[wg-c] bounced message, reposted for Milton Mueller

[Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com>]

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:57:49 -0500
From: Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>
To: wg-c@dnso.org
Subject: Re: [wg-c] Unofficial report on L.A. meeting

Craig:
A nice contribution overall. I agree strongly with Werner Staub's
elaboration upon,
and strengthening of, the analysis of why new TLDs are needed.

I remain unshakeably convinced that the profit-non-profit issue is a red
herring at
this stage. Let me explain once again what the reasons are. The fallacies
in the
reasoning are particularly evident in Craig's comments below.

Craig Simon wrote:

> If and when new gTLDs are added, I believe it would be wiser to start
> with non-profit/cost-recovery gTLDs rather than proprietary gTLDs.
> The underlying presumption is that if either approach is later deemed to be
> mistaken, it would be easier to parcel off a non-profit registry (say, by
> auction) rather than to take the registry from a private owner. In short,
the
> public resource blunder would be easier to fix than the proprietary blunder.

First, let me challenge the notion that adding exclusively administered
TLDs poses
some kind of enormous risk to the operation of the Internet, a risk so
threatening
that special measures must be taken to preserve options to "take back"
delegations.
We have been adding ccTLDs, and associated registries, to the root for more
than ten
years. The vast majority of them are administrered as proprietary
registries; i.e., a
single entity is both registry and registrar and the delegatee has effective
ownership of the zone files. Just exactly what kind of a "debacle" are you
worried
about that could not be easily handled via contractual arrangements in a
defined-period testbed?

Are you seriously suggesting that a new gTLD will obtain 75% of the market
in 6
months? Are you suggesting that ICANN and its lawyers don't know how to write
contracts that can preserve their interests?


> The last four years of experience with NSI provides incontrovertible
proof of
> how difficult it can be to get a powerful proprietary registry to modify
its way
> of dealing with the Internet community. Consider the grief that has occurred
> over questions of defining norms of conduct for interacting with registrars,
> adhering to a community-supported DRP, maintaining whois accessibility, etc.

The problems with NSI have nothing at all to do with its for-profit
character. They
have everything to do with market dominance, i.e. the fact that it controls
75% of
the world's domain name registrations. If you want to erode that dominance
you need
to authorize additional commercial, for profit registries that can compete
effectively with NSI.

Whether NSI was for-profit or not didn't make a bit of difference. Indeed,
does
anyone on this list besides myself has any experience with trying to
"modify the
behavior" or a powerful state-owned monopoly telephone company? These entities
claimed a public service mandate but often made customers wait for 10 years
to get a
phone line. The only thing that made them jump was competition. NSI will
become less
powerful when the market for gTLDs becomes competitive. Period.

Folks, the Berlin Wall fell almost exactly 10 years ago, and with it, the
idea that
profit-motivated enterprise is an evil force to contained or eliminated.
This is the
Internet economy, and the current level of Internet development is a direct
product
of profit-motivated firms. It is no accident that NSI commercialized domain
names
more successfully than any other registry.


> Chris Ambler asks for the same (very cushy) deal that NSI got. I say the
> Internet community should be spared a replay of this debacle.

The only "debacle" was the delays imposed on introducing new competition by
the Dept
of commerce and by the creation of ICANN

> I believe the choice provided by "the more feasibly fixed fiasco"
principle can
> expedite progress, given the paralyzing lack of consensus we have seen on
the
> issue of which registry model to adopt.

No, it can't. Any approach to the transition that has ICANN dictating
business models
is an absurd anachronism and is not acceptable to at least half of this
working
group.

The most feasibly fixed fiasco scenario is this:
Create shared, non-profit registries in the testbed. Create proprietary,
for-profit
registreies in the testbed. Create shared, for-profit registries in the
testbed. Let
CONSUMERS decide which ones they choose.

Am I the only one on this list who wants to give consumers the right to
make the
choice for themselves?

--Milton Mueller