From: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org (WG-C-DIGEST) To: wg-c-digest@dnso.org Subject: WG-C-DIGEST V1 #60 Reply-To: Sender: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org Errors-To: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org Precedence: bulk WG-C-DIGEST Thursday, March 23 2000 Volume 01 : Number 060 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 12:10:20 -0800 (PST) From: "William X. Walsh" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 22-Mar-2000 Mark C. Langston wrote: > The registry MUST NOT own the TLD, and must not be allowed to even > infer that some ownership exists, or we'll just be creating problems > for everyone, and perpetual fiefdoms for a select few. Must not is a pretty strong term, Mark. If you don't confer SOME rights in the TLD to the registry, there will be no incentive for the registry to invest the money needed to become an innovative registry, because their rights could be yanked from them at any time with no recourse, and they could lose their investment to the benefit of whoever gets it next. - - -- William X. Walsh http://userfriendly.com/ Fax: 877-860-5412 or +1-559-851-9192 GPG/PGP Key at http://userfriendly.com/wwalsh.gpg - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.1c (Mandrake Linux) Comment: Userfriendly Networks http://www.userfriendly.com/ iD8DBQE42Sir8zLmV94Pz+IRAiLhAKCe/f5vSn178CrdWiuJaLSKUU7S4QCggWIg fo/aZ1L0ipaKOIFJR3zSHgQ= =l5Eo - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:13:23 -0500 From: James Love Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed "Mark C. Langston" wrote: > The noncommercial attendees at the Cairo meeting? Which noncommercial > constituency members had enough money and time to travel all the way > to Cairo for just over a day's worth of open meetings? There were quite a few. ACM, CPT, CPT, Digital Bridges and Common Cause were among the US NGOs. There were others too from Korea and Latin America. The Markle Foundation has a fund to support NGO travel to these meetings. And, the NC constituency has its own mailing lists too. I would agree that it is difficult for these groups to participate, but some do. CPT has sent people to the last 3 ICANN meetings, with external support for only the Cairo meeting. I think the American Library Association is contributing $1,000 to the NC Constituency dues. > Let's not > forget that noncommercial does not equal individual stakeholder. > They've made that VERY clear. As far as I can tell, the NCDNHC is > full of ISOC chapters and university groups, and several > 'questionable' groups, such as Kent's boat club. Just because the > title includes the word "noncommercial" does not exclude the > participants from having a financial interest in these decisions. > Indeed, I do believe several of the NCDNHC members would easily > qualify as members of other constituencies, all of which are > commercial. This is probably true. But I would not conclude that the NCDNHC isn't going to do its job. It did pass a resolution on the new TLDs at the Cairo meeting, supporting the creation of new TLDs, and asking that at least half of the new testbed TLDs be NC domains. And there was suprising support and agreement on some core issues on the management of TLDs. > > > > For the voting proposal. ICANN does have a membership system. It is > > > > in place. If there was a "ballot" on 3 TLDS, it would give people a > > > > reason to register as a member. It's open and free right now. It may > > > > have flaws, but compared to what? > > > > > > Actually, the membership system is NOT in place. Nobody has received > > > the mailings that were supposed to follow the initial on-line registration, > > > becuase ICANN has not mailed them yet. There is no At-Large membership, > > > period. ICANN never followed through. > > > > > > Well, ICANN has created the mechanism to become a member. Of > > course, having a real vote would require more follow through. Is this > > doable? Of course it is. > > > > It's "doable" but ICANN seems to be unwilling to do it. They already > fear the Great Unwashed Masses enough to have completely changed the > manner in which the public can join the ICANN BoD, and have held up > completing the registration process until some unannounced future > date. At Cairo, there was no suggestion that would not move forward. Is there anything the contrary? ICANN was pushing hard for a Sept election. Jamie ======================================================= James Love, Director | http://www.cptech.org Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org P.O. Box 19367 | voice: 1.202.387.8030 Washington, DC 20036 | fax: 1.202.234.5176 ======================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 12:19:48 -0800 From: "Mark C. Langston" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 12:10:20PM -0800, William X. Walsh wrote: > > On 22-Mar-2000 Mark C. Langston wrote: > > The registry MUST NOT own the TLD, and must not be allowed to even > > infer that some ownership exists, or we'll just be creating problems > > for everyone, and perpetual fiefdoms for a select few. > > Must not is a pretty strong term, Mark. If you don't confer SOME rights in the > TLD to the registry, there will be no incentive for the registry to invest the > money needed to become an innovative registry, because their rights could be > yanked from them at any time with no recourse, and they could lose their > investment to the benefit of whoever gets it next. Oh! Just like domain names! And when the registry goes rogue, or becomes incompetent, or their contract expires or is broken, how do you propose we avoid the '98-'99 NSI debacle? - -- Mark C. Langston mark@bitshift.org Systems & Network Admin San Jose, CA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:25:12 -0500 From: James Love Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed "Mark C. Langston" wrote: > The registry MUST NOT own the TLD, and must not be allowed to even > infer that some ownership exists, or we'll just be creating problems > for everyone, and perpetual fiefdoms for a select few. Without addressing the issue of who should "own" a TLD, or what rights domain name holders have with respect to the "owner" of the TLD, would you agree that the policies might be different for a) Domains that were open to anyone, like .com or .org, and b) Restricted TLDs. I can imagine lots of models for restricted us TLDs that could be managed by industry associations, international NGO groups, or any number of other responsible parties that could be expected to treat the domain name users fairly. Also, if you want (1) the TLD to be restricted, and (2) real enforcement of the restrictions, do you really want ICANN to be the police, or would it make sence to "give" the management of the TLD to a different group that had the incentives to do it right? Jamie ======================================================= James Love, Director | http://www.cptech.org Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org P.O. Box 19367 | voice: 1.202.387.8030 Washington, DC 20036 | fax: 1.202.234.5176 ======================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 12:29:18 -0800 (PST) From: "William X. Walsh" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 22-Mar-2000 Mark C. Langston wrote: > On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 12:10:20PM -0800, William X. Walsh wrote: >> >> On 22-Mar-2000 Mark C. Langston wrote: >> > The registry MUST NOT own the TLD, and must not be allowed to even >> > infer that some ownership exists, or we'll just be creating problems >> > for everyone, and perpetual fiefdoms for a select few. >> >> Must not is a pretty strong term, Mark. If you don't confer SOME rights in >> the >> TLD to the registry, there will be no incentive for the registry to invest >> the >> money needed to become an innovative registry, because their rights could be >> yanked from them at any time with no recourse, and they could lose their >> investment to the benefit of whoever gets it next. > > > Oh! Just like domain names! > > And when the registry goes rogue, or becomes incompetent, or their contract > expires or is broken, how do you propose we avoid the '98-'99 NSI > debacle? > I don' t know what you mean by rogue or incompetent, and I surely don't know about the contract expiration. As far as I am concerned, the registry should retain their rights for as long as they stay within their contractual obligations. You will remember I have pushed for this group to come up with a reasonable set of standard contract obligations that registries would be bound to. Material breach of that contract would permit ICANN to step in and steward the domain till they can bid the contract. Part of the contract would have to include that the registry agrees that in the event they become insolvent, or are unable or unwilling to continue operating the registry, or otherwise breach in a material form the contract, that ICANN can step in and they assign any and all rights to the intellectual property associated with the registry operation to ICANN for reassignment to a new registry operator. - - -- William X. Walsh http://userfriendly.com/ Fax: 877-860-5412 or +1-559-851-9192 GPG/PGP Key at http://userfriendly.com/wwalsh.gpg - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.1c (Mandrake Linux) Comment: Userfriendly Networks http://www.userfriendly.com/ iD8DBQE42S0e8zLmV94Pz+IRAvB+AKCOwRlwfSgmJp3igpNzTOMwCJaxegCgge4s jrM+xBiZb6Zgu+lZ9DP0fOA= =Rajl - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:49:45 -0600 From: david@aminal.com Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 12:19:48PM -0800, Mark C. Langston wrote: > > Oh! Just like domain names! > > And when the registry goes rogue, or becomes incompetent, or their contract > expires or is broken, how do you propose we avoid the '98-'99 NSI > debacle? > What do you do if your ISP gets flaky? What do you do if your business has to move? What do you do if your telephone number has to change? I could go on and on, but the real answer is that there is -no- system that can guarantee the competence of any service provider. Best you can do is have provider options, and possibly some safety nets. The only practical safety net proposed so far is data escrow and a backup registry to take over for a failed provider, but that's expensive. We'll see how important this issue is when or if the bill is presented :-) David Schutt ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:28:39 -0800 From: "Christopher Ambler" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed > The only practical safety net proposed so far is > data escrow and a backup registry to take over > for a failed provider, but that's expensive. We'll > see how important this issue is when or if the bill > is presented :-) For that matter, as a prospective registry operator, I have no problem posting a performance bond to cover the cost to transfer the data to another registry should the contractual conditions be breached or whatnot. - -- Christopher Ambler chris@the.web ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 08:49:46 +1100 From: "Rothnie, Warwick" Subject: [wg-c] ICANN June meeting and new gTLDs Mallesons Stephen Jaques Confidential communication   An Australian registrar for .com and .com.au, Melbourne IT, has been reported in the local press as stating that ICANN's June meeting is expected to approve 10 new gTLDs including three new categories, each of which may have 2 or 3 new domains. The categories identified are "non-commercial", commercial domains other than .com and chartered domains for members of international professional and commercial organisations. The link to the report is . Warwick A Rothnie Partner Mallesons Stephen Jaques Melbourne Direct line (61 3) 9643 4254 Fax (61 3) 9643 5999 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:56:16 -0800 From: "Christopher Ambler" Subject: Re: [wg-c] ICANN June meeting and new gTLDs Jumping the gun a little? Aren't they a CORE member? Perhaps that explains why they said that one of the domains was likely to be .nom. On the other hand, perhaps they said that because they're intending to be a registry for .nom? Are we having fun yet? - -- Christopher Ambler chris@the.web - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rothnie, Warwick" To: Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 1:49 PM Subject: [wg-c] ICANN June meeting and new gTLDs Mallesons Stephen Jaques Confidential communication An Australian registrar for .com and .com.au, Melbourne IT, has been reported in the local press as stating that ICANN's June meeting is expected to approve 10 new gTLDs including three new categories, each of which may have 2 or 3 new domains. The categories identified are "non-commercial", commercial domains other than .com and chartered domains for members of international professional and commercial organisations. The link to the report is . Warwick A Rothnie Partner Mallesons Stephen Jaques Melbourne Direct line (61 3) 9643 4254 Fax (61 3) 9643 5999 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 100 18:00:48 -0400 (AST) From: John Charles Broomfield Subject: Re: [wg-c] re: Choosing the intial testbed > At 09:57 AM 03/22/2000 -0800, William X. Walsh wrote: > >How will voters be validated, and how will we prevent voter fraud and multiple > >voting by the same people? (...) > Sure, I understand what you are saying. The real world unfortunately makes > us go out of our way to prevent abuse from thieves and malcontents > everywhere. I don't know if you've been following the Arizona election or > not - but it was the first state-wide legal public election. All these same > issues came up - how do you validate people? how do you prevent fraud ? All > legitimate concerns - but, yet they still voted. > > Should we stop the entire democratic process - or stop trying to prevent > abuse from the few rotten apples who continually spoil everything for > everyone? (...) With a real-person paper ballot type vote, and taking as a given that the oversight is correct (ie that the counting is not tainted and that the ballot-boxes are not tampered etc...), the chances of voter fraud are really very low. In a state like Arizona, having a bunch of people go to three ballot boxes and deposit one vote in each, or manage to sign up and prove from a national census that they have 3-4 different addresses and then vote from each one is something that for all practical effects DOESN'T matter. How many fraudulent votes can one voter cast in a single day? 10? How many total votes are tallied? a few hundred thousand. Can this one person automate their fraud to vote 100 times? The answer is no because traditional voting requires them to actually turn up at the ballot box to cast their vote (mail voting is a very small minority traditionally). In other words, once you make everyone go out of their way to hand-in in person a piece of paper, fraud on a relative scale becomes irrelevant. Unfortunately, for quite a few years now, we have all been wondering how to actually have an online voting system which can be used in a wide way and which can be held accountable. On the online world, with some degree of programming, you CAN create a miriad of email addresses and then proceed to send votes in automatically from all of them. In a state election, one person on his own cannot send in 1 million ballots. In an online vote, one person on his own CAN manage to send in 1 million votes unless we have some outside heavy method to authenticate them BEFORE the ballot. Without this prior authentication, votes can be hijacked. More so if we're talking about a system with many many voters where you can't detect this fraud just by having a quick look at the votes. That is the problem that William highlights and that you seem to not realize. Yours, John Broomfield. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 100 18:13:25 -0400 (AST) From: John Charles Broomfield Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed > Selecting names before selecting registries is putting the cart well before > the horse. I actually feel its just as bad to do it the other way around. In fact I feel that it is two carts or two horses (depending how you look at it). In other words, I fail to see this obligatory tie in between the registry operator and the TLD. > What if a name selected is .ATT? > What if AT&T wants to run .ATT but it's not selected? That's easy: so as to avoid that tie-in between registry operator and TLD, no combination of characters that make up enforceable trademarks should be allowed at this stage. We are after all talking about gTLDs where the "g" stands for generic. We are NOT talking about creating TLDs which are the registered trademarks of companies, are we? I'm sure that ".ibm", ".adidas", ".linux", ".toyota", ".pepsi" etc would be great TLDs from the point of view of their respective owners, but I can't quite see the usefulness to the rest of the 'net for them. Any TLD selected should have a period *before* becoming operational where any company that thinks it is entitled to it could make that claim so as to eliminate it from the list to avoid the dilution of that particular companies trademark. Now, I know the claim to fame of IOD that they state that ".web" is a trademark of theirs, but then if it *IS* a trademark, it can't be a gTLD (by definition) as it is not a generic (generics can't be trademarked). So, either it is generic (in which case the IOD trademark doesn't apply), or it is an IOD trademark (in which case it is not generic, and we can safely forget about it for the time being). Can't have it both ways I'm afraid. > What if the names selected are .u4x, .hhrhr, and .w83hjf? I have yet to see *any* list of TLDs from *any* camp to come up with a list along those lines. If they did, they would be thrown straight back. What if the sky falls on our heads tomorrow? > The middle-road solution is to set down objective criteria that a registry > must meet (much like was done for registrars), and accept applications > based upon that criteria. Ok up to there. > Each application will also contain the single TLD > that the applying registry wishes to run, based on their business plan and > marketing data. I fail to see the need, interest or advantage to the internet community at large to tie these two things together. I can perfectly see where you're coming from, which is that you feel that ".web" if inserted in the root would be an instant winner (I feel that way too), and that you want to somehow tie it up to IOD, but (as stated) I see neither need, interest or advantage to the internet in doing so (tieing ".web" to IOD I mean). Yours, John Broomfield. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 19:56:43 -0500 (EST) From: James Love Subject: Re: [wg-c] re: Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, 22 Mar 100, John Charles Broomfield wrote: > In a state election, one person on his own cannot send in 1 million ballots. > In an online vote, one person on his own CAN manage to send in 1 million > votes unless we have some outside heavy method to authenticate them BEFORE > the ballot. Without this prior authentication, votes can be hijacked. More > so if we're talking about a system with many many voters where you can't > detect this fraud just by having a quick look at the votes. > > That is the problem that William highlights and that you seem to not > realize. I recognize that fraud is a risk in online balloting. Also, that registrars and registries might have unfair advantages in campaigning. But it isn't obvious that there would be significant fraud in an election of the type proposed by ICANN, and maybe a vote for TLDs would provide a nice way to see how the election would work. How much could go wrong? Would the "wrong" TLD be approved? This would hardly be the end of the world even if it happened. And, if there was less crime that one could imagine, that would be interesting too. Recognizing that the ICANN proceedure requires postal addresses, receipts of both email and postal mail, and a pretty good audit trial to check, if one was so inclined to check. Jamie ============================================= James Love, Consumer Project on Technology P.O. Box 19367 | http://www.cptech.org Washington, DC 20036 | love@cptech.org Voice 202/387-8030 | Fax 202/234-5176 ============================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 100 18:36:02 -0400 (AST) From: John Charles Broomfield Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed > > > The middle-road solution is to set down objective criteria that a registry > > > must meet (much like was done for registrars), and accept applications > > > based upon that criteria. Each application will also contain the single TLD > > > that the applying registry wishes to run, based on their business plan and > > > marketing data. > > > > (...)Then, after the TLDs have been agreed > > upon, if a registry so wishes, it can present exactly the proposal you > > just described, given that the TLD is in the pool agreed upon. If > > not, too bad. > > So the registry that wants to run .foo is out of luck if .bar is chosen? > Ridiculous. Companies willing to enter the market will have already > done their (expensive) market research to determine what TLD to > apply for. In the case of Image Online Design, there was quite a bit > of research in selecting .web back in 1995. When the approval > process for TLDs begins, this is the TLD IOD expects to submit. That was based on the (incorrect) assumption that any prospective registries showing up would be given the choice to have X TLDs of their own. Under a plan for introduction of gTLDs independent from registry operators, presumably gTLDs chosen would be popular choices, so all of them would have a healthy amount of registrations, and *ANY* prospective registry operator would get lots of money from running *ANY* gTLD. STRAW suggestion here: Technical backend operations for a registry are not too complicated (they are not dealing with the general public, but with registrars), so although from a transaction point of view there may be many transactions, from a staff workload point of view, there would probably be not much different work whether the registry has 100.000 domains or whether it has 1 million (obviously more in the case of 1 million, but not 10 times more), and staffing levels at both registry operators would be very similar. Some system should be devised to level out charges amongst the registry operators so that they won't complain of envy amongst themselves (maybe add up all the monthly registrations of ALL new gTLDs and divide equally, after all, the work is going to be very similar). When Christopher keeps touting that NSI has an unfair advantage etc... I can see his point, which is why I would also see it unfair that a registry operator that gets a TLD with "only" 100.000 domain registrations would complain that it is unfair that the next registry operator gets 10x the cash for only slightly more work... Just throwing it out into the arena here... :-) > Ironically, I suspect that if it ever did come down to voting, .web > would be in the top 3 anyway. I would tend to agree with you, but then again if it doesn't qualify as a gTLD, what use is it? Yours, John Broomfield. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:08:53 -0800 (PST) From: Rick H Wesson Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed John, a simple constraint for gTLD my be that they are *not* trademarkable for the purpose of being a gTLD. it might narrow the field a bit. - -rick On Wed, 22 Mar 100, John Charles Broomfield wrote: > > > Selecting names before selecting registries is putting the cart well before > > the horse. > > I actually feel its just as bad to do it the other way around. In fact I > feel that it is two carts or two horses (depending how you look at it). In > other words, I fail to see this obligatory tie in between the registry > operator and the TLD. > > > What if a name selected is .ATT? > > What if AT&T wants to run .ATT but it's not selected? > > That's easy: so as to avoid that tie-in between registry operator and TLD, > no combination of characters that make up enforceable trademarks should be > allowed at this stage. We are after all talking about gTLDs where the "g" > stands for generic. We are NOT talking about creating TLDs which are the > registered trademarks of companies, are we? > I'm sure that ".ibm", ".adidas", ".linux", ".toyota", ".pepsi" etc would be > great TLDs from the point of view of their respective owners, but I can't > quite see the usefulness to the rest of the 'net for them. Any TLD selected > should have a period *before* becoming operational where any company that > thinks it is entitled to it could make that claim so as to eliminate it from > the list to avoid the dilution of that particular companies trademark. > Now, I know the claim to fame of IOD that they state that ".web" is a > trademark of theirs, but then if it *IS* a trademark, it can't be a gTLD (by > definition) as it is not a generic (generics can't be trademarked). So, > either it is generic (in which case the IOD trademark doesn't apply), or it > is an IOD trademark (in which case it is not generic, and we can safely > forget about it for the time being). Can't have it both ways I'm afraid. > > > What if the names selected are .u4x, .hhrhr, and .w83hjf? > > I have yet to see *any* list of TLDs from *any* camp to come up with a list > along those lines. If they did, they would be thrown straight back. What if > the sky falls on our heads tomorrow? > > > The middle-road solution is to set down objective criteria that a registry > > must meet (much like was done for registrars), and accept applications > > based upon that criteria. > > Ok up to there. > > > Each application will also contain the single TLD > > that the applying registry wishes to run, based on their business plan and > > marketing data. > > I fail to see the need, interest or advantage to the internet community at > large to tie these two things together. I can perfectly see where you're > coming from, which is that you feel that ".web" if inserted in the root > would be an instant winner (I feel that way too), and that you want to > somehow tie it up to IOD, but (as stated) I see neither need, interest or > advantage to the internet in doing so (tieing ".web" to IOD I mean). > > Yours, John Broomfield. > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:17:20 -0500 (EST) From: James Love Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Rick H Wesson wrote: > a simple constraint for gTLD my be that they are *not* trademarkable for > the purpose of being a gTLD. > > it might narrow the field a bit. Could be a rule for the initial testbed, but perhaps problematic in the long run. But more general, the issue isn't just about generics. Other TLDs are also relevant. I personally don't see why AOL, with millions of customers, couldn't have .aol. Or my AT&T couldn't use .att, if they wanted to. Why not permit every ISP with a million or more customers to have a TLD of their choice? This could be a simple rule. I'm sure there would be complaints, but would it cause any harm? It wouldn't hurt me. Jamie ============================================= James Love, Consumer Project on Technology P.O. Box 19367 | http://www.cptech.org Washington, DC 20036 | love@cptech.org Voice 202/387-8030 | Fax 202/234-5176 ============================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 100 18:54:28 -0400 (AST) From: John Charles Broomfield Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed > On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 12:19:48PM -0800, Mark C. Langston wrote: > > Oh! Just like domain names! > > And when the registry goes rogue, or becomes incompetent, or their contract > > expires or is broken, how do you propose we avoid the '98-'99 NSI > > debacle? > > What do you do if your ISP gets flaky? If you are running with your own domain-name, the fact that your ISP goes flaky is a bother, but you change and its settled transparently. > What do you do if your business has to move? Mail forwarding? > What do you do if your telephone number has to > change? Aha... Here is where it gets interesting. I don't know if you have noticed the increasing trend worldwide where governments or telco oversight institutions are obligating telcos to maintain their customers numbers even when they migrate to different telcos (I imagine that for telcos, telephone numbers are starting to be like domain names). Today if you have an imposed telephone change it's bad luck and in many cases very costly to business which is precisely why governments are forcing telcos to co-operate in this way. Can't see why the same protection shouldn't be afforded to the internet. Yours, John Broomfield. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:25:47 -0800 From: Kent Crispin Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 08:17:20PM -0500, James Love wrote: > On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Rick H Wesson wrote: > > a simple constraint for gTLD my be that they are *not* trademarkable for > > the purpose of being a gTLD. > > > > it might narrow the field a bit. > > Could be a rule for the initial testbed, but perhaps problematic in > the long run. But more general, the issue isn't just about generics. > Other TLDs are also relevant. > > I personally don't see why AOL, with millions of customers, couldn't > have .aol. Or my AT&T couldn't use .att, if they wanted to. Because there is therefore no reasonable criteria by which you could restrict *any* TM holder from getting a TLD. > Why not permit every ISP with a million or more customers to have a > TLD of their choice? This could be a simple rule. I'm sure there > would be complaints, but would it cause any harm? It wouldn't hurt me. Wow. "It wouldn't hurt me." That's deep. I'm really encouraged that you are a consumer advocate. There are countries where *no* ISP has a million customers... - -- Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be kent@songbird.com lonesome." -- Mark Twain ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:56:16 -0800 (PST) From: Rick H Wesson Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, James Love wrote: > Why not permit every ISP with a million or more customers to have a > TLD of their choice? This could be a simple rule. I'm sure there > would be complaints, but would it cause any harm? It wouldn't hurt me. > wow now, see if you can get a /16 from arin why don't you. I think you are heading down the *wrong* path. The access and ability to run a gTLD should always be serving some public interest. using size of the applicatnts customer base just make barriers to entry isn't a good idea. - -rick ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:45:40 -0600 From: david@aminal.com Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 06:54:28PM -0400, John Charles Broomfield wrote: > > > What do you do if your ISP gets flaky? > > If you are running with your own domain-name, the fact that your ISP goes > flaky is a bother, but you change and its settled transparently. > > > What do you do if your business has to move? > > Mail forwarding? > > > What do you do if your telephone number has to > > change? > > Aha... Here is where it gets interesting. I don't know if you have noticed > the increasing trend worldwide where governments or telco oversight > institutions are obligating telcos to maintain their customers numbers even > when they migrate to different telcos (I imagine that for telcos, telephone > numbers are starting to be like domain names). > Today if you have an imposed telephone change it's bad luck and in many > cases very costly to business which is precisely why governments are forcing > telcos to co-operate in this way. Can't see why the same protection > shouldn't be afforded to the internet. > > Yours, John Broomfield. Ah. See, I -like- being smarter than my competition, I don't want to protect them, or make their life easier than it need be. If some business is dim enough to print up two years of business cards and stationary that have to be thrown away if an ephemeral business charateristic changes, well, better luck next time. And yes, living and working in Chicago means many area code and phone number changes in recent years, it's an annoyance, but all in all a comparatively minor one. Here, phone number portability only applies when you change providers, not locations. And area code changes are a constant factor. Jeez, according to this logic we should still be using our Telex number. Yes, and when we move the Post Office should forward our mail forever - They should know that even though it says Illinois on the envelope that it really means Kansas :-) There is a bit of philosophical difference here on where the responsibility lies as far as maintaining contact between business (or government) and customers. It's not the customers job to keep track of us. It's not governments job to keep communications channels open between us and customers. It's -our- (a businesses) job to keep track of our customers, and to make sure that they know how to reach us when they need to. As far as friends and family go, I figure if I really want to be in contact with them, I'll let them know if I move, whether it be physically or electronically. I'll stop now before I get even further into seminar mode about change being opportunity, yadda yadda yadda. David Schutt ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 18:14:33 -0800 (PST) From: "William X. Walsh" Subject: Re: [wg-c] re: Choosing the intial testbed - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 23-Mar-2000 James Love wrote: > Recognizing that the ICANN proceedure requires postal addresses, > receipts of both email and postal mail, and a pretty good audit trial to > check, if one was so inclined to check. You are suggesting limiting this vote to the 5,000 approved ICANN "members?" Please. First of all, this will not be anywhere NEAR ready in the foreseeable future. Secondly, this is nowhere NEAR a solution for polling the "Internet Community." The delay issue is a real one. One we are all frustrated with, and one which will cause any proposal to lose a LOT of support. We have delayed way too long as it is. There are right ways to do this without trying to wait for something that some people think is "better" to come along. There is no effective way to run a poll like you suggest. I could own that poll with a small and simply script written in less than 30 minutes, and probably work around any auditing you might be doing. And I'm not as advanced a programmer as many of the other people who are on tap to companies who have a real vested financial interest in the outcome (unlike me). They could probably do it better, faster, and with less chance of detection. If you have a complete and full solution, that includes how it would be paid for, controlled, monitored, etc, then it might be worthy of consideration (though I still oppose even the concept). But without any of that, this isn't a serious or worthwhile proposition. Quite simply there is no reason to have the TLD and Registry be seperated in such a fashion. People keep saying "lets not create another NSI." Spare me, thats the worst argument I have seen. The NSI "situation" was created by there being NO competitive gTLD registries at all for such a long time. NSI got away with WAY overcharging for a service that they were the sole source for. They had absolutely no incentive to innovate or otherwise enhance their offerings or operations. This will not be true for new gTLD registries, who already have to compete with companies offering com/net/org domains for under $20/yr and some under $15/yr( and even a handful at under $10/yr). They will have to compete, both by having competitive prices, and by offering innovative bundled services, competing on policies, etc. The companies will actually have to look at how their policies will effect their ability to market, since they won't have a captive market, like NSI had. We are wasting way too much time with people who are using the "NSI Situation" to justify forcing an economic and policy model onto all gTLDs when the FTC report clearly shows that there is absolutely no advantage to that, and indeed disadvantages would occur (lack of innovation, etc, are things the report mentions specifically). - - -- William X. Walsh http://userfriendly.com/ Fax: 877-860-5412 or +1-559-851-9192 GPG/PGP Key at http://userfriendly.com/wwalsh.gpg - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.1c (Mandrake Linux) Comment: Userfriendly Networks http://www.userfriendly.com/ iD8DBQE42X4J8zLmV94Pz+IRAi7lAJ9OAfBSNRMnJAsTuzMXlLBsFv7F+gCfcNRf 5uqmKpmbWMwju44LuG7VI0g= =hneU - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 21:50:53 -0500 (EST) From: James Love Subject: Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Rick H Wesson wrote: > heading down the *wrong* path. The access and ability to run a gTLD should > always be serving some public interest. using size of the applicatnts > customer base just make barriers to entry isn't a good idea. The important barriers now are the barriers to prevent new TLDs. Look, I'm hardly a fan of AOL or AT&T, and in fact, spend quite a bit of time opposing various AOL mergers or AT&T's closed ISP/cable platform. But even I don't see what possible concern one would have in giving a big ISP a registry for a TLD. I would guess that they could manage it, if they could manage a million ISP customers. And if smaller ISPs, or a coalition of smaller ISPs, would do it, why not that too. But I wouldn't do this for big businesses only, or even only for business reasons. Indeed, I am mostly interested in non-commercial TLDs, including some that would not have huge numbers of users, but that would accomplish important public interest goals. But I don't see this as a zero sum game. AT&T or AOL's gain isn't necessarily my loss. Jamie ============================================= James Love, Consumer Project on Technology P.O. Box 19367 | http://www.cptech.org Washington, DC 20036 | love@cptech.org Voice 202/387-8030 | Fax 202/234-5176 ============================================= ------------------------------ End of WG-C-DIGEST V1 #60 *************************