The Beginning
It started at noon, just about a hundred years ago, with the sound of a bugle. There were fortunes to be had, ready and waiting, just for one to reach out and do the taking.
There were the charlatans who convinced others that they had some "special" way to get what they wanted. There were those who were sneaks, called "Sooners," who crept out, under the cover of darkness, and staked claim to land that they had no honest claim to. Then there were those who sought to sell to the unsuspecting land, or rights to land, that they did not honestly own by changing the name "just a little." In some cases two and even three streets were laid out on the same thin strip of land. There were those who feigned ignorance of the law in an attempt to grab up some valuable piece of property. And there was bloodshed, often over just a small patch of ground.
The Territory Expands
We today are a little luckier because the blood is now green instead of red and comes in thousand dollar bills, however, as far as the territory is concerned we don't seem to be quite so lucky. The entire world is in on this one and the "land" seems to just keep expanding. In the beginning we started as just a small group-there was .com, .gov, .org, and .edu. Even with these, there are those who seek to mislead people by setting themselves up as "Whitehouse.com" when the actual place people are seeking is "Whitehouse.gov." This is just one of the more publicized incidences; there are dozens (at least) of companies and organizations fighting over just who will own what piece of the ether known as the Internet.
During the Territorial Rush of the 1800s, there was not just one race to get a piece of the land. The government added additional territories and ran more races for people to try grab up a piece of the wilderness. It took almost four hundred years for the land that has become known as the United States to be set up with borders for individual states, counties, cities and towns that are recognized and accepted by the majority of the people. But even with four hundred years, there are still some arguments over ownership that have not been resolved.
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Likewise, on the Internet, we now have the push to add such things as .per and .bus and .hlp. to the "territory" of the Internet. And just how many "Whitehouses" can we have? Is there room for more than one "MacDonald's" or "BettyCrocker"?
Use Simple Abbreviations
All of the states used to have three letter abbreviations, such as Ala., Neb., Cal. and Nev. Maybe that would be a place to start with this new territory-everyone has a URL extension that indicates a location as well as an organizational structure, like the zip codes we use for land-based mail now.
There could be something like
dept_fish_game.gov.cal.sfo
for the San Francisco office of the State of California's Department of Fish and Game. Likewise, making a small adjustment to the URL to read
dept_fish_game.gov.cal.lax
would connect to the Los Angeles office.
Maybe I'm just being too simplistic about the whole thing, but it seems to me if the logical rules we already have were applied to the Internet, many of the obstacles that seem to be causing problems would go away. If one wanted to send a message to the President of the United States then it could be addressed something like
william_clinton_whitehhouse.gov.usa.wdc.
This approach would put an end to the speculators trying to guess just what names might be of value to someone at some point in the future. This seems pretty clear cut to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
The End
Eliminating the confusion with a little simple logic would go a long way to putting an end to the "Territorial Rush" of the Internet. People and businesses could proceed with the confidence that what they needed would be there when they needed it, at least as far as having a place in the Internet. Yes, I know there would be times when things wouldn't work out perfectly, but then maybe those few could be taken care of by an impartial arbitration of some sort.
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