Re: [wg-c] new TLDs

["Milton Mueller" <mueller@syr.edu>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kent Crispin" <kent@songbird.com>
>
> Thanks for the thoughtful post.

Likewise.

It's clear that there are fundamental differences in values here. It will be
no surprise if I align myself clearly on the side of Ross Rader, Paul
Garrin, and Karl Auerbach (see their recent posts) and against the approach
you believe is necessary, but we do need to keep the discourse civil. The
best we can do is identify accurately what the differences are and what the
implications of different paths are.

A few additional comments to clarify remaining areas of agreement and
disagreement:

> 1) The "Doesn't Matter" argument: the domain name registration
> "industry" is a mosquito; the fundamental cost of providing the service
> is close to zero on a per domain basis, so in a cost-based competitive
> model price to the end user will be very low; technology will advance
> past the domain name system; the domain name fad will fade -- there are
> several factors that lead one to say that the enforcement of a charter
> isn't something that will matter a whole lot, and the sponsor will be
> the only one that cares.

Here I agree. This actually describes my own personal judgment of the
economic significance of domain names quite well.

What we're really fighting over, however, is the proper scope and limits of
ICANN. And this is important, very important. The TLD registry authorization
policy is a proxy for that. I am convinced that both the technical community
and the business community, with the exception of a few large multinationals
acclimated to the telecom world, support my, Ross's and Karl's notion of a
lightweight ICANN and would be appalled if they knew what was really going
on inside ICANN. I know for a fact that the dominant weight of opinion in
the public interest community, at least in the USA, is also on our side.

> 2) The "ICANN can't do it anyway" argument:  ICANN have a tiny
> budget, for a pseudo international regulatory agency, and simply can't
> expend a lot of effort on monitoring and enforcement.  Therefore, only
> egregious and obvious cases of abuse will reach ICANN.
>
> 3) On the other hand, ICANN is required to maintain a regulatory effort
> at some level:  it will sign contracts with registries/sponsors,
> those contracts will have various terms (such as support of a UDRP),
> and ICANN will have to expend at least some effort in being sure that
> *those* contractual obligations are adhered to.

It depends on what the purpose of those contracts are. ICANN still has the
latitude, at this point in its history, to limit its purpose to what it was
sold to the public as: "technical coordination." I note that your comments
now openly accept the fact that ICANN is a regulatory agency and has
regulatory responsibilities. This is progress, of a perverse sort, as Dyson
and Roberts were still publicly denying this as of August 99. I don't think
I need to belabor the point that mission creep is very dangerous to ICANN's
legitimacy. You can't sell people one thing and give them another without
paying for it at some point.

> #2 and #3 together imply that ICANN should chose sponsors with great
> care, especially in the beginning.  Stable, well-known international
> NGOs with a long history of committment to a purpose would be a good
> choice.  Tribal governments would also be a good choice -- stable, long
> term representative bodies with a clear mandate to represent a group.
> The European Commission is another entity that would be a good as a
> sponsor.

I think these choices of how to maintain artificial scarcity and parcel out
resources to a few favored agencies are just ways of garnering political
support. This is an excellent example of what we can look forward to if your
model of TLD delegation is adopted. In the telecom field, Europe is just
managing to emerge from under the dead hand of this model of
politically-driven resource delegations. It would be ironic if the Internet
was to regress to that model now.

> [Note that a ccTLD could be thought of as a special kind of sponsored
> TLD, with the associated sovereign as the sponsor, but no particular
> charter to enforce.]

Except for the fact that nearly all ccTLDs were delegated without the
knowledge of the highest levels of national governments, typically to
educational and scientific networking organizations that never would have
gotten the delegation if the telecom regulators, policy makers, and
politicians had been aware of the Internet at the time.

> 4) The term "sponsor" refers to a role, and doesn't necessarily imply
> an organization totally distinct from the registry/registry operator.
> The model is quite flexible; this is an evolutionary process; I expect
> that after a few sponsored TLDs were approved there would be many many
> creative possibilities.

There are indeed many creative possibilities. But if the delegation process
is treated as a special favor and comes with top-down regulatory strings
they will disappear.

> I agree.  Therefore, sponsors must be chosen with care, and the
> conditions carefully drawn.

So you have agreed with my assertion that by delegating sponsored or
chartered TLDs, ICANN accepts responsibility for policing and monitoring.
This in turn seems to lock you into a position of artificially limiting the
number of TLDs to a favored few. ICANN cannot afford to weigh the merit of a
lot of sponsors and carefully draw up lots of conditions if it accepts this
responsibility.

> ICANN doesn't really care what is or is not a bank.  What it
> cares about is that the proposed sponsor have some *defensible*
> relationship with the proposed charter, and that the proposed sponsor
> have stability of purpose and existence.

I understand the distinction, and thanks for clarifying it so neatly. But it
doesn't affect my argument. This is a trustee licensing regime. ICANN is
vouching for the "stability of purpose and existence" of the licensee and
(what concerns me most) by restricting the availability of TLDs to such
entities it is empowering them and validating them in a way that is denied
to other entities. In my opinion, ICANN lacks both the mandate and the
capabilities to do this.

> > Suppose ICANN delegates the .bank TLD to SWIFT. Now, six months later,
ICANN
> > is approached by a small start-up firm, let's call it "emoney, inc.",
based
> > in Spain, and it wants to run .banco. It has a business plan for digital
cash
> > and its business model calls for running a TLD.
> >
> > If ICANN behaves the way I want it to, it will insure that "emoney,
inc."
> > has a properly designed registry that won't affect the technical
stability
> > of the Internet. It will apply the same technical criteria to emoney
that it
> > applied to SWIFT. And if emoney, inc. meets those criteria, it will get
a
> > delegation.

> IMO It is politically impossible for ICANN to behave the way you want.

I honestly don't see why.

> I don't want to go down the rathole of discussing what the word
> "technical" means in the context of ICANN, but ICANN cannot ignore a
> registry's business plan, explicit or implicit.  Suppose that business
> plan also says "will form a haven for money launderers" (or words to
> that effect).

That is a problem for international banking regulators, not for ICANN. For
example, we don't expect NSI or any SLD registry to worry about whether the
person who registered "emoney.com" is a haven for money launderers, do we?
Indeed, the problem we are concerned about applies equally well at any level
of the DNS hierarchy. Suppose we asked NSI to only dispense SLDs to
organizations that "have some *defensible* relationship with the proposed
[domain name's meaning]," and after ensuring "that the proposed [applicant]
have stability of purpose and existence." NSI would garner a lot of power
over economic activity on the web, wouldn't it? NSI's costs of monitoring
and policing would skyrocket, as would the cost of a domain name.

>  USG still has control of the root zone, so fundamentally,
> as I see it, we have two choices:  let ICANN develop a public process
> for approving TLDs (which means that the "emoney" business plan will be
> debated in public fora), or let the USG apply its own public processes.
>
> ICANN won't ask [whether emoney is a bank], because ICANN is not
interested in defining
> what a bank is. Instead, ICANN will put emoney's proposal up for public
> comment and debate, and base it's decision at least partially on the
> results of that debate.

I'm pretty sure that the entrepreneurs and small businesspeople on this list
are either horrified or rolling on the floor laughing. This is a recipe for
the total eradication of entrepreneurial energy from the TLD space. You
don't put business plans out for public comment and debate. You acquire the
resources (legally!) and you execute it.

> No, that is not what I am saying at all.  emoney's proposal would be
> evaluated on it's merits -- but that evaluation involves public debate of
> the proposal.  The definition of "bank" doesn't even enter into the
> discussion.

This is a good clarification of the differences. I understand your proposal.
It is not as horrific as I at first thought, but i still think it would be a
disaster to the cultivation of creative energy on the net.

> It strikes me as odd that great concern is expressed that ICANN run in
> an open and transparent way, but that when it comes to perhaps ICANN's
> single most important job -- deciding what TLDs to insert in the root
> and why -- all of a sudden that is to be left completely to private,
> unaccountable entities...

No the decision of how to coordinate and protect stability is not left up to
private entities. We are just trying to get ICANN to perform that role in a
way that facilitates the freedom and diversity of the private sector.
There is a sharp distinction in the standards applicable to the prviate and
public sector. The US government cannot censor, but I can decide what to
allow into my VCR or bookshelf. Limitations on public authority are placed
there precisely in order to enhance the capability of individuals and firms
to make choices for themselves.

------------------
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/