Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

Dave Crocker wrote:

> "We believe that the requirement that all gTLDs have associated
> descriptions of their intended meaning."

Bret Fausett has just decisively answered this question. It is not only possible,
but highly likely, that the most popular new TLDs will be ones that are notable
only for their memorability, not for their "meaning." E.g., what is the meaning of
.zzz? Who would want to register there? No one knows for sure, but I feel very
confident that such a TLD would end up with a lot more registrations than the
plonky .store proposed by IHAC. Same goes for a string of Chinese characters, which
may evoke several meanings.

> What makes the small group of registry operators better than other bodies
> for doing the selecting?

The simple fact that it is their investment at risk. They are bidding their labor
and their money that people will want to register under a specific name. Registry
operators are directly accountable for what they offer in a way that ICANN and
certainly this little working group can never be. If we make stupid or unduly
restrictive decisions, what are the consequences to the members of this committee?
There are none. It doesn't affect our paycheck or our workload in any significant
way. If on the other hand a registry offers services that no one wants, there is a
substantial loss. This is true regardless of whether the registry is for profit or
not.

> Anticipating a "let the market decide" line of thinking will get us to
> companies' experimenting with the marketability of a string and then going
> out of business when it is not profitable.  At that point, the unfortunate
> organizations that chose to register under the TLD will be left without
> service.

Several fallacies here. First, zone files can easily be escrowed and transferred to
another operator. Any contract between ICANN and TLD registries can be structured
to minimize this risk and to compensate for it when it happens.

Incidentally, similar risks occur if your ISP goes out of business, but I don't see
any plans to have global centralized licensing of Internet Service Providers. See
next paragraph.

> This gives a good indication of the reason that DNS service needs to be
> counted as an infrastructure and the sole-source technical constraint --
> only one organization can be registrar for a given TLD -- mandates that
> operational stability included assurance that TLDs persist.  Going out of
> business is an extreme form of instability.  We do not tolerate it for
> telephone numbers or street addresses; why tolerate it for domain names?

This is a regulatory issue that can be and is handled at the national level. At the
national level, we have professional regulators functioning according to
established laws with significantly more resources than DNSO. Telephone numbers are
unique globally, as are domain names, but the ITU committee that administers the
numbering plan doesn't license all world telephone companies, nor attempt to tell
them how to run their business. It is simply a coordinating agency. That is ICANN's
only legitimate role.

> [Re: numbers of new TLDs] High estimates are VERY high.  Low estimates are in the
> thousands.  If we believe the low estimates and they are wrong, we can add more
> names
> safely.

OK. Let's start with thousands, then instead of millions. See, Dave, I'm always
willing to compromise. And since the largest list of proposed TLDs I've seen does
not exceed 300, we can conclude that there is no need to make restrictive choices
as to which ones are allowed and which are not. Scarcity in the economic sense
exists when demand exceeds supply. Your lowest estimate vastly exceeds known
demand.

> If we believe the high estimates and they are wrong, we break the
> DNS (and, therefore, make the Internet useless for almost all users.  Hence
> there is a requirement to approach the question of name space size with
> significant caution.  It's fine to call that constraint "artificial" but
> the label does not make the constraint any the less advisable.

According to your comments above, you consider a few thousand new TLDs as being on
the extreme low end of caution. Since this WG is proposing to start with 6-10 and
add on more at the rate of 50-100 a year, this is really a non-issue. We are being
cautious to a fault.

> Pursuit of DNS usage in the belief that it permits "search engine" features
> is a lost cause.  Any success it enjoys now is due to very, very severe

The rest of Dave's argument agrees emphatically with mine. In a word:

> The DNS was not designed for searching, it was designed for mapping.  The
> technical differences between these functions are significant.