• Reported by Andreas

This is a follow-up on my earlier posts about .mobi. Today's Slashdot points to a recent Builder.com article about mTLD:

mTLD, the operator of the .mobi domain space, has stipulated that anyone wanting to register for a domain must abide by a code of practice.

Back in July, there was already mention of "a series of style guides and policies", about which I had my doubts, as I didn't see any reference to web standards.

But let's go back to the article:

mTLD announced today that it has joined the W3C and will be using many of the consortium's best practices, developed for the mobile Internet, to develop its own criteria in order to ensure .mobi sites are optimised to be viewed on mobile devices.

.mobi will be the first TLD to require its customers to stick to rules on how their users' Web sites are developed.

That's an interesting development, but one can wonder if it is a good idea to police content. It's also weird mTLD is so fond of web standards, as the creation of .mobi itself actually collides with the W3C's own guidelines.

I don't get it, and the recently released Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 Working draft, which is co-edited by an mTLD representative, also doesn't make me any wiser: it doesn't even mention .mobi...

Any clues?