Re: [wg-c] CONSENSUS CALLS -- THIS IS IT

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

Hi,
	I don't know if the idea is to slowly seek consensus inch by inch,
which may mean slow but sure advance... in any case:

WRT item 1:
(initial rollout including generic AND chartered TLDs)
answer: Abstain/no-vote/don't care (choose which one suits better base on
        explanation)
        -Having chartered TLDs or not in the initial rollout doesn't bother
        me. I think that what most of us are pursuing (Eric Brunner is in
        the minority here) are GENERIC TLDs. Personally I am sceptical about
        enforcement of a charter, or who exactly you hand control of a
        chartered TLD to, think it would create more hassle than what it
        should resolve, and will only be workable/enforceable in a very
        small amount of cases. If it is deemed (how, by whom?) that the
        community of museums is happy with delegating a ".museum" to a given
        entity, then it's up to them... The group has to be large enough so
        as not to just become a way to avoid registration in generic TLDs,
        and there has to be good reasoning behind that. As you can see,
        AFAIK, these are VERY fuzzy concepts, which is why (as I say) I am
        sceptical of the idea. If a group comes forward and presents
        something that is credible, has consensus behind it, and looks as if
        it can work, then fine... Hence, I'm not bothered against
        introduction or not of chartered TLDs *IF* it's (relatively)
        painless. I give this explanation so as to show that if this item
        passes or fails on just 3 people voting for or against, then that's
        ok by me. I have no problem with it one way or another. Clear? :-)

WRT item 2:
answer: YES to consensus on the item.
        Problem: the concepts are far too vague to be useful IMHO. I feel
        that we might aswell gain consensus that "the internet is used to
        transmit data" or that "the sky is blue".

WRT item 3:
answer: YES if necessary.
        Problem: isn't this a technical problem with the current DNS? If so,
        why are we dealing with it? If the item is just to avoid confusion
        as to our role, then fine, let's formally say that it is beyond our
        scope. Just puzzled about this.

Resume:
If this is all we can do, then we're not doing much unfortunately.

Yours, John Broomfield.

> 	As promised, here is a set of three consensus calls.  Please note that
> these are *three separate items*, and that you need to vote on them
> *separately*.  That is, it won't work to send in a response that says "I
> vote yes," or "I vote no."  Rather, you need to vote yes or no on *each* of
> the three items.  The deadline for voting is Monday, April 17 at 4 pm UTC
> (6 pm in Brussels, noon in New York, 9 am in Los Angeles, 1 am the
> following day in Tokyo).
> 
> 	I want to urge *everyone* in the WG to weigh in on these three items.  If
> you like ‘em, vote yes.  If you don't, vote no.  There's nothing wrong with
> a proposed consensus item failing if the members of the WG, having decided
> that it's a bad idea, vote against it.  But there's something very wrong
> with an item failing because too few of the WG members bother to cast a
> vote at all.
> 
> 	Here are the three items.
> 
> PROPOSED ROUGH CONSENSUS ITEM NUMBER ONE	
> 
> 	The initial rollout should include a range of top level domains, from open
> TLDs to restricted TLDs with more limited scope.
> 
> 
> PROPOSED ROUGH CONSENSUS ITEM NUMBER TWO
> 
> 	Criteria for assessing a gTLD application, subject to current technical
> constraints and evolving technical opportunities, should be based on all of
> the following principles :
> 
> 1. Meaning: An application for a TLD should explain the significance of the
> proposed TLD string, and how the applicant contemplates that the new TLD
> will be perceived by the relevant population of net users.  The application
> may contemplate that the proposed TLD string will have its primary semantic
> meaning in a language other than English.
> 
> 2. Enforcement: An application for a TLD should explain the mechanism for
> charter enforcement where relevant and desired.
> 
> 3. Differentiation: The selection of a TLD string should not confuse net
> users, and so TLDs should be clearly differentiated by the string and/or by
> the marketing and functionality associated with the string.
> 
> 4. Diversity: New TLDs are important to meet the needs of an expanding
> Internet community.  They should serve both commercial and non-commercial
> goals.
> 
> 5. Honesty: A TLD should not unnecessarily increase opportunities for
> malicious or criminal elements who wish to defraud net users.
> 
> 6. Competition: The authorization process for new TLDs should not be used
> as a means of protecting existing service providers from competition.
> 
> PROPOSED ROUGH CONSENSUS ITEM NUMBER THREE
> 
> 	WG-C recommends that the Names Council charter a working group to develop
> policy regarding internationalized domain names using non-ASCII characters.
> 
> Jon
>