Thx for the pointers. Listened to a few vids.

Esther Dyson really has no imagination whatsoever.

New gTLDs will thrive not under a corporate-branding scheme, IMO, but 
under a good gTLD service plan/offering that will likely cut across 
brands and gTLD-solely-as-branding tool. If corporations are likewise 
lacking in imagination and fearful and they uselessly considering 
running a gTLD as a defensive investment, it's their loss. It IS true 
that they will come up spending some money on air but they don't have 
to. I own a margarine production plant and am in competition with big 
ones like Unilever and if they buy .margarine this won't affect the 
balance of marketing power between me and them. I'm thinking it would be 
a move that brings very little competitive advantage for Unilever. Same 
if I would be in the cheese market and Kraft decides to run a .cheese 
scheme. Under a gTLD expansion-enabled regime, there is pretty much 
limitless possibility of TLD development by competitors of Kraft or 
Unilever if they so choose. Not that i believe that there would be lots 
of good business reasons to do this, but the space is certainly NOT 
captured by kraft or Unilever running up a .cheese or a .margarine. Most 
likely the gTLD that will have success will be the ones that are truly 
good service and that are not captured by this or that corp. Unilever 
could register .healthyfood and do absolutely nothing interesting with 
it, while a registrar bent on registering .healthyfood and bundle it 
with other innovative service could make it thrive. And if the gTLD is 
taken, they will just find another one: it is their business model 
that's important, not the particular alphanumeric string attached to it. 
There are many alternative alphanumeric strings that will do just as 
good than .healtyfood.


Notwithstanding the "protection racket" argument which really is not 
convincing (i will NOT register my brands as a defensive investment: i 
commercialize them the best i can with the money i can spare and truly i 
don't have a few thousands to spare on the menace that someone may 
register them, especially not under this UDRP-economy. People that cough 
up on defense really need to get some street-savvyness because that old 
lady isn't all that menacing), it seems to me that many arguments 
against an expansion-enabled regime, ironically, are based on the fear 
that this or that corporation registers this or that gTLD thereby 
capturing some sort of competitive advantage by way of somehow 
monopolizing a alphanumeric string semantically relevant to their 
market. The subtext is one of capture of this semantics. But this could 
not be more illogical if it tried: how can an expansion-enabled gTLD 
regime somehow favors capture of semantically relevant to business 
strings where the regime can precisely  be expanded?

I don't know how it will all look like but, Mrs Dyson, i'm not fearful 
of choice, and neither should you be. If you registered .dyson, i can 
still chase after .dysonasnoimagination or, if you've taken it 
defensively, .dysonisscared.

Nicolas, NCUC

On 8/9/2011 6:37 AM, Joly MacFie wrote:
>
> I've posted video of last Wednesday's 'Master of Your Domain' 
> conference in NYC.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66A04B1808AABF48
>
> There's a couple of segments missing at the end including Q&A as I am 
> waiting on a transcription from Tony Kirsch from ausregistry. They'll 
> be added later in the week.
>
> There's a brief summary here 
> http://ibreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/08/esther-dyson-stands-her-ground-at-new.html
>
> Apart from Esther Dyson throwing icy water on the whole concept, the 
> most notable comment was Mike Davies from Verisign saying that they 
> anticipate 1500 applications, 1000 of which will be for dot brands, 
> and that it will be 3-5 years before the second round. Ken Hansen of 
> Neustar said they are offering to park TLDs for 10k/yr.
>
> Edmon Chung of dot asia gave an excellent all round presentation.
>
> I regret not asking about WHOIS  when they talked about .canon's plans 
> to give a second level to every customer..
>
> j
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
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