[ga] Attn: GA Chairman Younger....

[PacificRoot Hostmaster <idno@tallship.net>]

Dear Chairman Younger,

As a long time GA member and one who has also been honored with the
distinction of belonging to the GA's first watchdog committee, I would
like to say that I have been pleased to be one of the people who assisted
in bringin a semblance of order to this body back in the days when we had
no Chair, and were struggling to find ourselves through the adoption of
some kind of "proceedings".

There was much calamity back then, with paid confidence men and payrolled
disuptors in place here who were so adept and cunning with regards to
derailing any efforts of achieving order and stability here.

During the past year or so I have for the most part stood by the sidelines
of the GA, opting to focus more on things operational - things which have
yielded the fruits of a promising new Internet for our children, free
from outrageous name speculation and where everyone can have a short and
meaningful domain name for a modest fee or absolutely free - not subject
to the terms of the dastardly UDRP.

In fact, I would gather that most of the people here haven't even been
around long enough to remember the not so distant days when all I had to
do was give Hillary a phone call over at internic (NIC.DDN.MIL) down in
San Diego to get a domain name for free - because they were free back then
as long as you used it.

Since then much has changed but only primarily in the political landscape.
When President Ford announced that the gas crunch was over in 1974 the
lines at the gas stations suddenly disappeared - not that there was any
more or less gasoline than the day before. The public's psyche was simply
perceptibly overhauled by the announcement. That's all.

Similarly, the same thing is true wrt domain name registrations. A
flooding land grab and miner-49er-itis struck again, but instead of
Sutter's mill it occured in Virginia. ICANN has served as the catalyst for
a terrible injustice to the simple notion of taxanomical structure.

Although many here would not agree with my assertion that, "It's just a
string", that is in fact all that we envisioned back in the ARPAnet days
when IBM would have been happy to have ABC.NET - much simpler than
remembering all those host IPs.

Those days are obviously gone forever though, and the biggest threat to
The Intellectual Prperty community and ICANN is the fact that it doesn't
take jillions of dollars to reliably run a database, operate a root
system, registry, or administer them responsibly.

In the past there were even various volunteer hobby root systems such as
the ORSC which demonstrated quite effectively that DNS would not break if
the number of Top-Level domains greatly exceeded the amount currently
loaded in the relatively tiny VeriSign/NSI/DoC  managed root system.

Those days are past too, and now the world is experiencing a
transformation of the Internet landscape by international commercial
enterprises (and sovereign governments) that are delivering once again to
the public the mass availability of short, meaningful character strings in
a reliable, and responsible  manner.

I do understand that this tends to derail any notion that domain names
have any intrinsic value beyond what the nominal adminstrative tasks
associated with providing these services demands, and that it has quite
frankly threatened to destroy the ill-advised investment portfolios of
cyber-realestate speculators. But Someone should have told them, "It's
just a string".

The real reason I am writing you this evening is because your letter below
seems to point out that you intend to redress the critically sensitive
issues that threaten to have far reaching consequences for the "average
joe" using the Internet. So I find that now is the time to bring up this
issue of collisions, as you are apparently very aware of their
catastrophic possiblities in the domain name space.

Whereas the lionshare of dialog that has existed to date seems to center
around the notion of HTTP traffic, I would like to point out that there
are far dire consequences for ICANN if they continue on this collision
course with real, viable, and active Top-Level Domains such as those
currently supported by The PacificRoot.

Some fanatical extremists of Internet infamy, such as Richard Sexton,
insist that the loading of colliders into the USG root will result in
cache-poisoning, perhaps bringing everything to a grinding halt on all
sides of the DNS name space. Such people claim that there are even IAB or
IETF papers and studys depicting this very scenario and warning against it
- although my colleagues and I have yet to find anything to support these
claims through our extensive digging through the IAB archives or any
other research. In any case, perhaps this would be a good time for this GA
body to look into that independantly.

The real 'hidden' nasties though, aren't that you might not know which
ABC.TLD website you will end up at (although this would occur on a regular
basis), but things such as mail transport and other peripheral forms of
electronic communication and protocols that depend upon DNS as their
'cable-car wire' will be irevacably and adversely affected.

With the burgeoning use and activity in the "Inclusive Name Space" by the
general public, what people in the glass house don't seem to understand is
that users are actually putting MX records into zonefiles and engaging in
the practice of mail transport via email, which works just the same in the
"Inclusive Name Space" as it does in the deprecated ICANN legacy system.

This alone has caused so many problems with ISP tech support personnel
that we field calls at The PacificRoot almost daily from providers who
wish to upgrade their DNS if for no other reason than to avoid any more
calamity at their help desks. 

Nevertheless, electronic mail is NOT web surfing; private, confidential,
and even critical communications regarding health and welfare are conveyed
through this medium by private, governmental, and commercial parties,
There has actually come to exist in the last few years the assumpion that
email should be reliable and expected to arrive at the correct recipients
point of delivery. US government mandates that certain percentages of
government awarded contracts must be derived from bids submitted
electronically via the Internet are but one example of this.

Let's take the hypothetical situation where Verizon was granted the
authority from The FCC and CPUC to provide duplicate area codes and phone
number strings already switched by Pacific Bell. And let's say that
someone's child was gravely injured in an automobile accident one evening.
And let's just suppose that the police attempted to contact the parents of
the gravely injured minor child so that immediate consent could be granted
to save the life of that child. Suppose the phone number that the police
had on record was one of the colliding duplicates and the "other" party
was reached via phone instead of the parents of the innocent child.

Now, suppose that child dies as a result of this arbitrary administrative
approval of colliding phone numbers by the US Government and the
California Public Utilities Commission that had usurped the ability of the
law enforcement and medical community to reliably contact the childs
parents in time.

Who do you suppose the parents would sue? The US Government? The 
California Public Utilities Commision or the state of California? Verizon
for knowingly loading colliding phone number strings into the PSTN? 

I would venture to say all of them, although I'm no attorney and Judge
Wapner is about the extent of my legal training. 

Well, Mark my words. This very thing is going to occur on the Internet if
ICANN succeeds in having the US Government load a  duplicate, colliding
.BIZ TLD because The PacificRoot has made a legally binding contractual
commitment as a private sector commercial provider of network services to
ARNI, our customers, and our registrants to continue providing the quality
services that we are in the business of providing and we have no 
intentions of removing ARNI's .BIZ Top-Level domain just because the US
Government may decide to load a colliding .BIZ Top-Level domain in their
puny rootzone.

At The PacificRoot, we've sighed for and pained over the ineptitude of
this process longer than we are going to bother with. We're just about
ready  now to wash our hands and turn this problem over to the
International public community of Internet subscribers and providers to
let them hash it out directly with the US Government and ICANN.

No one has asked ICANN or the US Government to load the Top-Level Domains
managed or operated at The PacificRoot. That would be a decision
they would have to make on their own and without benefit of ANY contract
in the interest of public service. Besides,  we're doing just fine as it
is and will continue to do so even if they load colliders. The dillema is
all theirs.

Chairman Younger, this may be the last and final chance for ICANN and
the US Government to avoid fragmenting the Internet's one and only DNS 
name space, and I request and encourage you on behalf of all the
reasonable members of the ICANN General Assembly to do your utmost in
adressing this issue of collisions in the DNS name space.

I will therefore, if you think that it may help, join and participate as a
member of your proposed working group. But I have little time to bother
wiht, and even less tollerance of scheming disruptors that may wish to
participate as well. We're the real thing - The issue entity that ICANN at
it's own peril is going to have to ultimately deal with as one of
the only sources that can work cooperatively and in good faith to avoid
collisions in the DNS name space. Other parties would include ARNI and IOD
as well. This should be considered, because The PacificRoot isn't going
anywhwere and again, we're not pulling the proverbial plug on our
partners.

The only even slightly comical portion in any of this is that with the
coming of hundreds of websites where you will be able to register .BIZ
domain names, the average users WILL become confused as to which domain
space they are actually registering their domains in - the real and
original .BIZ held by ARNI, or the pretending would be imposter being
championed by ICANN - Once again I reiterate, at their own peril.

As you can tell, if neccessary, we are perfectly comfortable allowing both
to exist simultaneously, colliding and creating havoc due to ICANN's
arrogance and ignorance.

Humbly and sincerely,


Bradley D. Thornton
Chief Technology Officer
The PacificRoot/Joint Technologies Ltd.
The ONLY Root That Resolves All Roots!
Upgrade Your DNS today for FREE
http://www.PacificRoot.com
http://www.JointTech.com




On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, babybows.com wrote:

> To:  Philip Sheppard, Names Council Chair
> 
> There has been considerable discussion on the GA list regarding collisions
> in namespace.  Arguments have been put forth that the ICANN Board action to
> accept the .biz application constitutes a policy decision which may fragment
> the net irrevocably.  Without commenting on the merits of this claim, it is
> sufficient to note that domain name policy is the purview of the DNSO, and
> that "Constituencies or GA participants may propose that the NC consider
> domain name policies or recommendations."
> 
> As two principles addressed by the White Paper, stability and competition,
> have been raised in the course of this debate, and whereas the Department of
> Commerce has previously expressed concern regarding any actions which may
> lead to the possibility of consumer "confusion", I now ask that the NC
> consider the ICANN domain name policy with respect to collision with names
> in the alternate root community.
> 
> As the consequences of such NC consideration may have serious monetary
> repercussions for those directly impacted by any such consensus-based policy
> recommendation, and as such consideration may well come to also impact users
> of the Internet worldwide, I ask that a formal working group be convened to
> allow for the full and unfiltered expression of all views on this topic.
> 
> Best regards,
> Danny Younger
> 
> 
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