[wg-c-1] meeting our charter

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

The fundamental issue this committee needs to discuss and report on is whether there
should be new TLDs. In order to answer that question, we must consider *all* issues
pertinent to that question.

Thus, the questions raised by Ambler and Weinberg should not be dismissed as outside
the charter, because it is impossible for us to answer the questions we have been
given coherently unless those broader issues also are addressed.

More specifically, I agree that we need to consider whether, in authorizing new TLDs,
we are "licensing" new registries, as Ambler suggests, or simply coming up with new
three or four-letter strings of characters, as Sola and Connolly seem to suggest.

I fail to see how the issue of new TLDs can be discussed coherently without also
addressing the issue of whether these new TLDs will be run by a single, globally
shared registry, or by multiple, competing, exclusive registries. My answer to the
question of whether we need new TLDs might vary depending on how those issues are
approached.

I think that is partly what Weinberg was getting at when he suggested that we need to
discuss whether "ICANN, in expanding the name space, [should] consider the names or
charters of the particular TLDs seeking authorization, so as to achieve policy goals
relating to the structure of the expanded name space?  Or should it
consider only the number of new TLDs, and the speed at which they should be
added, leaving the structure of the expanded name space to the marketplace?"

In general, we need to take a flexible approach to the topics of discussion and the
performance of our charter. The Internet community [sic] needs to have an open and
fair and, above all, *inclusive* discussion of new TLDs. Any attempt to channel this
discussion into narrow bounds that conform to someone else's pre-conceived ideas
about how it should be structured will undermine the quality of our deliberations. I
will ignore any such abritrary admonitions and I urge other committee members to do
likewise.

--
m i l t o n   m u e l l e r // m u e l l e r @ s y r . e d u
syracuse university          http://istweb.syr.edu/~mueller/