Re: [ga] new TLDs Report: Further options for input

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karl, Liz, and all,

ICANN's "Core Values" as defined in ICANN's bylaws:
http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#ISection

To wit:
2. CORE VALUES
In performing its mission, the following core values should
guide the decisions and actions of ICANN:

     1. Preserving and enhancing the operational stability, reliability,
security, and global interoperability of the Internet.

     2. Respecting the creativity, innovation, and flow of information
made possible by the Internet by limiting ICANN's activities to
those matters within ICANN's mission requiring or significantly
benefiting from global coordination.

     3. To the extent feasible and appropriate, delegating coordination
functions to or recognizing the policy role of other responsible
entities that reflect the interests of affected parties.

     4. Seeking and supporting broad, informed participation reflecting
the functional, geographic, and cultural diversity of the  Internet at
all
levels of policy development and decision-making.

     5. Where feasible and appropriate, depending on market mechanisms
to promote and sustain a competitive environment.

     6. Introducing and promoting competition in the registration of
domain names where practicable and beneficial in the public
interest.

     7. Employing open and transparent policy development mechanisms
that (i) promote well-informed decisions based on expert advice, and
(ii)
ensure that those entities most affected can assist in the policy
development
process.

     8. Making decisions by applying documented policies neutrally and
objectively, with integrity and fairness.

     9. Acting with a speed that is responsive to the needs of the
Internet
while, as part of the decision-making process, obtaining informed input
from those entities most affected.

     10. Remaining accountable to the Internet community through
mechanisms that enhance ICANN's effectiveness.

     11. While remaining rooted in the private sector, recognizing that
governments and public authorities are responsible for public policy
and duly taking into account governments' or public authorities'
recommendations.

These core values are deliberately expressed in very general terms,
so that they may provide useful and relevant guidance in the broadest
possible range of circumstances. Because they are not narrowly
prescriptive, the specific way in which they apply, individually and
collectively, to each new situation will necessarily depend on many
factors that cannot be fully anticipated or enumerated; and because
they are statements of principle rather than practice, situations will
inevitably arise in which perfect fidelity to all eleven core values
simultaneously is not possible.  Any ICANN body making a
recommendation or decision shall exercise its judgment to determine
which core values are most relevant and how they apply to the
specific circumstances of the case at hand, and to determine, if
necessary, an appropriate and defensible balance among competing
values.

=================================================================

  So it seems that what Karl and Liz have here is a situation
of "competing values" and the report indicating that the determination
is more slanted towards "Social Values" of some undefined sort
are most relevant and how they apply to the specific circumstances 
of determining new TLDs.  

  I side with Karl to the extent that "Social Values" of any sort
as a relevant determining factor as to the introduction of new TLDs
if folly as there is as far as I know, and have been alive, no
distinct set of "Social Values" in the US that would indicate
any reasonable factor in the stability or social fabric disruption
of significance, nor same for any other country.  There ARE however,
political parties and factions in the US and many other counties
where "Social Values" as may be represented in the DNS and/or 
as TLDs would be very disconcerting and/or disruptive, i.e. .XXX...





Karl Auerbach wrote:

> 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.
>
> The committee did not even bother to define what is meant by stability.
>
> 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.
>
> It is pretty clear that this is going to be resolved in other fora.
>
> 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--

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obediance of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
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