Re: Tucows letter, was RE: [ga] Re: .info LR2 process ...

[Karl Auerbach <karl@CaveBear.com>]

On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Ross Wm. Rader wrote:

> > ICANN ought to adhere solely to those technical matters that directly
> > pertain to the ability of the Internet to reliably, accurately, and
> > promptly move packets from one IP address to another and for the
> > ICANN/NTIA DNS root to reliably, accurately, and promptly return answers
> > DNS queries.
> 
> While convenient to our position concerning sunrises regimes etc., this
> extremely narrow definition doesn't sufficiently deal with a far more
> important factor - that of competition.

Dealing with competition is easy: allow it.

Allowing competition is something that ICANN has never tried.  Instead 
ICANN has imposed itself as a very expensive, very slow, and very 
incapable gatekeeper.

ICANN should allow hundreds, even thousands of new TLDs to be established
yearly.

ICANN should cease micromanagement of new TLDS - Those who set up new TLDs
ought to be allowed to define their own businesses.  They ought to be
permitted to suceed or fail on their merits and abilities.

As a technical matter the root zone can contain millions of entries with 
no performance degredation.

ICANN's new TLD "experiment" is a snow job.  There is no experiment - new
TLDs can be installed ino the root zone in a matter of minutes with no
more technical risk than is involved when adding a new user to a Windows
box.

Beyond requiring that the operations comport with relevant technical
standards it is none of ICANN's concern how those new TLDs operate or what
their policies are.

> The problem in dealing with the issues raised by competition is that this
> opens up a door sufficiently far to let other, less relevant, issues through
> the door.

It is not for ICANN to define what constitutes fraudulant or deceptive
practices.  That is a matter for legislatures and law enforcement; they've 
dealt with shysters in the past, they can deal with e-shysters in the 
present and future.

ICANN's proper job is to merely make sure that the technical nuts and
bolts of IP address allocation and root zone creation/operation are
technically sound.  That is the extent and limit of ICANN's role.

For ICANN to pretend to be capable of dealign with issues arising out from
competive and anti-competitive practices would be to vastly expand its
scope and make it into an Internet Commerce Commission.

Nor should ICANN be a body that protects the consumer from new TLD 
behaviour.[*]

ICANN is competent neither to be a trade-practices regulatory body nor to
be a consumer protection agency.  ICANN's rejection of its obligation to
include the public in its decisions renders ICANN particularly unfit for
either of these roles.

Let us be extremely hesitant about assigning to ICANN any powers beyond
the minimal set attached to the technical concerns of IP address
allocation and the operation of the NTIA root zone and root servers.

		--karl--

[*] The whole issue of the degree to which ICANN ought to be a consumer
protection body with regard to the preexisting .com/.net/.org TLDs is
something that has been under-discussed.


 

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