Re: [ga] Re: On new TLDs

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If we want to speak collectively on behalf of Internet Users in anticipation
of a future voice as a Constituency within ICANN's GNSO structure, then I
suggest the method we use in any paper we construct should NOT be to come
down on one side or on another side, but to say: "These are the views that
need consideration", ranging from Karl's view to the view of those who take
a more cautious line. Then we fairly and openly list the pros and cons.
Among any group of Internet Users there are going to be those who have
invested already in TLDs and don't want to see further dilution, and those
who want an explosion of NEW TLDs providing the market bears them up (or
even if it doesn't). There will be those who believe that anyone should be
able to launch a TLD in the Marketplace providing they meet fair and defined
criteria; and there will be those who say that the Maerketplace should be
subordinated to the orderly development of a TLD policy, a taxonomy, and
consideration of how TLDs will be categorised and structured.

What I am saying is that there must be such a range of opinions and ideas,
that any collective presentation from Individual Users should be very open
and responsibly look at all options.

We shouls also analyse the Agreements that have previously been used and how
they can be improved; how those Agreements have been flouted; compliance
issues and possible sanctions written into contracts / agreements; the
previous experience (and problems) with launches; the best ways to prevent
registrar exploitation of their privileges; the problem posed by POOL.com
and others with their large numbers of what some might call 'shell'
registrars; the issue of restricted TLDs and the way in which some
registrars like EnCirca have got round these restrictions by acting as proxy
registrants; the question of local isentity and the demand for local TLDs
apart from at a country level; the implications of IDNs; the issue of why
ICANN should have any right to judge who 'deserves' the next TLDs; the
possibility of independent and international assessment panels working
within agreed criteria; the extent of financial commitment that any new
registry should offer to prevent frivolous projects.

In the end, if there is a proliferation of New TLDs then it will probably
have the paradoxical effect of making .com and search engines even more
important than they already are. In contrast, if 1000 New TLDs were to
emerge in 10 years it would be fine, but the demand for names in all these
TLDs would run out and speculators would probably find that investments in
lesser TLDs like .info and .biz would diminish in value. Then again, you
might say that has already occurred, when you see the failure of .biz to
emerge as a poor relation of .com; or the way .info has offered their names
for virtually zero from time to time in a desperate effort to maintain
registration levels.

Anyway, just to be clear Danny: are you proposing that as a group we try to
create a shared document to speak for Individual Users? Or some of them. If
so, I can work at this after December 17th, but before then I am deeply
committed both personally, medically and professionally.

Richard H

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <sotiris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Danny Younger" <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>; <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 10:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ga] Re: On new TLDs


> Karl, Danny et al.,
>
> I have to disagree with you Karl.  Though I didn't know Jon Postel
> personally, based on his comments in RFC 1591, specifically:
>
> "In the Domain Name System (DNS) naming of computers there is a hierarchy
> of names.  The root of system is unnamed.  There are a set of what are
> called "top-level domain names" (TLDs).  These are the generic TLDs (EDU,
> COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT), and the two letter country codes from
> ISO-3166.  It is extremely unlikely that any other TLDs will be created."
>
> I am of the opinion that Jon Postel would not have wished to expand the
> namespace; I believe he had the foresight to imagine the current
> registry/registrar free-for-all which has resulted in the semantic
> irrelevance of a what should have been developed as a coherent
> directory-like structure.
>
> I would have to say that Vint's questioning of the wisdom of adding new
> TLDs to the namespace is probably where most thinking people ought to be
> in their reflections on the current state of the dns.  Furthermore, it is
> not an accident that Tim-Berners Lee has spoken out against the further
> expansion of the namespace; and I hardly think anyone would want to accuse
> him of holding back or stifling innovation.
>
> Be Well All,
>
> Sotiris Sotiropoulos
>
> >
> > On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, Danny Younger wrote:
> >
> >> 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?
> >
> > Why not?  What's wrong with making a profit?
> >
> >> Should it be just because a municipality (like Berlin) wants one?
> >
> > Why not?
> >
> >> 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--
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>