RE: [ga] Older registrations

["Christopher Ambler" <cambler@iodesign.com>]

Simon, thank you very much for your accounting of the meeting.
I'm grateful for your good memory.

>I was there too. That's one opinion you could make if you weren't there.
;-)
>
>First, Jon Postel was never employed by IANA full time. He was employed by
>USC and his duties included mostly IANA-related things. He was busy on
>other projects that day. Bill Manning arranged the meeting as a consensus
>gathering exercise for Jon's draft. I never figured that out until the end
>of the meeting and we agreed upon the notes/minutes for the meeting. Both
>Chris Ambler and myself attended as TLD applicants. During the meeting Bill
>got out the file of applications and confirmed our TLD applications were on
>file. The check is a really big red herring. Because the Postel draft was
>going to require a fee to accompany the applications before they could be
>processed, Bill agreed to add a sealed envelope to the applications with
>the understanding that the contents were to remain sealed until the
>application was processed. The purpose of this was so IANA would not
>receive money ahead of the application, yet the application could be
>immediately processed when the proper time came. In practice it would work
>out the same as if we were to go home and mail in the check based upon the
>Postel draft requirements. Either one would be satisfactory. Remember, the
>underlying motive of all this was to satisfy the Postel draft requirements,
>have the iTLD application successfully processed, and get the chosen iTLD
>in the root. I didn't have my check book with me otherwise I would have
>done exactly the same thing.
>
>Did Bill Manning or Jon Postel know what was in the envelope? I know who
>knew, but it really doesn't matter one way or the other. They weren't doing
>anything wrong. What caused the stink was that someone leaked the rumor on
>newdom that IANA was accepting payments for iTLDs. This wasn't true. The
>facts are that IANA did not, at any time, receive money for the delegation
>of iTLDs. But in order to avoid the appearance of doing so - now the whole
>world knew what was in the sealed envelope by way of newdom - they were
>forced, by convention, to publicly return the envelope.
>
>I can't comment on Chris' claims as I was not part of his private
>discussions with IANA. What I can comment on is IANA's blessing at that
>meeting for the proposed registries to fulfill the requirements of the
>Postel draft. This included turning on the registries to meet operational
.requirements, and ensuring the visibility of the iTLD's DNS records to the
>public. This also included accepting paid registrations in the applicant's
>chosen iTLD(s) - I was against collecting a fee until the iTLD was in the
>root but Bill said it was part of the overall operation so it was OK. Later
>Bill emailed out a legal disclaimer for the test registries to use that
>explained that domain name registrations would not be in the root until the
>iTLD application had been approved, and that that may, or may not, happen.

I think you might recall (please say so if you do or do not) that at the
meeting in question, the "or may not" didn't even come up. At the time,
what Bill said was that it might take significantly longer than the
October deadline they hoped for. His exact quote was, "perhaps even
somewhat into next year," which would have been 1997.

Only later, when the IAHC process began, did IANA start saying "or may not."

--
Christopher Ambler
chris@the.web

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