Re: [ga] new TLDs Report: Further options for input
Liz Williams wrote: You can see that I was referring specifically to the Report -- I have not seen any suggestions about language to improve the Report as it stands. I made a very specific suggestion in my prior email, that all material not clearly related to technical requirements to the ability of the upper tier of DNS to turn DNS query packets into DNS reply packets be erased. That would require virtually all of the content of the report to be erased. The Report is the result of more than a year of consultations with, amongst many, technical experts, legal advisors, interested potential applicants, governments and the private sector. The report is the result of industry incumbents talking to industry incumbents, with the door open to the intellectual property industry. Most of us were excluded. By-the-way the report that you posted is missing its last 10 pages, including the Annex 2 you mention that perhaps contains the list of those who are purported to have contributed. This report is nothing more than a continuation of the highly incumbent-protective process that we saw in year 2000. Indeed, because it has no basis in technical necessity it is really no less arbitrary and capricious than ICANN's decision to reject TLD applicants simply because some board members had trouble pronouncing the letter sequence of the proposed TLD. As I have said, this report can not articulate that there is any relationship between the restrictions it proposes and the technical measures needed to maintain the technical stability of the upper tiers of the DNS. For all its pretentious format - albeit not yet on glossy paper with cutesy photographs like a Gartner report - this report fails to tell us, the users of the internet, how these proposals will result in an internet that is more stable, more open to competition, and costs less than the several hundred millions of dollars we now spend every year on domain names. Indeed, from the point of view of internet users this report seems merely to pour more concrete around the ICANN status quo and preserves the present day incumbent TLD registries and the supra-legal rights accorded by ICANN to the trademark industry. If you refer to ICANN's Mission and Core Values, you will see that there are other matters which need to be taken into account in addition to the prime importance of technical stability. Ah the "core values". Perhaps you ought to look to the statements that ICANN has made in its corporate documents and its statements to the US government in its tax filings. Those differ substantially from ICANN's highly self-congratulatory "core values". Moreover, no matter what ICANN might say in its "core values" ICANN does not have the legal authority to be a body that leverages its de facto monopoly position over the only really viable DNS marketplace to engage in social engineering, regulates businesses and their products, or protect consumers against sharp business practices or business failures. It is superficial and disingenuous to describe ICANN's mission as only technical when it is clearly evident that the picture is much more complex, involves a wide array of input and consultation with a diverse range of stakeholders. Superficial and disingenuous? Is it superficial and disingenuous to note that ICANN can not articulate any specific legal authority that gives ICANN the legal right to use its position over the domain name marketplace to impose its view of social and economic policy? Is superficial and disingenuous to note that this report does nothing for the users of the internet except to extend the status quo, a status quo that costs them over $300,000,000 each year in excessive domain name costs and subjects them to trademark protective contractual terms that go beyond the laws adopted by national legislatures and requires them to abandon the privacy rights accorded them by their national governments? Is it superficial and disingenuous to note that ICANN's own "core values" were adopted by a board that was lacking any component chosen by the community of internet users? And is it superficial and disingenuous to note that the contents of this proposal do not one whit for the technical stability of the DNS? I would suggest that the mirror goes the opposite direction - that the authors and proponents of this report have come to believe in their own glamour and have decided that the internet, or rather their financial stake in it, is best protected by imposing a regulatory regime that would make most governmental bureaucrats turn yellow with envy. When ICANN was formed it cast itself as nothing more than dealing with the "technical stability" of the internet; ICANN swore up and down on a stack of bibles that that was its limited role. Yet today, and implicitly your own admission, ICANN does virtually nothing that has any technical component whatsoever except through the most tenuous of ancillary linkages. As for "stakeholders" - ICANN long ago demonstrated that it is based on a highly selective choice of who has "stake" and who does not. As I have said on many instances, and which has never been contradicted, were ICANN to vanish into a cloud of money-colored smoke, the internet would continue to work, not a packet would fail to reach its destination, domain name businesses would continue to operate, users would happily use and providers would happily provide. What would happen, however, is that those who wish to provide new services in the domain name space - really different services and methods such as I offer in .ewe (see http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000159.html )- would come about and the profits of some of the "stakeholders" that ICANN protects would be subjected to real competitive pressures and the intellectual property industry might find that it has to use the legal systems of the world. Finally, if you had read the Report in full, you would have understood the ongoing focus on the stability and security of the Internet is of prime importance to the Committee -- Core Value 1.
I have defined it - the ability of the upper tiers of dns to efficiently, accurately, and promptly transform DNS query packets into DNS response packets without prejudice for or against any query source or query subject. ICANN's own contract with Verisign similarly defines stability in terms of packet flows, in that case between applications. And virtually nothing in this report has any grounding in either of these definitions. I am happy to receive any further suggestions for language that improves the Report and look forward to the participation of the GA List members at the upcoming ICANN meetings -- either in person or virtually.
In some cases those who want part of the domain name pie are going to bring legal actions against ICANN and those vendors that have participated in the creation of these policies that are so clearly designed to restrain competition and are lacking any foundation in technical necessity. This may occur in the US, it may occur in Europe, it may occur in any of the 250 other jurisdictions of the world in which these rules are found to contradict national policy against combinations in restraint of trade. In some cases nations will simply find that the domain name can actually be fractured into separate, but overlapping, domain name systems. --karl--
|