[wg-c] proprietary TLDs

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

"William X. Walsh" wrote:

> Odd.  I only see three on this list with an interest in running a TLD.
> Roland from MHSC and IO Design represented by Chris Ambler, and then the
> CORE group, represented by.....more than I could count.

Don't forget Brunner. Just as Ambler claims a property right in .web, Brunner
claims a sovereignty right to .naa. Sovereign rights, of course, are even
stronger than property rights, since property rights devolve from sovereigns.
And while property rights can be limited in term, and often are, sovereignty
as such cannot be.

The Brunner case is really a lot more interesting than people seem to notice,
having as they do the commercial generic TLD uppermost in their minds.
Position Paper E is not really a position paper at all, but an application to
run a registry. One could criticize Brunner on this count. All of the other
people positioning themselves for TLD rights, though decried as greedy
capitalists by some, would never be so purely self-interested as to dress up
their claim for a specific TLD as a generalized policy position and insert it
into the discussion at this juncture. Brunner gets away with it, I guess,
because of the sympathy factor. But let's leave that aside for the moment and
take it as an example of a real-world application. As such it raises some
valuable issues to consider regarding how ICANN might entertain such
applications.

There is, for example, no term limitation in the application. And indeed, how
could there be? Would we want to force this particular group of native
americans to "rebid" the registry every four years? If so, ICANN will be put
in the position of judging who "best represents" the native americans if there
were competing applications? What is Roeland Meyer prepared an offer to run
the .NAA registry that was cheaper and demonstrably more technically capable
than the one run by NCAI/AFN? Is ICANN in any position to decide which group
of native americans best represents "native americans?" Should it be able to
change the registry operator regardless of the wishes of the community served?
If not, how does it ascertain those wishes? Even if it was capable, do we want
it to have that power?

Of course, if the delegation is not rebid, then Brunner has the perpetual
property right that some people on this list seem to fear and loathe.

PPE also claims that it puts forward a shared-registry model. But does this
mean that any registrar in the world can register names within it? No. The
proposal calls for a "geographically distributed set of initial registrars
operating on the basis of mutual trust and common policy within a specific
jurisdictional scope." In other words, in order to register names one must be
trusted by, and conform to policies set by the owner of the delegation, which
in this case is the National Congress of American Indians/Assembly of First
Nations. In effect, this model means that NCAI/AFN dictate the terms under
which registrars are permitted access to the database.

I have no problem with that, because I believe that such relationships should
in fact be determined by voluntary contract.

As Weinberg's position paper made clear, it is likely that many similar
applications will be received and that those who wish to make registrations
within a TLD conform to a specfic policy may want more direct control over
which registrars are permitted to enter names in their database. This does not
pose a problem for those of us who believe in a heterogeneous model. It poses
big problems for those who think that the relationship between registry and
registrar ought to be dictated and standardized by ICANN.



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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/