Tim Berners-Lee has issued a statement against mobile-specific domain names, at the same time lamenting the current "land grab" methodology of creating domain names in the first place.
Tim Berners-Lee, who initially created the HTTP and HTML protocols that form the basis of today's World Wide Web, has gone on record against the idea of a mobile-only TLD (top level domain). In a statement submitted to and endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on 14 May, Berners-Lee denounced the proliferation of new TLDs, and of the proposed .mobi domain in particular.
Although the DNS system is hierarchical, the widespread commercialization of the Web has led to many companies using it as if it were simply a flat keyword space, with "www." and ".com" simply implicit. The result, according to Berners-Lee, was a massive "land grab" of potentially marketable domain names, as well as odd iterations on them such as misspellings. When several domains such as .net and .org were deregulated, the only result was that companies had to spend that much more money protecting their trademark, while at the same time the number of legitimately available domain names did not increase (since existing sites simply registered other iterations of their own names). When later domains were added, "the chief effect of the introduction of the .biz and .info domains appears to have been a cash influx for the domain name registries," Berners-Lee argued.
The .mobi propsal in particular, Berners-Lee claims, is directly contrary to the design and purpose of the Internet. Firstly, it is intended for use only by selected companies, mobile carriers and content providers. That breaks the device independence that is, according to Berners-Lee, integral to the Internet. "The Web must operate independently of the hardware, software or network used to access it, of the perceived quality or appropriateness of the information on it, and of the culture, and language, and physical capabilities of those who access it." Additionally, while currently "mobile" typically imples "small, intermittent connectivity, limited UI and bandwidth" there is no reason to believe that such a differentiation will persist for very long.
Too, Berners-Lee argues, "It is fundamentally useful to be able to quote the URI for some information and then look up that URI [Uniform Resource Identifier, the general case of a URL] in an entirely different context." Tying a .mobi domain to mobile devices breaks that portability.
Although not a binding proposal, Berners-Lee's statement was endorsed by the full W3C Technical Advisory Group save for two members who abstained or recused themselves. It is therefore unlikely that the .mobi proposal will eventually succeed. The full statement is available on the W3C web site.
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