Re: [ga-roots] Edelman's report on BIZ

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 05:48 PM 6/19/01 -0400, you wrote:

There was a lot of discussion before May 2000 about the .BIZ re-delegation. 
There was a concern that even though .BIZ (requested from IANA by Denninger 
on July 1st 1996) was an asset of MCS and part of the business that was 
sold to Winstar, that if Winstar had not taken possession of .BIZ, or had 
abandoned .BIZ, then the delegation reverted back to Karl who was the last 
active contact for the zone. If Winstar had said "here's our DNS, point 
.BIZ here", then that probably would have been the end of the matter. But 
they were not able to provide any proof or evidence of either active use or 
that they even wanted .BIZ. Karl washed his hands of the whole thing, and 
the .BIZ zone was declared abandoned and available for re-delegation to ARN 
who were asking for it. ARN took possession of it around May 2000.

The ICANN time-line shows that .BIZ was re-delegated prior to receipt of 
any "expressions of interest" or TLD applications being made public. The 
ICANN BoD agreed to pursue new TLDs at Yokohama in July 2000. The 
expressions of interest were posted from July 9th 2000 onwards as they were 
received:

http://www.icann.org/yokohama/eoi.htm

EOI 25, posted after July 9th, states "At this time NeuStar prefers not to 
comment on what specific new TLDs should be selected". It appears that 
Neustar's game plan was to read everyone else's proposals before deciding 
which TLD string to try to steal. The announcement for the "New TLD 
Application Process" was made August 3rd 2000:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/icann-pr03aug00.htm

Applications were due by October 2nd 2000. The TLD strings from the 
applications were not made public until that date, so there's no way anyone 
could have "skimmed the ICANN proposals" several months before they 
existed. In any case there were five applicants for .BIZ. The earliest date 
anyone could speculate about .BIZ is months after ORSC re-delegated .BIZ to 
ARN.

So reality doesn't look anything like the picture Kent Crispin is trying to 
paint here. He's once again trying to cause grievous harm to the internet, 
and ICANN are buying into it hook, line and sinker.

>Wrong.  It was re-delegated to Leah Gallegos in May, 2000 after it
>was abandoned.  In any case it was the original .BIZ that had
>existed since 1995.  Twist it any way you like.  It was there and
>operational prior to any hint from ICANN that it would accept
>applications for new TLDs.  We had made it known to all
>applicants that it was an existing TLD and we were accepting
>registrations via email and phone from the time of re-delegation.
>
>Small or large, it is and has been an active registry.  You and
>ICANN can claim anything you like.  Documentation is there to
>refute it.
>
>On 19 Jun 2001, at 15:40, Kent Crispin wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2001 at 06:58:14PM -0400, Milton Mueller wrote:
> > > Ben:
> > >
> > > It's good to have a fact-based discussion of the .biz problem.
> > >
> > > The picture of the ARNI registrations is a very valuable
> > > contribution to our understanding of the issue. It provides some
> > > basis for discussing the relationship between the ICANN process and
> > > the claims established outside of it.
> > >
> > > Your treatment of the facts, however, is incomplete
> > > and borders on the selective in certain respects.
> > >
> > > To begin with, you start your history with the ICANN TLD process. It
> > > is well known that the .BIZ top-level domain was first proposed, and
> > > operated, by Karl Denninger some time in 1996. No accurate treatment
> > > of this problem can ignore the historical context from which the
> > > debate over alternate roots emerged.
> > >
> > > There is a record, I believe, of a transaction between Leah Gallegos
> > > and Denniger to take over rights to .Biz.
> >
> > I doubt that very much:
> >
> >     "Denninger said he expanded the concept to allow automated dot-biz
> >     domain name registrations in 1995, and his company, Macro Computer
> >     Systems, was sold in 1998 to Winstar Communications.
> >
> >     He says ORSC changed from pointing to Winstar's list of dot-biz
> >     names to Alantic Root Network's in the last year.  "The problem is
> >     that (Gallegos') claim to this is no more legitimate than JV
> >     Team's. I would argue that neither of them has a legitimate
> >     claim," Denninger says.
> >
> >     from http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40301,00.html
> >
> > > Your report makes it seem
> > > as if Neulevel invented the proposed TLD and that it was first
> > > broached in the ICANN TLD process. This gives the impression
> > > that Gallegos simply skimmed ICANN proposals and imitated
> > > the Neulevel proposal.
> >
> > Yes, it sure looks that way.
> >
> > --
> > Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
> > kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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> >
>
>
>~ Leah G ~
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Best Regards,

Simon Higgs

--
It's a feature not a bug...

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