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.