Re: [ga] Re: On new TLDs

["kidsearch" <kidsearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karl, should there be limitations to the number of tlds one entity can
create?

My worry is that should the scenario you described happen and anyone can
create a TLD, what is to stop a company like Verisign to immediately put up
a ton of money and grab up tlds the way a domain name speculator grabs up
domain names?

Chris McElroy, President,
Kidsearch Network
http://www.KidsearchNetwork.org
http://www.MissingChildrenBlog.com
http://www.RunawayTeens.org


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Danny Younger" <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 5:24 PM
Subject: [ga] Re: On new TLDs


>
> 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--
>
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