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Letter from Kevin Dankwardt to Kurt Pritz regarding Release of Single-letter Names

Mr. Pritz,

Thank you for talking with me recently about my efforts to finally be able to obtain the domain "k.com". As you have requested I am sending you this email to put in to writing some of rationale for awarding k.com to K Computing.

K Computing Inc. was formed in or about February, 1992 and has operated continuously ever since. As our records and memories best show us, we attempted to register k.com as our one and only domain name sometime, most likely, in late 1992 or early 1993.

We were informed, personally, by Dr. Postel that just a couple of months prior to our request it had been decided that single letter domain names would no longer be awarded. Despite our pleadings and attempts to persuade Dr. Postel of the value in awarding us the domain name, our request was denied on each attempt. To the best of our recollection, Dr. Postel did comment something to the effect of "you have a really good argument for getting that name, though and you were the first to ask for it.".

Our arguments for our now being, finally, awarded the k.com domain include:

1) We were the first to request k.com.
2) We lawfully own the name "K Computing" and often are referred to simply as "K" by partners and customers.
3) We are a commercial entity in the United States and a .com domain name is the most appropriate top level domain for us to be a part of.
4) We are one of perhaps very few, commercial enterprises in the U.S. whose legal name begins with a K and a space and are not merely part of a name that involves other initials (e.g., "K & G Floorcovering") or the perhaps a later part of a name (e.g., "Circle K", "Element K", etc.). These other entities will not be so identified by the single letter "K".
5) Other uses of just the letter K represent products, not entire companies, e.g., "Special K".
6) We had to "settle" for kcomputing.com when our request for k.com was denied. Ever since that rejection we have hoped that we would eventually be able to acquire the domain name we always wanted: "k.com". I have personally recounted, dozens of times, to groups around the world that I have spoken to, over the last twelve odd years, of our saga of not being awarded the k.com domain name and how we very nearly got it.
7) We have never "squatted" on domain names and in fact have never re-sold, or even offered up for sale, a domain name and currently K Computing and I personally (Dr. Kevin P. Dankwardt) own only about half a dozen others, most of which are purely personal, e.g., dankwardt.com or are directly related to business pursuits of K Computing. Our request for k.com is for the use of K Computing in a manner that represents the traditional and proper usage of an Internet domain name.
8) My personal email address has been, since the inception of kcomputing.com, k@kcomputing.com. My interest in single letter addresses, incidentally, was incited when I learned in graduate school, circa 1986, that Mike Flynn was merely m@stanford.edu. Later, I thought I'd show even greater modesty, (or hubris) I'd be k@k.com! In case you're curious, Dr. Flynn informed me today (5/30/05) that he to this day still has a working single letter email address (but not, alas, m@stanford.edu!).

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Kevin P. Dankwardt, Ph.D.
President/CEO K Computing, Inc.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."