This is a very interesting statement. My gut reaction is "no, that's wrong!", but I can't quite articulate _why_ that's wrong - so, please consider this reply in the spirit of an auto-Socratic dialogue, rather than an argument intended to dissuade you.
You're right that names themselves are not truly scarce*, but "convenience of being referenced by a name on the internet" most certainly _is_ a scarce resource. There can only be one "first resolved entity" - this is why companies invest in SEO**. So it seems like what you're actually arguing for (and apologies if I'm misrepresenting you here!) is a situation where it's not possible for the average internet consumer to directly reference a particular domain, but rather where all name-resolution queries _have to_ go through a hypothetical unbiased "top-level" search engine - one which indexes not documents, but domains. Is that right?
If that's the case, then we've then opened up several other problems:
- who decides the order in which those results get displayed? You may not think it matters, but I can promise you that NEO ("Name Engine Optimization") would then become a lucrative industry. Apple-the-computer-company certainly wouldn't stand for being the third result for apple.com
- how do direct links and bookmarks work?
- If there's some sub-identifier ("apple.computer.com" resolves directly), then who assigns those sub-identifiers? If ICAAN or a similar organization, then we're right back at the current situation, but one level deeper - the IT company for the Apple grocery store would be fighting (with their wallet) against the Apple Computer company.
- If direct links only work via IP addresses, well, the average consumer wouldn't be delighted with that; nor would print advertisers trying to share a human-memorable address
It's a tempting idea, for certain, but I can't see a way of implementing this that doesn't immediately give rise to the same problems one layer deeper. You've clearly thought about this more than I have, though, so I look forward to hearing more about it!
* though to an extent, they are; since there can not practically be multiple items of a given name within a category - if every man was named John, then we would need some other way to distinguish them, and so "John<-identifier>" would _become_ their name
** where, here, the "name" is a search term rather than a specific one-to-one address - and, yes, I recognize that that's not _quite_ the same thing
Ugh, I apparently can't edit this to reformat. Apologies - the `-`s in the paragraph beginning "If that's the case" were, clearly, meant to be bullets or sub-bullets.
You're right that names themselves are not truly scarce*, but "convenience of being referenced by a name on the internet" most certainly _is_ a scarce resource. There can only be one "first resolved entity" - this is why companies invest in SEO**. So it seems like what you're actually arguing for (and apologies if I'm misrepresenting you here!) is a situation where it's not possible for the average internet consumer to directly reference a particular domain, but rather where all name-resolution queries _have to_ go through a hypothetical unbiased "top-level" search engine - one which indexes not documents, but domains. Is that right?
If that's the case, then we've then opened up several other problems: - who decides the order in which those results get displayed? You may not think it matters, but I can promise you that NEO ("Name Engine Optimization") would then become a lucrative industry. Apple-the-computer-company certainly wouldn't stand for being the third result for apple.com - how do direct links and bookmarks work? - If there's some sub-identifier ("apple.computer.com" resolves directly), then who assigns those sub-identifiers? If ICAAN or a similar organization, then we're right back at the current situation, but one level deeper - the IT company for the Apple grocery store would be fighting (with their wallet) against the Apple Computer company. - If direct links only work via IP addresses, well, the average consumer wouldn't be delighted with that; nor would print advertisers trying to share a human-memorable address
It's a tempting idea, for certain, but I can't see a way of implementing this that doesn't immediately give rise to the same problems one layer deeper. You've clearly thought about this more than I have, though, so I look forward to hearing more about it!
* though to an extent, they are; since there can not practically be multiple items of a given name within a category - if every man was named John, then we would need some other way to distinguish them, and so "John<-identifier>" would _become_ their name
** where, here, the "name" is a search term rather than a specific one-to-one address - and, yes, I recognize that that's not _quite_ the same thing