Re: [wg-c] voting on TLDs

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 12:04 PM 3/13/00 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote:
>From: "Kevin J. Connolly"
> > Nope.  The #1 reason why the GTLD-MOU tanked was opposition from the
> > trademark community.
>
>Nope. The #1 reason was the US government's lack of...er....comfort at the
>role of the ITU. ICANN was created primarily to avoid having to put these

The ITU?  You are kidding, right?

You seem to confuse the rhetoric of some noisy voices with legitimate fact.

Having been in the middle of the activities at that time and having gotten 
assessments from a number of independent sources directly -- including two 
meetings with Magaziner and many second-hand reports of regular 
conversations with him -- I heard a consistent summary that a) a PORTION of 
the trademark community -- namely a few very large multi-nationals, and b) 
the U.S. Congress were the primary reasons Magaziner felt compelled to 
re-invent IANA rather than allow it to develop under its own steam.

The ITU made good news copy for rabble-rousers but concerns about them 
never had any substance.  The factual aspects of ITU concerns were raised 
by the US government and pursued through normal channels.  For example the 
one that got the most publicity resulted in an ITU member country review 
committee -- of which the US was a part -- and it produced a unanimous 
statement of support for the ITU's involvement.

Unanimous means that the US approved.


>The #2 reason was the refusal of the USG to allow a government contractor
>such as IANA to grab control of valuable taxpayer-funded assets without any
>formal authorization.

A well-spoken representation of a popular -- albeit false -- view, 
unencumbered by any concern over the actual facts of the actual history.

IANA already had control and had been exercising it since the inception of 
the DNS.  The U.S. government had very little involvement in IANA 
activities.  By contrast IANA had the full support -- and the derived 
authority -- of the Internet community.  Magaziner's Green paper countered 
a -- still unpublished -- US interagency task force report's 
recommendations and, effectively, undermined IANA's existing authority.


>The trademark theory is an odd one, given the participation of WIPO and INTA
>in the gTLD-MoU, and the fact that gTLD-MoU gave them more power and more

Nice of you to cite that.  It is often forgotten.  Indeed, they did 
participate and in good faith.

On the other hand, a small number of specific, multi-national corporations 
conducted their own, forceful lobbying campaign privately.  They tended to 
present a public facade of being supportive but were working quite hard at 
undermining things.  And they succeeded.



At 12:21 PM 3/13/00 -0500, Kevin J. Connolly wrote:
>How fascinating.  Where, in the CORE-POC paradigm, did the
>trademark community have a seat at the table?  Where, in that
>process, was the ability to prevent the growth of the TLD
>namespace forever by imposing operationally-impossible
>constraints?

(Just to show that my concern for accuracy is not partisan...)  The WIPO 
and INTA were on the IAHC.  As I recall we also wrote them into the 
POC.  For that matter, the recently adopted dispute policy is essentially 
identical with the mechanism put forward in the IAHC proposal and, as I 
recall, first suggested by the WIPO participant.

d/

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Dave Crocker  <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA