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Date: | Thu, 10 Jul 2014 10:45:42 -0400 |
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Tim,
It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry here. There is no problem
with agreeing that every entity (business/person) has a right to an
identity/locator string on the Internet, under some terms and
conditions, but contrast this with that need in print. All of the
English in print in the world does that with less than 50 components: 26
characters; 10 numerals; and punctuation. URL options left of the gTLD
dot are limited only by IP considerations and good taste and -with the
expansion into other language scripts- are more than sufficient for
needs and rights.
What is the rational for vast numbers of strings to the right of the
dot? If vowels and consonants were owned for use under license, and some
agency could profit from franchise new vowels and consonants to aspiring
speculators, consider the mess that would follow. What if I had to pay
for and decide which version of the letter “e” (most used letter in
English) I used in this posting. Maybe I could use “z” which is chzap
sincz hardly anybody makzs usz of z. Wz would havz to tzll the szrvzrs
to rzsolvz z as e, zxczpt whzn z is z. Zazy zh! (rzzolvz that as
Canadian Znglish)
When the logic of a proposal looks faulty one has to ask “What is
driving it?”. Unfortunately, the level and structure of the policy
process around such issues is not designed to ask that fundamental
question. Thankfully there was not such a policy process in place when
languages were developed.
Sam L.
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