[council] Agenda item 5

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

Here is my attempt to fill in the blanks:

>>> "Philip Sheppard" <philip.sheppard@aim.be> 04/17/01 10:08 AM >>>

a) background with names of the organisations concerned.

Two organizations, ICANN (established late 1998) and Pacific Root Network, which inherited the eDNS root established some time in 1996, have assigned the same top-level domain name (.BIZ) to different companies. 

b) an analysis of the issue arising as they may effect 
i) net users/consumers 

Several thousand users who have already registered in the existing .BIZ will no longer have exclusive rights to second-level domain names. Their rights to use the domain name may be destroyed, or they may be forced to register the name twice. 

The same SLD name may be assigned to two different registrants. 

Consumers seeking a .BIZ name will face uncertainty as to where to get it.
  
ii) registries/ root owners.

Because ICANN is dominant in root administration, the business of the current administrator of the older .BIZ domain will be destroyed if ICANN's .BIZ becomes operational. 

ICANN will incur political liability and possibly legal liability if it knowingly collides with another business. 

Long term, a bad precedent may be established that collisions will be resolved through brute force (whoever has the largest user base wins) rather than through coordination.