[discuss] Dear ICANN - Feedback

Mon Apr 14 13:38:34 UTC 2014

At 11:40 14/04/2014, Joseph Alhadeff wrote:
>It would seem that such a committee should be made up of a broad 
>cross section of stakeholders.  All groups have a stake in these 
>discussions, not just self appointed representatives of the public 
>interest.  We keep on hearing the need for openness and transparency 
>and then see the concepts applied only in favor of the proponent of 
>a specific idea... What is needed is an open, inclusive and 
>transparent process with due recognition for those functions that 
>require technical skills and the operational realities of the 
>governance and oversight mechanisms with the objective of meeting 
>the NTIA requirements.

Joseph,

The real problem with an IANA committee replacing the NTIA irt. the 
root is to address not the "introduction in the root" but rather the 
***undemocratic*** allocation of TLDs to ***non-cooperative*** 
operators, i.e. why and who is to make money on the common good 
represented by a naming category. This is a highly political decision.

Question: why would it be political when the matter is not political?

A TLD is a common register tag, for all the TLD zone registrants to 
wear. The idea of making money from TLDs came with ICANN because 
ICANN needed a budget and chose to tax domain names. ccTLDs do not 
pay taxes to ICANN and work equally well. They can contribute in 
proportion to the added value they deem to obtain from ICANN. This 
puts ICANN in QoS competition with itself. This is shareware.

The ownership and management of an MS TLD actually belong to its 
registrants (several ccTLDs are non-profit associations, e.g. 
http://afnic.fr). DNS MSism means to be owned and managed on an MSist 
basis, top-down of the DNS hierarchy. This should be the only 
condition to enter the root. This means no committee, but a clerk and 
a NIC.COOP equivalent procedure. Whoever wants to start an MS TLD 
project would then have to register and document the project as being 
MS cooperative, for example on "http://tld.coop", on a first come 
first serve basis. Anyone could challenge it during its sunrise period.

This has simple consequences:
- there cannot be any confusion between TLDs and TMs, unless a TM 
holder wants to delegate their TM to the stakeholders of a TLD.
- a DNS equilibrium should be easy to reach: MS TLD management will 
most probably result in at-cost DNs that people will favor. This is 
true democratic market competition.

DNSA.org is, therefore, going to introduce an IETF Draft to dedicate, 
on a test basis within the ICANN/ICP-3 framework, an "MS" class to 
TLDs to be managed on an MS basis. Any stakeholder who wants to be a 
co-author is welcome.
jfc