[ga] Re: On new TLDs

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Karl,

Sotiris has touched upon a point that I wanted to
raise with you -- he notes 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".

My concern goes just a little deeper than that... when
Vint starts to "question the rationale" of anything,
we have learned to expect that rather dire
consequences will immediately follow.  

It's easy to convince the choir that new TLDs are a
"good thing", but let's face it... you've been on the
Board and probably realize moreso than most Vint's
singular ability to sway other directors toward his
position... so, if I may be so bold, let me hear an
argument from you as to whether we should have new
gTLDs that is strong enough to sway Vint.

Just so you know, my own opinion (subject to further
consideration) is that a brief hiatus prior to
launching new TLDs is required for the following
reasons:

?	Does ICANN currently have in place a plan to deal
with registry business/financial failure?  No.
?	Are all ICANN-accredited registrars currently
escrowing all of their registrant data as required by
the terms of the RAA?  No.
?	Has ICANN hired the necessary complement of
Compliance Program Managers?  No.
?	Is the Internet community satisfied with the
language embodied in current and proposed registry and
registrar contracts?  No.

ICANN's house is not in order.  I would sure feel
better about launching new TLDs if ICANN got its act
together first.


  
--- Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> 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 
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