Re: [ga] New TLD White Paper released

["L. Gallegos" <jandl@jandl.com>]

On 19 Mar 2003 at 14:46, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, John Palmer wrote:
> 
> > Please explain why that is fair to auction off what is potentially the
> > fruits of someone else's labor.
> 
> > Some of us have been operating registries and have been supporting TLDs
> > in for almost 9 years now. Why can't we have the property that we have
> > worked hard to develop? 
> 
> If a name in a competing root has established itself as a actual
> designator of actual goods or services through use and/or registration,
> then you've possibly got cognizable legal rights.
> 
> But you've got to be willing to defend those rights.  Otherwise you are
> simply whining.

I'm sorry, Karl, but I have to strongly disagree here.  Since ICANN is 
sanctioned by the US government, all the power rests with ICANN to simply 
take from others what it chooses with very little recourse.  

Sure, small registries can use the courts, just as registrants can use the 
courts when attacked by covetous entities that steal domain names through 
UDRP.  The problem is that the average small registry or domain name 
holder doesn't have the millions of dollars to fight the battle, so they 
lose their businesses.  

If this is whining, then so are all the disenfranchised registrants who 
could not afford to pursue actions when they lost domain names.  Losing a 
TLD by having it usurped is no different other than not even having a 
procedure to try to keep it and not disenfranchising the existing domain 
name holders as in the .BIZ issue.  Where does it stop?  What else can 
ICANN and the DoC do to take property from others?  What protections are 
there for those who have worked for a decade to create something only to 
have another covetous entity take it from them?

Like John, I cannot support such a program.  There are thousands of TLDs 
in existance, as you know.  Why not just incorporate them into the USG 
root a few at a time instead of arbitrarily auctioning what is not IcANN's 
to auction?

> 
> So if you believe that you have laboured to build something, then the forum
> to vindicate those rights is the courthouse.
> 
> The best that ICANN can do is to be blind to rights that may or may not
> exist in names, leaving the resolution of disputes to forums better suited
> to that kind of thing.

Well, that makes sense since IcANN is blind to the rights of others in 
every sense anyway.  This is just one more way to exacerbate it.  Turning 
a blind eye is a great part of the problem with ICANN.  You can't even say 
"ignorance is bliss" because ICANN is fully aware of what it is doing.  
I'm surprised at Milton, though.

If his proposal is the way to go, then perhaps we should form some sort of 
cartel to take some corporations products and auction them off to the 
highest bidder.  If they have rights, they can sue.  So lets go after the 
little ones with really good products and ideas since they can't afford to 
fight a big cartel.  Heck, why not?  Betcha we could find some hefty 
backers if the takings were good enough.

> 
> That doesn't mean that I agree with Milton's paper - I believe that ICANN
> ought to be cranking new TLDs out at a rate of rather more than one per
> day, and that the choice of what TLD ought to be totally blind to the
> actual character string being sought (other than to ensure that it doesn't
> clash with an already allocated string.)  But Milton's approach is
> certainly a far sight better than the status quo of do-nothingness.

Allocated by whom?  We've seen the results of colliding TLDs.  It's going 
to be a real mess when there are hundreds of them doing the same thing.  

Leah


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