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.