Tim Berners-Lee, widely credited with creating the World Wide Web, has spoken out against the wireless industry’s attempts to create a “.mobi” mobile-specific Internet domain listing. Further, the World Wide Web Consortium’s Technical Advisory Group echoed Berners-Lee’s criticism’s by voting to endorse his position.
“Dividing the Web into information destined for different devices, or different classes of user, or different classes of information, breaks the Web in a fundamental way,” wrote Berners-Lee in a letter published on the W3C’s Web site. The W3C develops Internet technologies and advises on Internet standards. “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.”
Berners-Lee’s criticism comes at the end of the public comment period for the .mobi proposal, which was introduced earlier this year by Nokia Corp., Microsoft Corp., Vodafone, 3, the GSM Association, Hewlett-Packard Co., Orange, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sun Microsystems Inc. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers-the entity that manages Internet addresses-is set to evaluate the .mobi proposal along with several other so-called top-level domain listings, including .xxx for adult content, .asia for Asian countries and others. ICANN is expected to rule on the listings by September.
The .mobi initiative, dubbed mTLD, is an effort to create mobile-specific Internet sites with the .mobi suffix. For example, users looking for Nokia’s Internet site on their mobile phones would type in www.nokia.mobi instead of www.nokia.com. The aim of the mTLD effort is to simplify the current status of the wireless Internet, where addresses range from www.wap.nokia.com to www.nokia.wap.com to www.mobile.nokia.com.
However, Berners-Lee took issue with top-level domains in general and .mobi in particular.
“Introducing new TLDs has two effects,” he wrote. “The first effect is a little like printing more money. The value of one’s original registration drops. At the same time, the cost of protecting one’s brand goes up. …. The value of each domain name such as example.com also drops because of brand dilution and public confusion. Even though most people largely ignore the last segment of the name, when it is actually used to distinguish between different owners, this increases the mental effort required to remember which company has which top-level domain. This makes the whole name space less usable. Is it fair to reduce the value of these domains which have been acquired at great cost by their owners?”
As for .mobi, Berners-Lee said a mobile-specific top-level domain name would serve only to fracture the Web and that it would create unnecessary differences between mobile companies and other types of companies.
“A travel agent should be a travel business, not a `mobile business,’ ” he wrote. “In a reasonable world, the travel agent gets on with selling flights and not worrying about whether a customer is attached by a wire. In a reasonable world, a phone is a phone, and the particular electromagnetics used to connect it to another phone are totally uninteresting compared to the fact that a person is connected to another person.”
“I think it’s the exact opposite,” explained Mike Wehrs, a Microsoft executive speaking on behalf of the mTLD effort.
Wehrs said the .mobi domain listing would bring wireless users more in line with regular Internet surfers because the .mobi listing would work under the same basic procedures and methods as .com, .net and other Internet listings. Further, Wehrs said .mobi wasn’t an attempt to limit or block companies from playing in wireless, but a way to simplify the wireless Internet for users. Wehrs agreed that wireless devices soon may be capable of viewing standard Internet sites without the need for special wireless-specific addresses like .mobi or technologies like WAP, but he said the .mobi approach would accomplish the same thing in a cleaner, quicker manner.
Wehrs said the mTLD initiative meets ICANN’s requirements for sponsored top-level domain offerings. Such listings are sponsored by interested entities and are designed for use within a specified community. ICANN has already approved sponsored top-level listings such as .aero, .coop and .museum. Wehrs said that, if approved, standard domain name registrars like VeriSign Inc. would administer .mobi addresses.
Public comments filed in conjunction with the .mobi initiative span all sides of the issue. The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, the GSM Association and others spoke out in favor of the effort, while content company Bango.net and others argued it would confuse users and could slow the adoption of already established wireless Internet services.
Interestingly, Spanish carrier Telefonica Moviles posted its opposition to the mTLD initiative in an April public comment to ICANN. The carrier raised questions over the assignment and management of .mobi domain names, the openness of the mTLD effort and the management of users’ personal data.
“TEM believes that there are too many aspects … that are clearly unrefined and which generate uncertainty regarding application of the sTLD .mobi, in the business of mobile communications, as well as the possible repercussions this would generate,” the carrier wrote.
However, two weeks later, Telefonica Moviles reversed its position and voiced complete support for the .mobi initiative. “We are highly motivated to extend the Internet domain to mobile. This is a major opportunity to extend the scope of the Internet to our core sector, creating opportunity for both the Internet and mobile worlds,” the carrier wrote. “We recognize that there are still issues being shaped, but we are now convinced that the consortium is committed to an open approach moving forward. Accordingly, we are intent to become a founder member of the support organization.”
