Re: [wg-c] Consensus call

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

Simon Higgs wrote:
> Who is claiming anything? There's a list of legally binding TLD 
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> applications filed, per RFC1591, sitting in a file in IANA/ICANN.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Wow, that's a bit rich... If so, then (as it's legally binding), any court
will automatically allow those into the legacy roots no doubt, so we have no
further need to discuss it, just wait for the positive outcome from your
lawsuits (still waiting...).

> The NSF 
> has made it clear that only TLDs filed in way will be considered:
> 
> http://name.space.xs2.net/law/answers/letters/NSF-NSI08111997.jpg
> "The Foundation [NSF] and NSI agreed that new TLDs would be added only in 
> accordance with Request For Comments 1591."

It's nice and easy to quote one liners that can help towards ones own goal,
and forget about the whole context of the phrase within a letter (and I'm
NOT trying to second guess anyone).
In any case, we could say that RFC-1591 has been applied flawlessly so far,
as we have from RFC-1591:
---
2.  The Top Level Structure of the Domain Names

   In the Domain Name System (DNS) naming of computers there is a
   hierarchy of names.  The root of system is unnamed.  There are a set
   of what are called "top-level domain names" (TLDs).  These are the
   generic TLDs (EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT), and the two
   letter country codes from ISO-3166.  It is extremely unlikely that
   any other TLDs will be created.
---

The phrase (within context) to note carefully being the last one. If we
decide that RFC-1591 should be followed, then we have extreme unlikelyness
that other TLDs will be created.

Also, another point within RFC-1591 (accepting that "extremely unlikely" does
mean "relevantly possible") is:
---
   4) Significantly interested parties in the domain should agree that
      the designated manager is the appropriate party.
---
And *THERE* we would probably all agree is what we've been fighting over for
the past few years, in finding a way to designate the appropiate party(ies)
as manager(s) of any new TLD(s).

RFC-1591 doesn't talk about FCFS. FCFS was(is?) generally used by the
hostmaster@internic.net robot but for com/net/org registrations.

As non-ccTLDs (as indicated by RFC-1591) are extremely unlikely, a lot
of fuzzy nice things have to happen, no *clear* procedures were available
(RFC-1591 says in various places to forget about rights and ownership, which
is precisely what entities like IOD want to talk about: the rights and
ownership of the TLDs), and forums were being created precisely to discuss
these issues, then (in light of that) it is understandable that the requests
were queued. In fact it would have even been understandable for them to have
been dumped all together!!!

FCFS would come into play if significant parties agreed that both requesters
were equal (my opinion). As yet, WG-C doesn't seem to agree on who should be
the designated manager for any given TLD, and I'd say that we could consider
WG-C as a group of interested parties. So, in that light RFC-1591 would not
allow for any delegations yet (ever?). Where is the problem?

> What part of this don't you understand? Are you still a sore loser because 
> you can't have your own ccTLD?

You can't on the one hand say "let's apply RFC-1591" and just pick and
choose which parts you want to apply. Either you apply it whole, or you
discard it whole, or you draft a new document keeping the bits you want and
adding/discarding other (and then it is -of course- no longer RFC-1591).

Have fun, but I don't read RFC-1591 as being "legally binding" nor even if
it were do I read it in such a manner that would say that Simon Higgs gets
the TLDs he wants.

Enjoy.

Yours, John Broomfield.