Re: [wg-c] re: Choosing the intial testbed

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Kendall Dawson wrote:
> 
> I agree that it should be decentralized - but not in the exact way that James has proposed.
> 
> My person feeling is that the general public should choose the TLDs/registry by a vote. It seems the only democratic way to do this. Rather than telling people -- "here are the 10 choices" why not have a Net-wide Web poll (sponsored by DNSO) to decide this matter?
> 
> This way ICANN gets the general public involved, the business/commercial interest does not get to make the choice for the public - and no one can come back later complaining - "we weren't offered any choice".


    As you know, my own proposal had 1/3 of the TLDs selected by a
direct membership vote, and I think this is a good idea for many of the
reasons indicated by Kendall.  But for a testbed, I don't see a problem
in having more than one selection process, more or less "competing"
against each other.   

   If the business/registrar community came up with an agreement on some
TLDs for the testbed, that would be fine with me.  And as I have
indicated before, I think the noncommercial constituency will have a
different take on this, and should be given the chance to come up with
their own consensus proposals.

   
> This method could be used whether the registries are chosen first, or the TLD strings are chosen first. If the registries are asked to apply first - we offer a list of say 100 registries and the string they propose to run. The public then votes on these - and the top 10 are implemented.
> 
> If we go the other route - and the TLD strings are chosen first - we put up a list of 100 strings. The public votes on which ones they want. The top 10 are chosen. Then, the registries bid on who will run them.

    
   I would agree that the popular vote method could be done either way.

> I know that Paul already has a poll going over at Name-Space. But, this is not "officially sanctioned" by DNSO. If ICANN were to offer something similar to this as an "official" poll that will used to gauge the interests of the public -- we could avoid a lot of the back-and-forth fighting of which ones to add.


    I would agree that one objective of a system would be to permit
decisions to actually be made.   At least with a vote, you have a
mandate, and you can explain the objective criteria -- the highest vote
total.


   Also, with respect to the consensus on 3 TLDs each for the commercial
and noncommercial groups.  You could say, if there is no consensus, the
number allocated by votes will be expanded.  This would give the groups
an incentive to get a consensus.  

  Jamie


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James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
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