Dear Anthony
Our apologies if we have caused offence, we were aiming to lighten the mood a bit. We are just trying to present our point of view, and wished to make clear that for those who remain unconvinced, we offer a means to try the system with no outlay. In having a discussion about these (real) domain names, the "first webdesign salesman" story is trying to illustrate that every new idea has its detractors, and that the public automatically looks on new products and ideas with a certain amount of reserve. This doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.
1) May we please refer you to an article in ZNet News entitled "FTC Bust Dot USA Domain Sellers" by Lisa M Bowman of 11 March 2002 -
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-857033.html . The article refers to the comments made by J Howard Beales, a director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection and he is reported as saying "several companies are selling domain names that are not sanctioned by ICANN in the hope of getting round what many see as a corporate strangle hold on the organisation, which approves "official" top level domains such as .com. Beales said the FTC would not go after those companies unless they try to deceive consumers into believing the domain names work like any other Web address."
2) There is nothing for ICANN to "crack down on", whereby in using crack down, we presume you are referring to ending illicit or harmful activities. In what way are these domains harmful and how can they threaten the stability of the Internet (in this regard please also see comment further below by Mary Hewitt of ICANN).
3) We fail to see how we are misleading people. Have you had the time to visit our website? Not only can people get a range of domains for free, they can also try out the entire system at zero cost.
4) ICANN is supposed to work for a better internet and our aim is the same. Why would ICANN release a TLD that we offer, we certainly respect theirs. We do not know how ICANN feels about us (they have not told us), however, we are a perfectly legitimate entity. If we were not, the FTC and other trading standards organizations worldwide, would never have let dotWORLDS operate for over 2 years. Under any proper definition of a domain name, dotWORLDS domain names are as "legitimate" as ICANNs.
5) One may say that people require a plugin to view our (real) domain names, and use that as an argument against them. But again, (a) how many reputable and widely popular companies require users to download plugins? Macromedia, Adobe, Wild Tangent etc etc. Just because you need a plugin doesn't make a product less real, or more fake. (b) AOL's product is a plugin, a piece of software you need to download in order to access their proprietary content, which is a parallel of the web, not an integration. And people pay for it. (c) Any piece of software is no more than a plug-in, required to view a certain type of content. How about Windows? If you don't have windows, you can't use specific types of content. So what happens to Linux users? Ok, some may say that a certain type of person in a certain type of situation is apt to use Linux, but we must admit that it's getting massive commercial and even desktop usage now.
So, just because you can do something more than one way (be it using an OS, surfing the web, receiving email through a certain client or setting up a domain name other than through ICANN) doesn't make the second or third or subsequent ways wrong. Just because our domains need a plugin and ICANN's don't doesn't make them fake. What's so wrong with competing in the doman name market? In the last 12 years ICANN has provided just 7 new TLDs.
ICANN does not have the sole rights to the World Wide Web. No-one is forced to cross America only via Route 55 and only by car. There are alternatives, and people don't get confused. Anyone who manages or owns a DNS server can put whatever they like on it. Everyone uses ICANN because it was the first and most complete system, but nothing stops the owner/manager of a DNS server putting other domains on it if they so wish. In a Wild West situation, that would make things pretty confused, but we have taken the responsible position of non-collision with ICANN domains, to preserve the integrity of the Internet domain name system.
ICANN, as mentioned above, has released only 7 new extensions in 12 years. Whilst there are a small number of proposals in the pipeline, proposing a new domain is a long, complex and expensive process, open only to a privileged few with millions of dollars to spend on an application process, and we believe it is only a matter of time before our systems will work side by side. If ICANN introduce a collision, how much responsibility does that show on their part?
Let us examine for a moment the fundamentals on the issue of domain names. This from ZDnet in July 2002, and it still holds true, with our comments marked (D), the report marked (R):
(R) According to an ICANN paper, the DNS was intended to provide a reliable way to unambiguously refer to Web sites, e-mail servers and other Internet services. "One of its core design goals is that it reliably provides the same answers to the same queries from any source on the public Internet, thereby supporting predictable routing of Internet communications," it states. "Achievement of that design goal requires a globally unique public name space derived from a single, globally unique DNS root."
(D) We don't offer ICANN TLDs to avoid such collisions. Neither do we offer the TLDs of new.net.
(R) Mary Hewitt, director of communications at ICANN, said it's about universal resolvability. Although Hewitt said there was nothing wrong with the alternative root-"we're not the Internet police"--but added that the aim was to keep the Internet working effectively and efficiently globally.
(D) Three cheers for Mary!
(R) There are a number of consequences if alternative roots were to become prevalent, according to ICANN's Web site. These include different answers being given to the same DNS query issued from different computers on the Internet, depending on whether the computer which is inquiring is programmed to access the authorative root, or one of the alternative roots. ICANN also sees the main consequence of inconsistent data is that the same domain name could identify different computers depending upon where the name is used.
(D) Not in our case. We do not collide with ICANN, so how could this be an issue?
(R) Although ICANN has argued that working within the system doesn't preclude experimentation, it believes this should be done in a controlled manner.
(D) 100% behind you on that!
(R) ICANN's prime directive of preserving the stability of the Internet and DNS requires an unwavering commitment to promote the continued prevalence of a single authorative root for the public DNS," according to ICANN's Web site.
(D) No problem. Why not take on dotWORLDS TLDs as well then?
Anthony, on the subject of fair. Is it fair to charge millions of dollars for a single domain name - after all its just a domain name. Some would call domain name traders "protectionist", in the same way as you have called our domains "fake". It's just a matter of perception. We follow Internet law. It isn't perfect and some of it isn't fair. There are and will be growing pains. We believe what you are seeing today, will, in many ways be different, tomorrow. Structures are changing: even former friends within this industry do not seem to be as cosy with each other as they once were. Enemies are uniting (see Sun and Microsoft...) There are many new issues that need answers, and some of those issues will require more than one solution. We have started on this path to offer Internet users more choice. We believe that they have it now.
As ever, thank you for allowing us the opportunity to post on your Forum
Kind regards
dotWORLDS
