Re: [wg-c] There is no "consensus"

[Craig Simon <cls@flywheel.com>]

Milton Mueller wrote:

> The best comparison between commercial/proprietary and the alternative is
> the fate of dot us and dot com. One TLD (.us) was managed by a person of
> great intelligence and foresight, and with the public interest in mind. Yet
> everyone agrees that dot us is a failure and the whole approach needs to be
> revamped. 98 percent of registrations in the States are in NSI's gTLDs. Why?
> Because they gave users what they wanted: choose their own names, quick and
> cheap automated registrations. The market tends to do that: reward people
> who respond to what consumers want, and punish those who don't.


I won't argue with that part of it. 

Not that I'm convinced that a mixed model is workable, Milton, but how
would you decide which entities should be entitled to own which TLD in
perpetuity? What criteria would determine whether .web (or any zone)
should be constituted as a publicly or privately owned registry? And
then, if some "good" zones can be privately owned, why should any others
be shut out?

Saying, "let the market decide" is too general of an answer for me.
Markets are intentional creatures.

Also, the reason .us failed to catch on, in my view, is because Postel's
experiment in sharing extensible delegation authority among a widely
dispersed number of self-selected volunteers was a major flop. His
foresight was wrong. He thought the geographic scheme would be a good
way to enlist free help around the country without imposing a huge
administrative burden on IANA (I heard him say so), but it led to system
that is clearly cumbersome and confusing to use. In addition: 1) People
would rather adopt names whose semantics reflect a globalized appeal
rather than a localized point-of-contact, and; 2) a highly advertised
and accessible market for names in com/net/org existed.  If IANA had
established itself as a clear point of contact for the .US registry
rather than forcing people to jump through so many hoops to find out who
their local contacts were, .us would have done much better, though I
doubt it would ever have done better than com/net/org... generics have
much more innate appeal on the Internet than localized zones.

The flop of .us demonstrates that is easier to commodify a flatter name
space. The problem is not the not-for-profit shared registry model;
Nominet works.

> Concerned about the "dark side" of the profit motive? The solution is
> simple: create shared gTLDs run by non-profit agencies (or by for-profits
> under contract to ICANN). There is absolutely no constraint technically on
> the simultaneous pursuit of both models. Consumers would benefit from an
> additional choice.There is room for a mixed model and in fact it's the only
> solution. If the choice is "shared only" I will fight it to the death and so
> will many others, and eventually business will just bypass it. Long term,
> ICANN won't survive such a decision.
> 
> I have yet to see a single reason why commercial/proprietary models cannot
> or should not be combined with shared, non-profit models. All I see are some
> purely ideological references to "greed." Look, it's ok for techies living
> on government funds to sneer at the marketplace, but don't confuse your
> religion with the sort of public policy that ought to be applied to the
> whole world.

Here's something other than a purely "ideological reference to greed"
for you to mull over. Markets are constructed. They are constructed like
playing fields of all different types are constructed. They vary.
Playing fields are never perfectly even. They are bounded. The structure
of the playing field itself tends to reward some and punish others.
Whether its flipping a coin to decide who goes first, playing at home,
or giving one runner the inside track, there's almost always some kind
of privilege granted.  

I would argue that one major challenge of public policy making is to
begin with a recognition of how the playing field itself is structured
to favor certain types of outcomes. What types of outcomes are more
valued than others? Dramatic innovation prompted by vast tournament-type
rewards to the innovator and practically nothing left over for the
losers, or more stable and widely distributed growth in wealth, even if
the overall incentives and rewards for innovation are lower? Those
aren't the only choices, but the choices are being made as a consequence
of these struggles.
> 
> p.s. Craig:
> that alarm that won't go off.....it's not unrelated to the ICANN DNSO
> situation.


The guy later claimed it was broken and "there was nothing he could do
about it," as if it wasn't in his hands. But it always is. We are not
machines subject to the rule of some impersonal hand, whether its your
despised "dead hand of government" or your cherished invisible hand of
the market. 


Craig Simon