How to sell your country’s identity

Step 1: Tightly control your country’s top level domain (TLD) for years, making it near-impossible to register a reasonable domain name.

Step 2: Start a “meaningful” and “thoughtful” discussion about how your country should have a bigger Internet presence. Make press statements like the following (take a deep breath before reading the first sentence out loud): “The number of .IN Domain Names so far registered does not truly represent the penetration of information technology in India when seen in conjunction with the dimension and vibrancy of the Indian economy and the number of companies and public institutions operating in the area of Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology enabled Services (ITeS). “

Step 3: Change the rules, allowing people to register domains like “example.in”.

Step 4: DON’T put in any regulations in place, limiting domain registrations under your country’s TLD to peope/organisations who have a provable presence in your country (the way other countries do).

Step 5: Announce a meaningless “sunrise period” without public debate, then let anyone in the world register any .IN domain that they want to, including porn sites in the USA, spammers in Asia, domain squatters and extortionists in Europe…

Step 6: Sit back and watch as your country’s “internet identity” becomes diluted, eroded and turned into a laughing stock, while at the same time not benefitting India at all, as famous names and words are used to attract traffic to sites that have nothing to do with India.

Step 7: On days that you need some entertainment, read the press release again, especially the part that says “A proactive policy for .IN Domain proliferation can help establish .IN as a globally recognized symbol of India’s growth in the area of IT.” Compare this statement with what you actually managed to achieve.

There – it’s so simple.