Re: RE: [council] gTLD CONSTITUENCY

["Milton Mueller" <mueller@syr.edu>]

I am quite surprised by the responses I am getting on this issue. I look forward to discussing it on the teleconference. 

Let's get some facts straight before we do. 

Fact: both Roger Cochetti and Ken Stubbs now represent registries that have been authorized by ICANN. It is sad, but predictable, that they would want to limit representation as much as possible. One might hope that concerns of fairness and good policy making would allow them to overcome these biases, but politics is politics. I hope the rest of you can adopt broader-minded strategies.

There are over 250 domain name registries in the world. There are probably 20-odd registries that operate outside of or in supplment to the ICANN root. 
There is no secret about "what a registry means," Elisabeth.

An effective DNSO, which commands broad support and consensus, ought to represent all of them.

Did you know that SRI, which proposed .GEO, ran the Internet root and all gTLDs for ten years before Network Solutions? On what basis do you exclude them from representation in a registry constituency? 

Likewise, companies such Sarnoff Institute are as capable and innovative as the ones who were recently authorized by ICANN. Vint Cerf admitted in his congressional testimony that the number was limited arbitrarily in the so-called "proof of concept" phase. Any one of those applicants is as good as the ones that were lucky to get delegations.

Elisabeth, it is both inaccurate and unfair to say that these applicants just "wish" to be registries. MAny of them HAVE BEEN registries for longer than ICANN has existed. They have functioning businesses, and extensive business plans. The $50,000 application fe was a small part of the investment they made. 

ICANN decides which registries get to enter the marketplace. I believe that it is unfair and makes for bad policy to exclude people who want to enter a market from having any voice in defining the policies about the domain name registry market. 

Question: if a new company wanted to enter the automobile market, should we give the decision to a council composed of General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler? 

Can Names Council members look beyond their narrow self-interest and ask "what kind of a representational structure is good for the Internet in the long term?" It will be interesting to see.

-MM