Re: [ga] Older registrations

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

Simon Higgs wrote:
> At 12:16 PM 3/20/00 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
> > > You can say whatever you want. I'll stand by the
> > > historical facts:
> > > In 1995/1996, IANA solicited new iTLD requests under the guidelines laid
> >Not fact.
> Semantics. When two out of four IANA employees tell others to go ahead and 
> submit an application, and even go so far as to tell them how to go about 
> that process, even informally, I'd call that something "semantically 
> similar" to a solicitation.

If you ask how can you have an island given to you by the Government of
Malaysia, and there is no clear procedure and a Malaysian government official
tells you "send an application", you don't immediately presume that you will
be given an island or if you do you are very naive. Using the argument "as I
am naive, I deserve a TLD 5 years down the line" is humourous at least! :-)
Persistance is fine, but won't necessarily get you your demands just because
of consistent hammering them in.

> > > out in RFC1591. IANA received many new iTLD applications and published the
> > > results on the IAHC-discuss mailing list (archived at www.gtld-mou.org for
> > > some inexplicable reason).
> >IANA published the collection of applications that people had sent in
> >over a substantial period of time, whether on whim
> Submissions started in response to this message from Jon Postel:
> http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/1995q3/0233.html

Which reads:
---
Hi.

The IANA is seriously considering the creation of a few new top level
domains and the allocation of these to new registration service
centers. It is important to do this thoughtfully. It will be helpful
to carefully consider the criteria for selecting these new registration
service centers and the requirements they should meet in providing the
service.

--jon.
---

Resumed (for the mentally challenged): "IANA hears people saying "more TLDs",
how should it be done?"

> Hardly a whim. And the period of time of submissions was exactly the length 
> of time between the above message and the creation of the IAHC (when IANA 
> published their list). This can be verified from the time stamps noted on 
> the IANA list (9/14/95 through 11/28/96):
> http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive/00990.html

A few (naive?) people decided to interpret the Mon, 18 Sep 1995 message from
Jon as "applications for TLDs will be processed on a FCFS basis as of now,
so go ahead and send in the applications". As quite a few people though that
there was a nice gravy train to be had should someone be so naive as to
throw TLDs in the air for anyone to catch, the result is that IANA *did* in
fact receive a large number of applications (many of them conflicting, like
multiple applications for ".web"). IANA published the list of the requests,
and seeing that it wasn't such a straight forward task as could have
initially be thought, it created a task force to evalue how to proceed
(IAHC). The findings of the IAHC were attacked from two important sides:
those who saw they werene't going to get a TLD assigned on a
no-questions-asked-and-you-do-whatever-you-want-with-it basis; and from the
IP trademark community who felt more TLDs means more trouble.

So:
Mon, 18 Sep 1995 Jon Postel asks "what shall we do?"
There follows a bunch of "I want a TLD!!!" applications.
Thu,  5 Dec 1996 Jon Postel states "Here is a preliminary summary of the file
  of messages, including domain name registration forms, received by the IANA
  since Septermber 1995." and lists those applications. He states in the same
  message that "In most cases if a reply was sent at all it said something
  like:(...) There is some considerable possibility that this particular
  request will not be granted (in simple words -- don't plan on it)."
The phrase <<(in simple words -- don't plan on it)>> is part of the original
message of Jon Postel (including the brackets). It is NOT some comment added
at a later date. I don't think it can be any clearer.
Because of the questions surrounding how to go forward with the addition of
more TLDs (highlighted by all the controversy before during and after), the
IAHC was created. The rest is more recent (and better documented) history.

All those who operate alternative/rogue roots/TLDs and state that "IANA told
me I could" had a clear and concise message from Jon Postel. If they sent an
application for a TLD to IANA they either had no response (which certainly
does NOT give an indication that it is being dealt with) or they got a
message saying amongst other things "...There is some considerable
possibility that this particular request will not be granted (in simple 
words -- don't plan on it)." . 

Sorry, no biscuit.

Yours, John Broomfield.
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