[ga] Re: On new TLDs
I would imagine that in Jon Postel's day the issue wasn't only the competencies and ethics of a TLD proponent, but also the issue of "circumstance", as in, "under what circumstances should a new TLD be launched?" Clearly Jon's iTLD file lists requests by competent parties that weren't acted upon. Jon was not a god. He was just a very nice person who happened to do a particular thing. We should not ossify the internet around his personal procedures or predilictions. Jon was a pragmatist - he did what needed to be done and didn't dig into motives. In his time we were getting along with a few TLDs - they had not been overly monitized by a frenzied dot-com boom, nor had the kind of entrenched money-pump mentality that underlies into ICANN come to pass - so the issue of when and why did not rise to the top of the stack. But knowing Jon as I did (which was not close but not distant either) I believe that Jon would have answered a direct TLD request with a couple of questions: - Does the requestor know what he/she/it is doing (i.e. does the
requestor know how to follow internet protocols and the
end-to-end principle?) - Has the requestor really done some introspective thinking about
whether they really need a TLD as opposed to doing their thing
at a lower level in the hierarchy? (Notice that the focus of the
question only asks whether thought had been exercised; the requestor
is given the benefit of trust.)If so then I believe Jon would have said "go ahead, give it a try". He might also have said, if you fail, please relinquish it. Jon was part of the internet experiment - an experiment which still continues - in which some ideas grew and bloomed and others died. The internet landscape is littered with huge investments in ideas that did not make it: big visible ones like ISO/OSI, medium ones like gopher, small ones like supdup. So ICANN's idea that a TLD application must be microscopically examined and required to demonstrate that it can not fail or that everybody thinks its the greatest thing since sliced bread simply is not neither the Jon Postel way nor the classical internet way. Might I ask your view of what should prompt the launch of a new TLD? My answer is this: If someone wants to give it a try and can demonstrate that they are willing and able to follow internet standards, to meet reasonable performance requirments (requirements based on their expected user base, not on some hypothetical scenerio where every internet user becomes their subscriber), and that they will refrain from violating laws, then that person should be given his chance to try his/her idea. Some people ask about innocent users who build their names in TLDs that might fail. My answer is simple: Has there been fraudulent conduct? Has the TLD provider engaged in a knowing misprepresentation of a material fact, and has the customer relied on that misrepresented fact and suffered harm as a result? If so, the law provides a remedy. ICANN is crushing innovation on the internet by shifting the rational and reasonable balance between vendor (TLD provider) and customer to the degree that the vendor/TLD-provider can only innovate if even the most stupid of the stupid of customers are immunized against harm - in other words, ICANN is destroying innovation by becoming a consumer protection agency that requires TLD providers insure that no matter how stupid the customer, that customer is protected from harm. ICANN's methods bear a stronger resemblance to those of a bureau in the 1930's Soviet Union that is dictating a 5-year plan than it does to those of an agency tasked to ensure the stable operation of a technical system. Is it overwhelming public demand? Why should an innovation have to depend on the pre-existance of public demand? Had the internet had to wait for "overwhelming public demand" than we would never had an internet. Similarly, had the telephone had to wait for "overwhelming public demand" we would never had a telephone system. The point is this - innovation *preceeds* demand. Should it be simply because some technically-competent business wants to profit from a new namespace?
Should it be just because a municipality (like Berlin) wants one?
What principles should govern the decision to accept a new TLD in the root? Beyond the requirements of following internet protocols, maintaining adequate service levels to support the anticipated use, and refraining from violating the law (I won't get into the question of "which law?"), I have only one concern: We know that the root zone can be huge - tens of millions of TLDs can exist and run. Because from the point of view of serving requests and doing the database lookups a zone is a zone is a zone, the .com zone gives us a good metric of what is technicall possible for the root zone. And the .com zone is now over 44 million names. However, there are administrative concerns such as time to disseminate and load such a large zone file (we want root zones to recover quickly), and the chance of human or computer error with such a large file. These administrative concerns argue for restraining the size of the root zone to someting rather less than the technical limits. I've picked a target that is a mere 2% of the size of .com - 1 million TLDs. Even were we to allocate 10,000 TLDs per year it would take take a century to reach that target. Suppose we take my numbers and reduce them 100-fold, so that we have a target of 1% of the 2% (i.e. 0.02% overall) of the current technical limit, i.e. 10,000 TLDs and allocate them over a 40 year period. that's 250 new TLDs per year. That probabably exceeds demand, so the issue then becomes one of a system of apportionment. First of all - we should be blind to the semantics of a name. For example, .xxx could be read as the number 30 in roman numerals or as some sort of representation of the three crosses on Calvary mount. We should refrain from digging into semantics. Second, ICANN's notion of "sponsored" versus 'general' TLDs is totally contrived and artificial and, as has been seen from the experience with ICANN's sponsored TLDs, of little general interest or value. Third, ICANN's beauty contests are simply subjective - remember how ".iii" was tossed out because one member of the ICANN board had trouble pronouncing it? And .web has never been allowed in the door because the proponents once stood up for what they perceived to be their rights and raised that concern in a proper forum for the resolution of such questions? Fourth, ICANN should not pick names - proponents of TLDs should simply be granted "slots" to which they can assign an character string they want as long as it is not already used. Fifth, let the law do what the law does. If someone picks a TLD that is a trademark, let the owner of the mark use existing trademark law to police any offending concrete act of the TLD. Who knows, a .FORD TLD might actually be used to run a database of good places to cross rivers, a use that might not constitute an offense under trademark law. Sixth, unadultrated auctions tend to give the prizes to the wealthiest. I personally like auctions, but I like my auctions to be mitigated by a set-aside of at least a portion of the "slots" to be allocated by a lottery mechanism. Yes I know that lotteries can be biased by buying strawman to act as ticket holder proxies for the wealthy. But we can't fix every problem and obtain perfection; I think auctions+lotteries is good enough. I discussed many of these issues back in my "platform" when I ran for the ICANN board in year 2000 (take a look at the "Domain Name Policy" links): http://www.cavebear.com/icann-board/platform.htm --karl--
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