[ga] Re: The First New.net Name Appraisal at Afternic

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Ken Stubbs writes:  "i am also frankly surprised that the GA chair would have 
been the person to start this thread anyhow !!"

When the wholly-owned subsidiary of ICANN's second-largest accredited 
registrar makes a policy decision to begin accepting for auction domains from 
the largest alternate root, this is a noteworthy event...    

What we are witnessing is the "consensus" of the market-place, a consensus 
that is more far-reaching, more representative and responsive to community 
needs than the "consensus" that ICANN purports to have.  The ISP community 
has reached a preliminary market-place consensus... they are supporting the 
New.net initiative -- Earthlink, @Home, prodigy, Juno, Netzero and many 
others (such as the American Alliance of Service Providers with over 550+ 
member ISPs) have partnered with this registry.  No wonder that our own ISP 
constituency has remained silent on this issue... they want to be able to 
supply that which the market demands, and that which New.net has offered to 
the public, new TLDs, now.

The secondary domain market has recognized this "consensus" and is moving to 
capitalize on the opportunity for further profit... many of ICANN's own new 
TLDs won't even be going "live" until 2002, and the public has not exactly 
clamored for the choices being offered -- .shop, .web, .club are choices far 
superior than that which ICANN has chosen.

The public has responded to the New.net initiatives because ICANN has not met 
their needs.  The ccTLDs are withdrawing from the DNSO primarily because 
their needs have not been met.   Congressmen craft legislation to establish a 
.kids domain because the needs of their constituents have been ignored. 

The consensus that I am hearing is not the consensus that ICANN purports to 
have.  We, in ICANN, bandy about the word "consensus".  We claim that our 
policies are based on the bottom-up consensus process, and yet a policy paper 
(ICP-3: A Unique, Authoritative Root for the DNS) was issued without the 
necessary bottom-up process, without any public comment, without constituency 
input, and without a vote by the Council... 

We can continue to bury our head in the sand (like those in the NC that argue 
that roots are beyond our scope), or we can move forward to responsibly deal 
with the issues that face us.  Alternate roots have become a part of the 
landscape... to attack them, or to ignore them, is folly.  

To the same degree that the White Paper recognized that the earlier IAHC 
process was insufficiently representative and that important segments of the 
Internet community remained outside the process, so too are we in ICANN now 
guilty of becoming an exclusionary cartel.   Letters between attorneys have 
already been published.  We are potentially on the brink of a very ugly 
situation.  It is time for Mr. Lynn to withdraw his paper, and time to 
recognize that if we lay claim to a consensus process, we had better start 
using it.





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