From: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org (WG-C-DIGEST) To: wg-c-digest@dnso.org Subject: WG-C-DIGEST V1 #35 Reply-To: Sender: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org Errors-To: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org Precedence: bulk WG-C-DIGEST Tuesday, March 14 2000 Volume 01 : Number 035 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:48:29 -0800 (PST) From: Patrick Greenwell Subject: RE: [wg-c] voting on TLDs On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Winer, Jonathan wrote: > Intentional misappropriations of famous names (or even less famous ones, > like ours) can cause a wealth of malicious mischief, The problem is of course that when asked, it seems the vast majority of TM attornies believe that every trademarked term/phrase in existence is "famous." /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Patrick Greenwell Earth is a single point of failure. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 13:32:29 -0800 From: Dave Crocker Subject: RE: [wg-c] voting on TLDs At 09:10 AM 3/12/00 -0800, Roeland M. J. Meyer wrote: >---- Dave Crocker, Monday, March 06, 2000 8:45 AM >The concern for stability has been present from the start of discussions >about gTLD expansion, roughly five years ago. It has covered: >---- Roeland M.J. Meyer, Sunday, March 12, 2000 0900 hrs. >What Dave fails to mention here is that most of the triggers for those >discussions were Dave Crocker and Kent Crispin repeatedly raising the same >issues over and over again, just as they have done here, although number These concerns were raised long before my involvement. The fact that some of us have been persistent in reminding folks about the range of factors does not mean that we created the factors. It is odd that the strong concerns from the trademark community, and the potential impact of a very litigation-oriented community, would be attributed to Kent or me. >issue with a vetting process, and is not effected by item 1. Item 3 is a >policy jurisdictional issue which we have no power to effect (nor do the Taking actions that exacerbate legal concerns of (powerful) trademark holders is not an matter of abstract policy. Choosing to create an undisciplined process of addition is quite clearly a strong irritate. The trademark community has been quite clear and forceful on this point. >The only point Dave leaves off here, and rightly, from his perspective, is >the natural limit of the marketplace. The most optimistic view is that there >appears to be a maximum market size of 3000-4000 TLDs, depending on how they >are defined. This appears well within the technical limits of the current As always, many thanks for the marketing lesson. But where DID those numbers come from??? In any event, most efforts at estimating new markets turn out to be seriously off the mark. Classic examples are IBM's original estimates of the computer market and Sony's marketing folks' estimate of the Walkman. Both were wildly low. There is no serious basis for claiming any firm estimate of the TLD market. Estimates based on casual surveys of current participants have no methodological validity. In fact they are sure to be grossly misleading. So rather than pull estimates out of the air, responsible planning requires taking an approach that can handle the possibility of massive demand for new TLDs. >root servers and gtld root servers . However, arguments of the >self-healing nature of the DNS is that the Internet, at large seems to be >able to ignore these outages more successfully, since then. What evidence is there that average users are able to comfortably "bypass" outage of DNS service? All the evidence I am aware of says that average users instantly become non-users, until the DNS is fixed. At 12:08 AM 3/13/00 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote: > > incremental cost for adding a new gTLD is close to zero. Any > > technical/business infrastructure that can provide a registry service > > for a single gTLD can provide registry service for a hundred gTLDs. > >Agreed again. >chuckle< Kent, have you ever thought about what this fact >does to your and Dave's scare tactics about the "operational risk" >associated with adding TLDs? Kind of blows it out of the water, doesn't it? Odd that operational stability is treated so lightly... While it is an appealing debating technique to use emotional language like "scare tactics" it is not constructive or professional. Wasn't there supposed to be fresh interest in keeping these exchanges serious and substantial? As to the real issue, yes adding administrations and operations organizations is probably more significant to stability than adding TLDsto a data base. But that is a "probably". And the distinction, in this stage of discussion, is not relevant. The fact remains that performing any change to the DNS, a large number of times and in a short period of time, is likely to have unanticipated results. In systems work, "unanticipated" is sometimes equivalent to "bad" and the rest of the time it is equivalent to "very, very bad". >Ditto my comment immediately above. This is just too good. If there are no >costs and no scaling problems associated with adding TLDs, then this debate >is pretty much over, isn't it? This underscores one of the real difficulties in these discussions. Some people are more interested in winning a debate than in developing constructive (and safe) proposals that represent a real balancing among competing constraints. We need the latter. The former is quite dangerous. At 02:04 PM 3/12/00 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote: >Kent is saying that groups could propose, and ICANN accept, TLDs WITHOUT the >proposer having arranged for specific contracts or operational arrangements >to actually register names. That position seems unworkable, and antithetical >to the emerging consensus. Avoiding, for the moment, the rather curious assertion of emerging consensus, a core question is why separating the choice of name strings from the administration of names under them is at all "unworkable"? >Under Kent's alternative, some group could be designated "policy authority" >over a TLD without having any demonstrated ability to actually provide a >service on the Internet. The relationship between its policy authority and In fact, such a separation is the prevalent form of TLD administration. Most TLDs have a country (or the like) as the registry authority, with an operations group assigned a contract for the daily work. That also is the mode NSI was chosen under. And their track record at the time of original assignment was quite limited. In any event there is nothing in Kent's description that comments on the degree of "vetting" that should or should not be done, concerning assignment of operations responsibilities. Having the registry authority separate from, and provide oversight to, the registry operator, does not abrogate any control over operations requirements. >the implementation of the policy via the registry operation would not be >specified. On what basis, then would the delegation of a TLD be made? On the >grounds that ICANN "liked the idea"? Not good enough. On what basis would When asking a question, it is best not to then answer it and take the hypothetical answer as fact. The question is a good one and one that should be a focus of this working group. The proffered, hypothetical response is silly and unconstructive. > > Note that I am not in any way restricting a registry from making a > > proposal for a TLD -- I am simply saying that there is no good reason to > > restrict proposers to registries only, and many good reasons not to make > > such a restriction. > >Both you and Brunner seemed to be equating "registry" with "existing >registries." >This is a logically unnecessary equation. > >Anyone who proposes to run a tld is a registry. That is like saying that anyone who is accused of a crime is a criminal, or that world peace is achieved just by wanting it. Let's try to be at least a little careful, and reasonable, with terminology. A group is not a registry unless and until they are given the task of being a registry. >Thus, any group that wants "policy authority" has to team up with a viable >operations entity when making its proposal, or do the job itself. Whether That suggests that a registry authority (that's the term that has been around for awhile) is locked into using a particular operations contractor. Doesn't seem like such a good model; does not permit switching to a better operator. >This is where we part ways. There is no difference. For ICANN's purposes, an >organization that gets a TLD delegation is a registry. This is true >"Don't have anything to do with" are strong words. Do you mean that ICANN >would select an operational partner for them? They could not change the >operational contract when they wanted? > >Give me one real-world, actually existing example of such a thing. Certainly OK: The original IANA/NSI relationship. IANA did specify the contents of the root, but otherwise "had nothing to do with" daily operations. That is also the model for a number of ccTLDs, such as Tuvalu. And, please, let's not quibble about the fine-grained definition of "has nothing to do with". The concept distinguishes between authority/oversight versus daily activity. That's an important distinction, while this group's debating exactly where the line is drawn is not. > > Which is easier: > > 1) Given an approved TLD string, find a qualified registry to operate it > > 2) Given a registry, find an approved TLD string to operate. > >You don't seem to have thought this through carefully. yeah. right. The real distinction is between registry "ownership" of a TLD, versus community ownership, with the registry being given (temporary) responsibilities. As long as there is such interest in "emerging consensus" let's be clear that there has been a long, strong and very broad consensus about treating the DNS as a public resource/trust. (And let's not get into legal semantics games again, please.) That means that the registry folks do NOT own the thing but, rather, have current responsibilities and can be replaced. As has been done many times. Such as when NSI replaced SRI. >Also, Your thinking about this is limited by the fact that you think of a >"registry" as a generic function with no differentiation. But in fact many Exactly right. The tasks of a registry are quite straightforward. There might be other functions such a group could choose to perform, but they are distinct from basic registry administration... and therefore need not be tied to it. >of the most interesting new TLD proposals are precisely those which use DNS >to create some new functionality, such as a privacy-enhanced name space, or There has been a constant stream of proposals over the 15 years of DNS history. None has panned out, especially none tied to TLD names. We are again back to the problem is letting interesting, but untested, ideas affect policy, versus continuing established practises and maintaining stability. The former is policy-by-whimsy-of-latest-fashion. The latter is responsible operations. d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:24:38 -0800 From: Dave Crocker Subject: Re: [wg-c] voting on TLDs At 12:04 PM 3/13/00 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote: >From: "Kevin J. Connolly" > > Nope. The #1 reason why the GTLD-MOU tanked was opposition from the > > trademark community. > >Nope. The #1 reason was the US government's lack of...er....comfort at the >role of the ITU. ICANN was created primarily to avoid having to put these The ITU? You are kidding, right? You seem to confuse the rhetoric of some noisy voices with legitimate fact. Having been in the middle of the activities at that time and having gotten assessments from a number of independent sources directly -- including two meetings with Magaziner and many second-hand reports of regular conversations with him -- I heard a consistent summary that a) a PORTION of the trademark community -- namely a few very large multi-nationals, and b) the U.S. Congress were the primary reasons Magaziner felt compelled to re-invent IANA rather than allow it to develop under its own steam. The ITU made good news copy for rabble-rousers but concerns about them never had any substance. The factual aspects of ITU concerns were raised by the US government and pursued through normal channels. For example the one that got the most publicity resulted in an ITU member country review committee -- of which the US was a part -- and it produced a unanimous statement of support for the ITU's involvement. Unanimous means that the US approved. >The #2 reason was the refusal of the USG to allow a government contractor >such as IANA to grab control of valuable taxpayer-funded assets without any >formal authorization. A well-spoken representation of a popular -- albeit false -- view, unencumbered by any concern over the actual facts of the actual history. IANA already had control and had been exercising it since the inception of the DNS. The U.S. government had very little involvement in IANA activities. By contrast IANA had the full support -- and the derived authority -- of the Internet community. Magaziner's Green paper countered a -- still unpublished -- US interagency task force report's recommendations and, effectively, undermined IANA's existing authority. >The trademark theory is an odd one, given the participation of WIPO and INTA >in the gTLD-MoU, and the fact that gTLD-MoU gave them more power and more Nice of you to cite that. It is often forgotten. Indeed, they did participate and in good faith. On the other hand, a small number of specific, multi-national corporations conducted their own, forceful lobbying campaign privately. They tended to present a public facade of being supportive but were working quite hard at undermining things. And they succeeded. At 12:21 PM 3/13/00 -0500, Kevin J. Connolly wrote: >How fascinating. Where, in the CORE-POC paradigm, did the >trademark community have a seat at the table? Where, in that >process, was the ability to prevent the growth of the TLD >namespace forever by imposing operationally-impossible >constraints? (Just to show that my concern for accuracy is not partisan...) The WIPO and INTA were on the IAHC. As I recall we also wrote them into the POC. For that matter, the recently adopted dispute policy is essentially identical with the mechanism put forward in the IAHC proposal and, as I recall, first suggested by the WIPO participant. d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:22:37 -0800 From: Dave Crocker Subject: Re: [wg-c] voting on TLDs At 10:22 AM 3/13/00 -0800, James Love wrote: >Kent Crispin wrote: > > Suppose 10000 new members suddenly appeared and decided to add a TLD > > called ".general-motors". Or maybe ".saddam". And then 30000 more > > people suddenly joined and voted for ".death-to-gore". > > Are there technical reasons why these TLDs should not be approved? Is there any reason you focus only on "technical"? And since this discussion comprises such a wide range of participant skills, please clarify what you consider the term "technical" to cover. d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:48:17 -0800 From: "Josh Elliott" Subject: RE: [wg-c] IMPORTANT: DRAFT WG-C REPORT Good work, Jon. > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-wg-c@dnso.org [mailto:owner-wg-c@dnso.org]On Behalf Of > Jonathan Weinberg > Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 11:02 PM > To: wg-c@dnso.org > Subject: [wg-c] IMPORTANT: DRAFT WG-C REPORT > > > Folks -- > > Members of the Names Council have requested that WG-C file a report > **before the NC's meeting in Cairo next week** describing our initial > conclusions. Accordingly, I've drafted up a document. This is a > draft, to > be rewritten in response to reactions from the list. Because time is > short, please give me your comments as quickly as you can, and in no event > later than midnight UTC on Tuesday, March 7. In addition to the > redrafting > process, if anybody wants to draft up a minority (dissenting) statement, > please send it to me by midnight UTC on March 7, with the > endorsement of at > least five WG-C members, and I'll attach it. > > Thanks; I apologize for the short turnaround. > > Jon > > ----------------------------------------------------- > > Report (Part One) of > Working Group C of the Domain Name Supporting Organization, Internet > Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers > > > This document is Part One of the Report of Working Group C. > It sets out > the rough consensus of the group regarding whether there should be new > generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and if so, how quickly they should be > added to the root as an initial matter. Part Two of the Report, > which will > follow, will address other issues relating to the addition of new gTLDs. > > Introduction and summary > > Working Group C has reached rough consensus on two issues. > The first is > that ICANN should add new gTLDs to the root. The second is that ICANN > should begin the deployment of new gTLDs with an initial rollout of six to > ten new gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. This report will address > each of these issues separately. For each of the issues, it will > summarize > the discussions within the working group, arguments pro and con, and > comments received from the public. > > Procedural and outreach history > > The Names Council approved the charter of Working Group C > on June 25, > 1999, and named Javier Sola as its chair. On July 29, the working group > members elected Jonathan Weinberg co-chair. The working group currently > has more than 140 members, not all of whom are active. It includes > extensive representation from each of the constituencies. (There is one > partial exception: For most of the life of the working group, no NSI > representative participated. When WG-C's co-chair solicited greater > participation from the Registry constituency, Don Telage > explained that NSI > had chosen not to involve itself in the WG-C process. That > representational gap has been filled now that Tony Rutkowski — an active > WG-C member from the start — has joined NSI in a senior policymaking > capacity.) > > On October 23, 1999, the Working Group released its Interim > Report. That > report described the issues on which the Working Group had reached rough > consensus to date. It also included seven "position papers," setting out > alternative scenarios for the introduction of new gTLDs. On November 23, > 1999, the Names Council formally requested public comment on the Interim > Report. This call for comments was publicized on a variety of mailing > lists maintained by the DNSO, including ga-announce, ga, and liaison7c > (which includes the constituency secretariats). In addition, WG-C's > co-chair spoke at the meetings of most of the constituencies at the Los > Angeles ICANN meeting, and urged constituency members to file comments. > Nearly 300 comments were filed in response to the interim report. They > included responses from leading members of all of the constituencies but > two — the record does not include comments from the ccTLD or Registry > constituencies (although ccTLD members and Mr. Rutkowski participated in > the discussions that led to the Interim Report, and WG-C's co-chair > expressly solicited the comments of both of those groups). > > Issue One — Should There Be New gTLDs? > > Discussions within the working group > > The working group quickly -- by mid-August, 1999 -- reached > consensus that > there should be new global top-level domains. There was very little > dissent from this position. > > Arguments supporting the consensus position > > Expanding the number of TLDs will increase consumer choice, > and create > opportunities for entities that have been shut out under the current name > structure. Today, .com stands astride the name space: it has more > registrations than all other top-level domain names combined, and is ten > times the size of the largest ccTLD. Yet it has become nearly impossible > to register a new simple domain name there: Almost a year ago, in April > 1999, a survey found that of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary > words, only 1,760 were free in the .com domain. Millions of additional > names have been registered in .com since then. > > This situation is undesirable. It requires companies to register > increasingly unwieldy domain names for themselves, and is inflating the > value of the secondary (speculators') market in .com domain names. > Existing second-level domain names under the dot com TLD routinely change > hands for enormously inflated prices. These are legitimate trades of > ordinary, untrademarked words; their high prices reflect the artificial > scarcity of common names in existing gTLDs, and the premium on .com names > in particular. > > Companies that currently have a domain name in the form of > have an extremely important marketing and > name-recognition tool. They have an advantage over all other companies > that do not have addresses in that form, because the companyname.com firms > are the ones that consumers, surfing the Net, will be able to find most > easily. If the name space is expanded, companies will be able to get > easy-to-remember domain names more easily, and the entry barriers to > successful participation in electronic commerce will be lowered. Addition > of new gTLDs will allow different companies to have the same second-level > domain name in different TLDs. Those businesses will have to > compete based > on price, quality and service, rather than on the happenstance of which > company locked up the most desirable domain name first. > > Similarly, addition of new gTLDs could enlarge > noncommercial name space, > and allow the creation of top-level domains designed to serve > noncommercial > goals. One proposal made in WG-C, widely applauded in the public > comments, > advocated the creation of a new top-level domain to be operated for the > benefit of North American indigenous peoples. Other examples are easy to > imagine. > > In response to the unsatisfied demand for new gTLD names, > several ccTLD > registries, including .nu, .cc, and .to, have transformed themselves into > gTLDs, marketing their names globally as alternatives to .com, .net and > .org. This is undesirable from the perspective of protecting trademark > rights, since no mechanisms are in place to ensure that these TLDs enact > the same trademark-protective procedures (such as the UDRP) now > in place in > the gTLDs. The transformation of ccTLDs into globally marketed commercial > gTLDs deprives the local Internet community of the benefits of a > ccTLD more > closely oriented to serving that community. To the extent that ICANN > wishes to deploy new gTLDs subject to community-determined policy > guidelines, finally, the growth of ccTLDs in response to pent-up > demand for > TLDs frustrates that goal. > > Creation of new generic top-level domains can be beneficial > in other ways. > One proposal before WG-C, with significant support, urges the creation of > multiple registries, each capable of managing registrations for multiple > TLDs, so as to eliminate the single point of failure for the registration > process. Under this view, multiple new gTLDs are necessary to support the > multiple registries needed for stability. > > Adding new gTLDs to the root, finally, is an important part > of ICANN's > mandate. ICANN was created because the institutions that preceded it were > unable to resolve the intense political and economic conflicts created by > demand for new top-level domain names. The U.S. Department of Commerce's > White Paper saw the establishment of policy "for determining the > circumstances under which new TLDs are added to the root system" as one of > ICANN's fundamental goals. > > Arguments opposing the consensus position > > Three arguments were made, or suggested, in WG-C that cut > against the > addition of new gTLDs. The first relates to trademark policing concerns: > Expansion of the domain space will create additional opportunities for the > registration of domain names that are confusingly similar to existing > trademarks. The relationship between domain names and trademark rights > presents an important and difficult issue, and is appropriately addressed > by registry data maintenance requirements, dispute resolution mechanisms > such as the UDRP, and any other device that ICANN may choose to adopt. > Trademark owners' concerns in this regard are important ones, and > not to be > overlooked. The argument that ICANN should impose substantial delays on > the initial deployment of new gTLDs in the interest of adopting or > perfecting such mechanisms, however, did not win much support within the > working group except among Intellectual Property constituency members. > > Second, some working group members suggested that an increase in the > number of top- level domains could confuse consumers, because it would be > harder for consumers to keep in mind and remember a larger set of > top-level > domains. Notwithstanding requests, though, no working group > member offered > studies or other evidence backing up this view. > > Finally, some working group members suggested that the > perceived need for > new gTLDs was illusory. For the reasons described above, it is the sense > of the working group that that view is incorrect. > > Public comments > > The comments received by the working group fell into > several categories. > A few commenters questioned whether new gTLDs were indeed needed: this > group included Bell Atlantic, Marilyn Cade and John Lewis (writing on > behalf of some members of the Business & Commercial constituency). > > Some commenters took no position on whether new gTLDs > should be added. > Rather, they focused their comments on the position that deployment should > be delayed until after implementation of the uniform dispute resolution > procedure, improved domain name registration procedures, and > protection for > so-called famous marks. These commenters included, among others, Jonathan > Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington, AOL, British Telecom, Disney, INTA, > Nintendo of America and Time Warner. Comments noting the need for caution > in deploying new gTLDs, but not explicitly referencing famous-marks > protection, were filed by the Software and Information Industry > Association > (which supports adding new gTLDs, but only after the creation of a robust, > responsive whois system), John Lewis (writing on behalf of some members of > the Business and Commercial constituency), and Steve Metalitz. > > A third set of comments urged the addition of new gTLDs > without further > delay. These commenters included, among others, Hiro Hotta (emphasizing > that discussion of famous-mark protection should not delay the gTLD > rollout), Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer Professionals for > Social Responsibility, Melbourne IT, AXISNET (Peruvian > Association of Users > and ISPs), the United States Small Business Administration's Office of > Advocacy, Register.com, InterWorking Labs, Tucows.com, InterAccess Company > and PSI-Japan. Raul Echeberria filed comments urging that the > establishment of new gTLDs was important and positive, but that rules > should be devised to avoid massive speculative purchases of domains in the > new TLDs, or trademark holders simply duplicating their existing domains. > > A fourth, and by far the largest, set of comments supported > the creation > of a specific proposed new domain: .NAA, proposed as a new gTLD to be run > for the benefit of North American indigenous peoples. > > > Issue Two — What Should be the Nature of the Initial Rollout? > > Discussions within the working group > > In September 1999, the WG-C co-chairs made the > determination that the > working group had reached rough consensus supporting a compromise proposal > that the initial deployment of new gTLDs should include six to ten new > gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. Because there had been no formal > consensus call, though, the working group held a vote in December 1999 to > reaffirm that consensus. Following the lead of Working Group B, the > working group determined in advance that a two-thirds margin would > constitute adequate evidence of rough consensus. The vote reaffirmed the > compromise position as the rough consensus of the working group, by a > margin of 44 to 20. (A substantial number of working group > members did not > cast votes. In addition, some working group members, having been > solicited > to vote, sent messages to the list explaining that they were declining to > take a position at that time, and listed themselves as consequently > abstaining. Neither the non-voters nor the abstainers were counted in > figuring the two-thirds majority.) > > Members of the working group had expressed sharply varying > positions on > the nature of the initial rollout. Some working group members urged that > ICANN should immediately announce its intention to authorize hundreds of > new gTLDs over the course of the next few years. While ICANN might > interrupt that process if it observed serious problems with the rollout, > the presumption would be in favor of deployment to the limits of the > technically feasible and operationally stable. If ICANN simply deployed a > small number of new gTLDs with no commitment to add more, they argued, the > public would have to make registration decisions based on the possibility > that the small number of new gTLDs would be the only options. This would > give the new registries oligopoly power and the ability to earn > greater-than-competitive profits; it would encourage pre-emptive and > speculative registrations based on the possibility of continued artificial > scarcity. By contrast, they urged, an ICANN decision to deploy a large > number of gTLDs would enable competition and a level playing field: If > ICANN announced an intention to add hundreds of new gTLDs over a > three-year > period, no new registry could exercise market power based on the prospect > of a continued artificial scarcity of names. > > Other working group members took the opposite approach. > New gTLDs, they > urged, could seriously aggravate the problems facing trademark > rightsholders in the existing domain name space. Accordingly, they urged, > new gTLDs should be introduced only slowly and in a controlled manner, and > only after effective trademark protection mechanisms had been implemented > and shown to be effective. > > A third set of working group members took still another > approach. In the > long term, they stated, it would be desirable for ICANN to allow the > deployment of new gTLDs to the limits of the technically feasible and > operationally stable. As a short-term matter, however, the immediate > deployment of hundreds of new TLDs would not be prudent. The > operationally > safer course, rather, should be to deploy a smaller number, and to follow > that deployment with an evaluation period during which the Internet > community could see what lessons were to be learned from the initial > deployment. ICANN would go on to deploy additional TLDs if no serious > problems arose in the initial rollout. The initial deployment would be a > testbed, in the sense that ICANN's decisions regarding the rollout of > subsequent gTLDs would rest on that initial experience. > > The proposal that ICANN start by deploying six to ten new > TLDs, followed > by an evaluation period, was crafted as a compromise position to > bridge the > gap separating the three groups, and to enable a rough consensus > to form in > the middle ground. > > Arguments supporting the consensus position > > The consensus position has the advantage of being a > compromise proposal > supported by a wide range of working group members. In a bottom-up, > consensus-driven organization, broad agreement on a policy path > is valuable > for its own sake. The sense of the bulk of the working group is that this > proposal strikes an appropriate balance between aggressiveness > and prudence > in remedying the shortage of domain names. > > Arguments opposing the consensus position > > Three arguments were made in the working group against the > proposal. The > first was that the contemplated initial deployment was too large; rather, > some WG members urged, it would be appropriate, following the > implementation of effective intellectual property protections, > for ICANN to > roll out no more than two or three new gTLDs. Most WG members felt, > however, that this figure was smaller than caution dictated, and that such > a modest deployment would not give ICANN the information that it > would need > to make sensible later decisions. > > The second argument was that the contemplated initial > deployment was too > small: that, as detailed above, a deployment of only six to ten, > without an > upfront commitment to roll out many more, will be a half-measure > that would > grant oligopoly power to the lucky registries selected for the initial > rollout. This argument has considerable force. Most of the working group > members felt, however, that an initial commitment to many more than six to > ten would not be operationally sound. Until we see the consequences for > the domain name space of adding new gTLDs, there are advantages to a more > circumspect path. > > The final objection raised was that the consensus agreement > answered the > wrong question: The working group, said some, should not be addressing the > number of new gTLDs at all before resolving such issues as whether the new > top-level domains should be general-purpose (like .com), special-purpose, > or some combination of the two. The working group is currently addressing > these issues (they will be discussed in Part Two of the WG's Report), and > certainly it would not have been inappropriate for it to have sought to > reach conclusions on those matters before discussing Issue Two. But most > members of the working group concluded that the path of resolving the > nature of the initial deployment first was just as valid. > > Public comments > > As with Issue One, public comment on this issue was divided. Bell > Atlantic and Marilyn Cade supported the introduction of just a single new > gTLD at the outset. John Lewis, on behalf of some members of the Business > & Commercial constituency, suggested the introduction of a very small > number; British Telecom and Time Warner urged the initial rollout > of only a > few. Other commenters, including Jonathan Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington, > AOL, Disney and Nintendo of America, generally endorsed the statement that > the introduction of new gTLDs should be slow and controlled, and should > incorporate an evaluation period. > > By contrast, Hiro Hotta, Kathryn Kleiman, Michael > Schneider, Computer > Professionals for Social Responsibility, AXISNET, InterWorking Labs, > Tucows.com and InterAccess Company supported the position that ICANN > should, at the outset, announce a schedule for introducing hundreds of new > TLDs. The Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration > concluded > that ICANN should start with a limited introduction of new TLDs > followed by > an evaluation period, but that ICANN should announce in advance that it > would continue with a steady introduction of additional TLDs so long as > pre-announced technical criteria were met. Raul Echeberria, by contrast, > emphasized that ICANN should evaluate the operation and market acceptance > of the TLDs added in the initial rollout before creating or announcing > more. Melbourne IT, PSI-Japan and Register.com all supported the > compromise position of an initial rollout of six to ten new gTLDs followed > by an evaluation period. > > -------------- > > A detailed summary of the public comments on Issues One and Two is > available at . __________________________________________ NetZero - Defenders of the Free World Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 11:33:52 +1100 From: "Rothnie, Warwick" Subject: RE: [wg-c] voting on TLDs Mallesons Stephen Jaques Confidential communication   Dave Crocker said: >(Just to show that my concern for accuracy is not partisan...) The WIPO >and INTA were on the IAHC. As I recall we also wrote them into the >POC. For that matter, the recently adopted dispute policy is essentially >identical with the mechanism put forward in the IAHC proposal and, as I >recall, first suggested by the WIPO participant. Without wishing to detract from the rest of Dave Crocker's message and certainly not disagreeing with his point that WIPO were involved in the IAHC proposals, the current UDRP has even closer parentage to the WIPO report, The Management of Internet Names and Addresses: Intellectual Property Issues, 30 April 1999 which WIPO claims arose out of an invitation in the US government's White Paper. The recommendations in that report no doubt grew out of the IAHC proposals, but also involved further development through an extensive process of consultation and public comment.. Warwick A Rothnie Partner Mallesons Stephen Jaques Melbourne Direct line (61 3) 9643 4254 Fax (61 3) 9643 5999 - -----Original Message----- From: Dave Crocker [mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com] Sent: Tuesday, 14 March 2000 9:25:AM To: Milton Mueller Cc: Kevin J. Connolly; wg-c@dnso.org Subject: Re: [wg-c] voting on TLDs At 12:04 PM 3/13/00 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote: >From: "Kevin J. Connolly" > > Nope. The #1 reason why the GTLD-MOU tanked was opposition from the > > trademark community. > >Nope. The #1 reason was the US government's lack of...er....comfort at the >role of the ITU. ICANN was created primarily to avoid having to put these The ITU? You are kidding, right? You seem to confuse the rhetoric of some noisy voices with legitimate fact. Having been in the middle of the activities at that time and having gotten assessments from a number of independent sources directly -- including two meetings with Magaziner and many second-hand reports of regular conversations with him -- I heard a consistent summary that a) a PORTION of the trademark community -- namely a few very large multi-nationals, and b) the U.S. Congress were the primary reasons Magaziner felt compelled to re-invent IANA rather than allow it to develop under its own steam. The ITU made good news copy for rabble-rousers but concerns about them never had any substance. The factual aspects of ITU concerns were raised by the US government and pursued through normal channels. For example the one that got the most publicity resulted in an ITU member country review committee -- of which the US was a part -- and it produced a unanimous statement of support for the ITU's involvement. Unanimous means that the US approved. >The #2 reason was the refusal of the USG to allow a government contractor >such as IANA to grab control of valuable taxpayer-funded assets without any >formal authorization. A well-spoken representation of a popular -- albeit false -- view, unencumbered by any concern over the actual facts of the actual history. IANA already had control and had been exercising it since the inception of the DNS. The U.S. government had very little involvement in IANA activities. By contrast IANA had the full support -- and the derived authority -- of the Internet community. Magaziner's Green paper countered a -- still unpublished -- US interagency task force report's recommendations and, effectively, undermined IANA's existing authority. >The trademark theory is an odd one, given the participation of WIPO and INTA >in the gTLD-MoU, and the fact that gTLD-MoU gave them more power and more Nice of you to cite that. It is often forgotten. Indeed, they did participate and in good faith. On the other hand, a small number of specific, multi-national corporations conducted their own, forceful lobbying campaign privately. They tended to present a public facade of being supportive but were working quite hard at undermining things. And they succeeded. At 12:21 PM 3/13/00 -0500, Kevin J. Connolly wrote: >How fascinating. Where, in the CORE-POC paradigm, did the >trademark community have a seat at the table? Where, in that >process, was the ability to prevent the growth of the TLD >namespace forever by imposing operationally-impossible >constraints? d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA ------------------------------ End of WG-C-DIGEST V1 #35 *************************