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

[Alexander Svensson <alexander@svensson.de>]

Dear Bradley,

first of all, thanks for taking *time* to write down
your thoughts!

> 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.

I'm afraid I disagree with the way the proponents of
alternative roots argue. They may argue that they need
no authority to set up an alt.root and that's just fine,
but then I find it hard to understand how they can
complain that others are not limiting themselves to
the TLDs left over by the alt.root operators. It
comes down to the question whether "being there first"
is sufficient for claiming a Top Level Domain.
From the U.S. legal point of view, it seems it isn't
(at least that is how I understand the court decisions
about TM rights in TLDs), and although I understand
that many participants in the GA are personally running
such alt.roots, I don't think they have a higher moral
right to any TLD than anybody else.
(Including ICANN, that is.)

I also don't think your phone and child story depicts the
situation adequately. The alt.root phone company would have
to be a company who e.g. finds and uses a portion of the
number space which has not been previously occupied (e.g.
all numbers between 12xxxxxx and 14xxxxxx). So does that
mean the alt.phone company gains a permanent right in this
part of the number space? Hardly.

Alternative root TLDs will lead to alternative resolution
unless there is some kind of Meta-ICANN making binding
decisions on both the ICANN/USG root and the alternative
roots. For phone companies, there is a hierarchical structure
in place: ITU recommendations, national administrations,
phone companies etc. But I fail to see a public call for
such a Meta-ICANN. If the alt.roots had as many users as
the ICANN/USG roots, they would suffer from the same
problems and attract the same actors as ICANN does today.

Best regards,
/// Alexander
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