CDR: Re: ICANN should approve more domains, from Wall Street Journal

[Joe Baptista]

If you don't like USG namespace - just switch

http://www.youcann.org/

point click reboot .. and it's astalavista ICANN.  It's as simple as that.

Regards
Joe

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Bill Stewart wrote:

> I was disappointed that the IETF Ad Hoc Committee wasn't able
> to generate their political clout to get their earlier
> 7-new-TLD plan implemented a couple years ago.
> 
> However, one strong similarity between their plan and ICANN's
> is that both first rounds of new TLDs were pretty lame,
> and if this wasn't done deliberately, it should have been,
> because it's a Good Thing.  It's how you get a practice round
> before getting to the far more controversial valuable namespaces,
> like .inc, .ltd/gmbh/sa, .mp3, .sex and .microsoft.
> The limitations on the number of TLDs aren't particularly technical;
> if you allow an infinite number of them, you replicate all the 
> problems with .com under . , and don't have a level of indirection
> available to fix them with.   It's worth going slowly.
> 
> The more important questions are the openness of the namespaces;
> I'm glad that ICANN rejected the WHO's .health and Nader's .union,
> because they allow political groups to decide who can join
> based on their political correctness positions
> (would WHO allow .accupuncture.health?  .joes-herbal-remedies.health?
> .snakeoil.health?  .homeopathy.health?  Nader's group wouldn't allow a 
> company-dominated union, and might even have trouble with the Wobblies.)
> 
> The $50K application fee was pure exploitation of their position;
> I don't think they're making any excuses for that.
> The big problem is that it limits the kinds of TLDs that can
> be applied for to commercial players - experimental namespace use
> like .geo is valuable, and hard to get funding for.
> And like taxi monopoly medallions in New York City,
> once you've charged somebody big money for their chance,
> it's politically difficult to charge somebody else less or nothing later.
> 
> 	Bill Stewart
> 
> 
> At 08:58 AM 11/20/00 -0800, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >[My op-ed, below, appeared in today's paper. An HTML-formatted copy is at: 
> >http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1714249 --Declan]
> >
> >    The Wall Street Journal
> >    Monday, November 20, 2000
> >
> >    ICANN Use More Web Suffixes
> >    By Declan McCullagh
> >    Op-Ed
> >
> .....
> >    One reason is that the new suffixes approved by the Internet
> >    Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers are woefully inadequate.
> >    Instead of picking GTLDs that would meet market demand, ICANN decided
> >    to approve the lackluster set of .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum,
> >    .name, and .pro instead. (If these were proposed brand names, you can
> >    bet most would fail the first focus group test.) Any more additions,
> >    ICANN's board members indicated, would not be approved until late
> >    2001.
> >
> >    This is absurd. Technology experts occasionally wrangle over how many
> >    GTLDs the current setup can include, with the better estimates in the
> >    millions, but few doubt that the domain name system can handle tens of
> >    thousands of new suffixes without catastrophe.
> ....
> >    Another problem is a predictable one: Politics. In the past, some of
> >    ICANN's duties had been handled by various federal agencies. Unlike
> >    what some regulatory enthusiasts have suggested, however, the solution
> >    is not encouraging the government to again become directly involved in
> >    this process. A wiser alternative is a complete or near-complete
> >    privatization of these functions.
> 
> 
> 				Thanks! 
> 					Bill
> Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
> PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
> 

-- 
Joe Baptista

                                        http://www.dot.god/
                                        dot.GOD Hostmaster
                                        +1 (805) 753-8697