A few days ago I posted about the state of the EU. This was prompted in part by the first part of John’s excellent study into the .eu namespace and activity therein and partially by Eurid’s latest promotional campaign.
My post here may have gone unnoticed, but shortly after it appeared on CircleID Jay Westerdal posted on his blog.
While I agree with the thrust of his post ie. that a TLD needs to be used in advertising and mass media where people can actually see it and relate to it, I would have to disagree with some of his followup comments:
I think the EU should release their zonefile. That would allow people to track growth and chart their marketshare. However they think that is an invasion of privacy and are opposed to it. Historically TLDs that release their zonefile have better adoption. The EU seems to be opposed to true market forces. They discourage buying multiple domains and building value in the TLD. I think this is a fundamental mistake of Dot EU.
In common with so many people across the Atlantic Mr Westerdal seems to have issues with our respect for privacy in the European Union.
As John put it to me earlier this evening:
The problem with releasing the zonefile is that EURid is bound by EU data privacy legislation. Most ccTLD registries in the EU do not release their zonefiles so it is not unusual. The .eu is an EU venture. It is no suprise that it is not a free market venture because there is a multitude of jurisdictions to be considered. Thus legislation in one jurisdiction could be used to challenge the release of the zonefile on the basis that it would be interfering with the data privacy of its citizens.
Zonefiles are handy things for certain purposes, but I’d really wonder what he is trying to promote. The language he uses is very suggestive and would make me wonder what he sees as “value” in a TLD.
Europeans like me are not overly happy with Eurid’s handling of .eu, however they have shown willingness to learn from their mistakes.
What a lot of domainers don’t seem to understand is that a young TLD needs to have valid usage and growth or else it will end up a bit like .info and won’t have any real value in the secondary market, which is where a lot of people are focusing their efforts.
