Re: [wg-c] A counterproposal

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

Javier SOLA wrote:

> I am NOT a member of CORE.
> I have, at no time, advocated that CORE should be the registry to run ANY gTLD.
> I believe that ICANN should be the one to publish a call for tender for new
> registries. Our job is to define the policy and try to figure out what the
> community wants. I personally believe in multiple registries, to give
> stability to the system.

The relationship between Sola and CORE/gTLD-MoU is a factual issue that can be
documented pretty easily.

Sola played a major role in the RFP and design of the CORE database system. See
http://www.aui.es/core/core101.html for documentation. In that document, dated
8/97, Sola writes: "The actual number of registrations per day under .com seems to
be of 18.000 per day. We have to be able to do, at least, two to four times that
amount, that is, 36.000 to 72.000 per day, in order to assure that the basic
system can last at least for two or three years."

Who is the "we" in the preceding sentence?

CORE was a creature of the gTLD-MoU, an alternative governance structure created
by the Internet Society in alliance with ITU and WIPO in 1997. Javier Sola was
elected to the Policy Advisory Board of the gTLD-MoU, and elected to the Policy
Oversight Committee (POC) of the gTLD-MoU on May 1, 1997.

Kent Crispin was PAB Chair and also a POC observer, and consulted and advised,
along with Amadeu Abril, on Sola's CORE DB work.

Please understand. There is nothing wrong with this association per se. CORE, POC,

and PAB members are legitimate participants in this working group--but they have a

distinct economic and political interest in the outcome, just as NSI or Ambler's
IOD do.

When Kent Crispin and Javier Sola tell us that we ought to adopt the specific
names and the shared registry model developed by CORE/gTLD-MoU, everyone on this
list should be aware of the fact that this is not "impartial advice."

I repeat: I have no objection to adding undisputed CORE gTLDs to the root and no
problem with letting established CORE registrars keep their pre-registrations in
all of those gTLDs. But to say that the CORE gTLDs and those *only* should be
added represents the kind of special interest pleading that this committee must
move beyond.

--Milton Mueller