[ga-roots] Domain Name Board Faces Outright Revolt

["Patrick Corliss" <patrick@quad.net.au>]

Friday June 01 07:25 PM EDT
Domain Name Board Faces Outright Revolt
By Robyn Weisman, www.NewsFactor.com

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nf/20010601/tc/10208_1.html

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN (news - web
sites)) planned on Friday to address the increasing unrest over the number
of top level domain names (TLDs) available under its stewardship.

Over the last several months, countries such as China and independent
organizations have taken exception to what they believe to be ICANN's
authoritarian practices. In March, a Pasadena, California-based company,
New.net, began offering a score of alternative TLDs.

ICANN was expected to take up the matter at its quarterly meeting, which
began Friday.

Last month a new nonprofit association, the Top Level Domain Association
(TLDA), was established as an alternative to ICANN. Board member Leah
Gallegos told news sources that TLDA will invite ICANN and the 500 or so
unofficial TLDs to join their organization in order to "work toward a
stable, collision-free name space."

Keeping Order on the Web

In a white paper posted earlier this week, ICANN president M. Stuart Lynn
wrote that the TLD approval process, while too slow for some, prevents World
Wide Web chaos.

Wrote Lynn: "The outcome of orderly processes based on the wishes of the
community is assurance that the Internet will continue to function in a
stable and holistic manner that benefits the global community and not become
captured by the self-interests of the few. That, in the minds of most, is a
price worth paying."

Gallegos told news sources that Lynn's contentions were "absolutely
ludicrous."

Said Gallegos: "Who died and conferred upon [ICANN] the totalitarian rule
over the Internet? They need to be cooperating with the entities that are
out there. If they don't, they're creating a major catastrophe."

Making a Buck

Jim Grady, an analyst with Giga Information Group, told NewsFactor Network
that many of those criticizing ICANN are forgetting that the U.S. government
created the Internet and that it only recently relinquished control to an
independent body.

"They're not respecting the fact that these things take a little bit of
time," Grady told NewsFactor.

Grady said that these groups are clamoring for more TLDs "because a lot of
registrars are in financial trouble and are feeling the heat, so they want
to make as many new TLDs as possible even though surveys have shown that
domain names are not the moneymakers they once were."

Added Grady: "I don't know of any businesses rushing to purchase [new domain
names], but they may have to for defensive purposes" if the list of suffixes
is expanded.

Last fall, ICANN added dot-biz, dot-aero, dot-coop, dot-info, dot-name,
dot-pro and dot-museum to the list of Web address suffixes, marking the
first additions since 1980 to the familiar list of dot-com, dot-net,
dot-org, dot-edu and dot-gov. Dot-biz and dot-info registrations are soon to
get underway.

Still on Dot-Com Boulevard

Aebin Noonan, vice president of Internet and Media Research at Boston-based
Yankee Group, told NewsFactor that increasing the number of suffixes will
prove confusing and ultimately frustrating both for businesses and
consumers.

Noonan noted that the present system is very reliable, and any minute
decrease in reliability, either from clashing TLDs or confusion over where
to find a given business, will exacerbate the learning curve.

The Web is "easy to understand with [five] TLDs now, but consumers will stop
feeling comfortable if these suffixes are constantly changing," Noonan said.
"The Internet is a medium of convenience, and most of us are still on
dot-com Boulevard."

And the increased advertising expenditures companies would face, if they
felt obligated to purchase multiple domain names, could cause them "to go
under even faster than they have already."

Against Overreaching

Noonan compared the TLD controversy to the use of phone suffixes and
prefixes.

Said Noonan: "In exchanges you don't need new endings. You need new
beginnings. When Manhattan had to increase phone numbers, [it] added 917 and
646. It didn't change the last four numbers because that wouldn't make
sense."

Similarly, if companies throw around more TLD choices to the public,
consumers have an increasingly harder time finding what they want, Noonan
said.

"Most consumers go to only 10 to 12 sites on average" to find what they're
looking for, said Noonan. "If you reach out and touch me too often, I'll
eventually turn off."


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