Re: [ga] Re: more tlds = more competition in my opinion, was: Re: Election...

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
> kidsearch said the following  on 13/08/2006 16:22:
> > Hmmm. Okay I just have a question. So if you got approved to run a tld 
> > of your creation, ICANN would also allocate part of that to someone 
> > else as well?
> In that case, I would inclined to give the operator of that new TLD some 
> kind of exclusivity during the first years. Does that make sense ?

I take a somewhat different approach - that ICANN, or its successor, 
should not be "allocating TLDs".  Rather it should be granting - we can 
argue about the terms of the grant - the right to place a name of the 
operator's choice put into the root zone (with the appropriate NS and 
other resource records as well).

I call this the granting of TLD "slots" rather than allocation of TLDs.

The grantee of this right gets to chose the string, subject to 
reasonable constraints such as character set, as long as nobody else has 
inserted it into the root zone.  There would be no semantic criteria: If 
somebody wanted to put "puppy-fumping" into their slot, so be it.

The *only* questions that I believe should be asked of the applicant are 
these:

  1. Will you follow published and widely accepted internet *technical* 
standards?  (We can argue whether IPv6 is "widely accepted".)

  2. Will you resolve and respond to query packets accurately and 
without prejudice against or preference for any query source or any 
query content?  (I'd probably want to modify this to allow private 
services as long as the publicly listed servers in the NS records were 
run fairly and equitably.)

  3. Will you refrain from using your position in the root zone to 
engage in conduct that is prohibited by civil or criminal laws of most 
nations?

If they are willing to say "yes" to these questions, then they should 
get their slot.

To my mind that is all that ICANN should be asking.  The huge process 
and deeply intrusive inspection of business plans is simply wrong - it 
serves no technical purpose and contributes not one whit to the 
technical stability of the internet.  It's merely a kind of Jim Crow 
system designed to impose "The ICANN way".

In addition it is completely unreasonable to require that a new TLD 
operator come up on day one with a set of servers, not to mention a 
front end order processing system, that would support .com.  If the 
grantee expects only low traffic, then they should be allowed to 
build-out to that level.

		--karl--