Re: [wg-c] about the consensus call

["William X. Walsh" <william@userfriendly.com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


On 16-Mar-2000 Dave Crocker wrote:
> At 04:06 PM 3/15/00 -0800, William X. Walsh wrote:
>> >         NAA  in 2000 -> other human rights gTLDs in subsequent years
>>
>>The blatent self interest expressed here discounts the entire post.
> 
> William.  You are right.  We should give far more consideration to the many 
> posts from people who do not make their interests nearly so clear...

The point, Dave, which you seemed to not want to see, is the Eric's "proposal"
is only acceptable to him because he gets his proposal.  This is commonly
referred to as pork barreling.

Now, I have no such axe to grind.  I do not plan or intend to operate or work
for a new registry, nor am I under the employ or pay of anyone who has such
plans.  I'm here as an ISP and a consumer who has a vested interest in seeing
this process moved along in a fair and open fashion.  I am in the process of
becoming a reseller of domain registration services for com/net/org, however
that in way impacts my views here, and is merely an extension of my existing
internet services business.

Who are you employed by Dave?  Who are your employers? Who contracts you for
"consulting?"  I would love to pour over your financials and see exactly whose
interests you are representing directly.  I bet you won't entertain any such
open disclosure when it comes to you.

At least with IOD and PGMedia and Brunner, I know where they stand, I know where
they are coming from, and I know their motives, and I know the interests behind
their participation.   But you are one of those people "who do not make their
interests nearly so clear."

I have taken exception with the alternative root operators demands that they
get some "preexisting rights" and I've taken Eric to task for his onesided
effort to accept anything that results in his .NAA proposal being added ASAP. 
I've taken CORE to task for their insistence on forcing their model on every
gTLD registry.

But one thing I am entirely in support of, is an open and fair process for
adding new gTLDs.  Eric's "proposal" is wrought with attempts to make everyone
happy, so he can get "his" TLD.  

Face it people, there will be many unhappy people.  Frankly, I don't think we
should accomodate everyone's concerns or even try to.   I see the IPC as being
one group who must be limited in the impact they have on this process.  Their
positions are overly extreme, not based on existing protections under the law,
and wrought with problems relating to due process, fair use, and that not all
use of a string that is trademarked is necessarily an infringing use.  They
seek to criminalize the process of selling or offering for sale a domain name,
particularly if that domain happens to contain a trademarked string. This is
ludicrous.  It deserves to be discounted and ignored.

Claims of prior use by renegade/alternative registries/root server networks are
in the same group.

This is a clean slate people.  There is no prior process or any prior work that
should gain ANY participant in this process any advanced standing.  This
workgroup is not tasked with selecting new gTLD strings, or specifically
endorsing any proposal for new gTLD strings.  It is specifically tasked to come
up with a proposal for a process for ICANN to permit the addition of new gTLDs.
The process doesn't mean including a rider that advances one groups claim for a
new TLD over any other future applications under this process.

Eric needs to start focusing on working on a fair and open process, and stop
trying to manipulate the results to get .NAA in the roots.  So does CORE, and
so does PGMedia, and so does every other prospective registry.  CORE has
members jumping ship everyday and going around them to get ICANN Accredited and
distance themselves from CORE as much as possible.  They have other problems
they should be addressing, rather than trying to stack the deck here.  From
what I have seen of the CORE operation, they are no where near ready to run a
real registry just based on the performance of their SRS system.

What we need is a uniform set of policies that will permit a fair and open
expansion of the gTLD namespace.   That is to the benefit of all of us.  

Trademark holders have legal rights, and there are forums for them to address
their rights.  Our process has no impact on their rights, and technical
coordination does not include expanding the ability of the trademark holders to
exercise rights they may or may not have under the law.  We are already seeing
EXTREMELY bad decisions under the ICANN UDP, such as the buypc.com case where
the original registrant let the domain lapse and expire (the domain was
inactive for over >>2 months<< before being deleted and made available for
registration, what POSSIBLE rights could they claim????) and the domain was
reregistered.  This is exactly the type of crappy decisions I and others
predicted would result from such a bad and biased policy.  The COURTS are the
only place these decisions should be made in.  It is the only way that domain
owners can be protected from these types of extremely bad decisions made by
people who have absolutely no understanding of how the system works.

Mandatory business models, mandatory rebidding of registries, mandatory SRS
style registrar models, etc, are all overly restrictive and stifle innovation
that would bring REAL competition into the domain industry.  

The real issue of lock-in is that to do business today, my clients HAVE to
register under .com and have to accept restrictions and business practices that
they would never accept if they had choices.   I would immediately and gladly
shift new registrations to a new registry for .web, .biz, etc, if they were
available and they removed all the B.S. surrounding domain registration that we
now have to endure under com/net/org, such as the UDP.  My clients would even
pay MORE for domains from such a registry, because of the clear position of the
registry NOT to support a process that violates their rights to due process and
forces them to submit to flawed and partial arbitration systems slanted against
them.

You keep saying you want new gTLDs, Dave.   Let your actions speak louder than
words, and start endorsing some open standards for that process, and not closed
standards that end up duplicating all these problems and giving ICANN way more
authority than it should have.   I don't discount everything you say simply
because it came from you, Dave.  I've acknowledged when you have made valid
points, and supported positions by you and Kent when they were in line with my
own positions or I saw the logic behind them and agreed with them.  For
example, the position Kent has taken that Proposals could originate from people
who are not technically capable of or interested in operating the actual
network infrastructure required of a new registry, but are prepared to contract
that operation to a party of it's choosing.  This makes a lot of sense to me,
and I support it.   I'd have a much easier time finding something to support in
Eric's posts if they weren't all tied directly into insistance that .NAA be
added to the roots under his proposal.

Get out of your CORE garmets, and stop trying to recreate the gTLD-MoU, and
let's get some real work done.

- --
William X. Walsh <william@userfriendly.com>
http://userfriendly.com/
Fax: 877-860-5412 or +1-559-851-9192
GPG/PGP Key at http://userfriendly.com/wwalsh.gpg
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.1c (Mandrake Linux)
Comment: Userfriendly Networks http://www.userfriendly.com/

iD8DBQE40C+z8zLmV94Pz+IRAmsWAJ45SkOHQxjWZcsAZExh58O51b/3OACgkJJp
sHQ8LR40Lrzz2BAgoE9Tx0I=
=NLPq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----