Re: [ga] Policy for dealing with controversial TLDs
At 05:40 a.m. 25/12/2005, Danny Younger wrote: Recently, governments have pointed to "obvious and predictable public policy issues" associated with the introduction of certain TLDs. They have cited "potential ethical problems" and "significant impacts on local concerns" as justification for a TLD selection criterion that would examine "the real need for such an introduction". Imagine an outfit sitting at the gate of a huge enclosed public beach, having convinced the government that the introduction of a toll-per-head was a good revenue gathering and crowd control idea, then restricting this space only to those who could prove a NEED to be on that beach. Now think of the same happening on a beach that is infinitely large. Laugh if you will, but that is the current situation in the top level namespace. The controversiality of a TLD is not in its potential content (that content is now freely scattered over the secondary levels - out of the bottle, not likely to ever be pushed back in), it lies in the control that "holding" a TLD gives over the names in it's namespace and with the associated benefits of that control. What if individuals or companies that are not part of the current cosy club would end up holding a majority of TLD's and, horror, these TLD's would become popular? What , for example, if such a TLD would be administered and have its policies determined by elected representatives of its registrants? A free market in registration contract modalities would be the complete opposite of the doling out (to those who agree never to sue ICANN and never to speak critically of ICANN in public, if the proposed Verisign agreement is any guide) of TLD's with uniform registration contracts and it would undermine the gateway. It would undermine ICANN. What the GAC is saying is just that governments also believe in a gateway approach and that they want to come to mutually agreeable policies to keep current TLD participants happy.
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