Or at least that's what this piece could easily lead you to think. It's not so much that he takes on .mobi -- I get his argument that a TLD designed to designate the sort of device used to access the web doesn't line up with his view of how the Internet should evolve. I disagree with his point, but at least I understand his perspective. It's his argument that new TLDs generally -- any new TLD -- causes "brand dilution" that makes me wonder which corporate conglomerate threatened to pull its funding from W3C. Yeah, that's unfair, but so's his piece. The three center sections of his paper, on "The Cost of Change", "The Economics of Domain Names", and "Unfairness" are far outside his areas of expertise. They fail to take into consideration the needs of individual Internet users, small businesses, or the world outside the United States. It's an amazingly near-sighted piece. His input ought to get the credit its due, but not undue credit just because he's Tim Berners-Lee.

Add: Michael Froomkin on the same subject.