Re: [ga] Re: On new TLDs
Both parties to the MOU, ICANN & the DOC, agreed that a registry financial failure or other such registry emergency would constitute a destabilizing event. The idea that a business failure of a TLD operator somehow destabilizes the internet at a technical level is something that I do not accept. I have long defined internet stability to mean the net's ability to efficiently move IP packets from source IP addresses to destination IP addresses. (I've also more recently added that internet stability also means that the upper tier (roots) of the DNS system promptly and accurately respond to DNS queries.) My definition has been echoed in the recent proposed ICANN-Verisign settlement agreement. The DoC and ICANN may have reached such a definition - but the fact that they did something very stupid and brain dead does not make it right. There is a prodigious cost should ICANN become a guarantor of TLD survival - ICANN then must be so careful about who will receive the grant of ICANN's franchise that it effectively kills innovation by elimination any but the most conservative plans. In other words, such an approach would kill the innovation of DNS and, indirectly, channel innovation in naming into root systems outside of ICANN's control and into systems that do not use DNS. In addition, if ICANN is to become the gatekeeper into DNS, then we must ask what legal grounds give it the right to restrain trade in that way? The GAO reports done so far indicate that the DoC is already way out on a limb with no clear statutory support. I'm personally expecting to see the next two years as full of legal actions, some claiming billions of dollars in damages, against ICANN based on various claims that ICANN improperly limits entry into the domain name marketplace, constrains products, sets prices (e.g. the Verisign $6 fee) without relationship to costs, etc etc. For ICANN to restrict TLDs on some claim of "stability" has about as much validity as a claim by the FAA that only those airlines serving Pepsi (as opposed to some other brand of Cola) can safely land at Federally supervised airports and thus are the only airlines that will be allowed to fly. Moreover, if ICANN is to be a regulatory body that claims to protect consumers of domain names, then how can it continue to reject and eject those same consumers from its forums in which decisions are made? --karl--
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