Re: [wg-c] Re: your mail

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

> I cannot see a situation where the current 8-year contract that NSI
> has could be broken, nor can I see a situation in which it would be
> proper.

I agree with Chris completely (arghhh! am I sick!???? ;-) ).

> Put .org and .net aside, and create new registries that get the same
> treatment as .com and give .com some serious competition.

Hmmm, not sure I agree with you entirely there (ahhhh, that feels better :-P )
As you state initially, NSI has managed to get itself a pretty airtight
contract for com/net/org which is for all practical purposes unbreakable.
That contract must be understood with the light that it was created, in that
NSI agreed to sharing the registry as long as it got pretty good guarantees
for hanging onto the cash for a long while. It was probably an agreement
unfairly tilted in NSI's favour, but realistically any further concessions
from NSI would have had to be wrenched out through a court of law and
through long and painful proceedings, resulting probably in a much longer
term because of those proceedings, without counting on the threat of
disruption of operations to the internet. In any case, we are talking about
conditions that legacy TLDs have. Legacy TLDs, precisely because they ARE
legacy TLDs, come with baggage. One of the things that this whole process
has achieved has been a certain evolution of com/net/org, which now has a
known target for full openness (a competitive bid for running the registry).
Personally I believe that setting up and running TODAY any *NEW* gTLD under
the same handicaps that any existing TLDs are being run is NOT being fair,
but rather being backwards and unfair.
Of course, any entity wanting to be a registry will want to claim as many
advantages as possible and draw as many comparisons with existing TLDs as
possible.

> Give each new registry 1 TLD to start as a testbed, prove that it
> works and is not harmful to the Internet (gee, I can't believe I
> said that, according to someone else I don't care about that).
> Once the testbed is over, offer new registries positions in up to
> 3 TLDs if you like to create equality. Frankly, I don't see that
> as making much sense, but what do I know? 

I believe that this would be rather similar to starting the house with the
roof. Your position "choose the registries" and then get them to choose what
they want to run results in a situation in that what exists is there because
those registries have chosen it to be so, in other words, the situation
would be a product of the will of the registries. The position "choose the
TLDs" creates a situation where the entities running the registry are just
filling in an operational need, in other words, it is much less unlikely for
us to wind up in a situation favourable to the registries just for the heck
of it.

Yours, John Broomfield.