[discuss] Real world Impact of multiple roots

Milton L Mueller mueller at syr.edu
Tue Jan 28 12:51:07 UTC 2014



-----Original Message-----

On Jan 26, 2014, at 10:55 PM, Ben fuller <ben at fuller.na> wrote:
>> Does anyone out there know of studies on the economic impact that having two or more root zones.
>
>As far as I am aware, current technology does not support more 
>than one root zone, so I'm not sure how such studies could have been done.

This is what AT&T said about competing telephone systems 40 years ago. They were wrong. Interesting pre-emptive move for David to suggest that something he doesn't want cannot and should not even be studied. 

It is not inconceivable to coordinate separately administered root zones, depending on the rate of change in either one. I've modeled the problem in an academic paper published more than 10 years ago. And the techies on this list will insist that that layer of coordination is just the new root, thus "solving" the problem tautologically but overlooking the real institutional, economic and operational differences between coordination that is hierarchical and coordination that comes from bargains among autonomous actors.  

But Ben, the real question for you is, what advantage or benefit would be gained by adding another root? For a long time, that debate was about new TLDs - alternate roots promised to add them faster than a stalemated and over-regulatory ICANN. Now that ICANN is adding them, what is the point? If it is a political split, then the 'benefits' presumably would be political too - perhaps you can explain to me what they are. 




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