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

["J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>]

Dear Karl,
as you probably know we worked out now most of the details of the 
Tymnet/APRANET technical talks of 83/84 and the delegation of the ".arpa" 
namespace to ARPANET, the support of their ccTLD delegation and our support 
of our "com", "net" usage by them, the use of the ".", their use of our 
"root name" concept etc.. What resulted in the RFC 920 in Oct 1984 I fully 
agree with. and the earlier RFC 883 etc... We still miss the name of the 
Tymnet people to know the detail of who proposed what and who were the 
Internet people.

What is impressive is that actually we (Tymnet) stroke a moral deal with 
them they did respect for now 18 years (we were operating under a FCC filed 
rate and we provided them with non charged additional value - at least for 
International access and for the naming). So they had a moral obligation 
not to create us any conflict. As I suppose they agreed the same with 
Telenet people. (Tymnet and Telenet were the two public nets : "com" and 
"net" in Tymnet world).

They certainly forgot quickly about the exact deal, but they respected the 
status quo very nicely. The "czar" used the name space to control his 
sub-name space and not to create conflicts (in Tymnet's approach conflicts 
where not a major problem but did not permit to build consistent naming 
patterns).

So now the status quo has become a culture that many support without 
knowing really why. Some 18 years old fossil religion. Nothing happened in 
16 years until Vint Cerf decided to collide with .biz.

Oh! I know status quo is also worth some millions of dollars to some.

But I prefer to believe that it is just sticking to one's word. As it has 
certainly been for a few years.
jfc











At 20:39 21/07/02, Karl Auerbach wrote:

>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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