thing while alot see this
>as creating more confusion and decreasing the value of present
>'commerical' spaces and therefore indirectly even placing them at risk.

FLAME ON (personal comment).

Sorry but I CANNOT let this pass.  Statements like this make a mockery of
what the DNS is truly for!  Maybe I am old-fashioned/naive but in my book,
the DNS is there for one primary purpose - to provide a unique mapping of
hard to remember and possibly changing IP addresses to fixed and easy to
remember names.  People who place a value on names are fooling themselves,
so talk of devalueing commercial name spaces is a nonsense.  How many people
actually FIND a service based purely on the DNS name, and randomly try
entering URLs to their favourite browser?  People get addresses from news
postings or mail lists, or use search engines, and I am sure that smarter
directory-style tools will continue to emerge, so it is just a matter of
putting the right keywords into postings or web pages, and not grabbing
clever DNS name(s).

I believe that companies *do* have a right to an indentity on the net for
e-mail addresses, etc., and they do have similer/clashing names, so one of
the purposes for more 2LDs is ensure that people can obtain a suitable name
without expensive legal action against someone who already has 'their' name.
All this does is leave everyone poorer (except the lawyers).

The cost of a domain name should be based around providing and maintaining
the service and should have nothing to do with some instrinsic value placed
on a name as such ('a rose by any other name'?).  Sure, people pay big bucks
for clever '13' numbers, but this has nothing to do with the issues around
creation of extra 2LDs, which is all about overcrowding of com.au, getting
an identity, and providing a competitive environment.

FLAME OFF

--
Chris Chaundy (Network Manager)

connect.com.au pty ltd, Level 9, 114 Albert Rd, Sth Melbourne, VIC 3205, Aust.
Internet: chris§connect.com.au   Phone: +61 3 9251-3671   Fax: +61 3 9251-3666