[discuss] Dear ICANN - Feedback

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 03:38:34PM +0200, JFC Morfin wrote:

> 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. 

I think that is a false dichcotomy.  Suppose that two
internally-co-operative organizations that do not co-operate with one
another[1] both want to control a domain name.  All of the problems you
are talking about (which might have nothing to do with making money
but certainly involve disputes about the common good represented by a
name -- I don't know what a "naming category" is) are repeated in this
case.  We still need to make a decision about who if anyone gets to
register and activate the name.  

> wear. The idea of making money from TLDs came with ICANN because
> ICANN needed a budget and chose to tax domain names. 

Just to be clear, you mean "making money from fees imposed on TLD
operators" and not "making money from TLDs", right?  Those of us who
were around pre-ICANN remember then-NetworkSolutions making _plenty_
of money "from TLDs", in that by having the registration authority in
a TLD there was lots of money to be made.  

> 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.

So, apart from the price of applying for a new TLD in the last round
(and I certainly won't defend that), what was the difference between
that and what you propose?  The apocryphal, "Now we're just haggling
about the price," comes to mind, though with a much more elevating
goal, I must say!

> 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.

If by "class" you mean "in the DNS sense, for registration in the IANA
protocol parameters registry", then I'd be happy to read and try to
help improve a draft once it was reasonably complete.  Any such draft
will _have to_ deal with the class-independent RRTYPE problem, of
which CNAME is the most prominent member.  But I suspect it could be
coped with in a somewhat hideous way involving server-side processing.
Whether it'd actually work at all with deployed code is an empirical
question.  It'd doubtless be a mess, but it might be worth
investigating anyway.

Best regards,

A

[1] I trust this is not so unusual a situation such that it requires
careful redefinition of "co-operative" or "not co-operating with one
another", but in case it is I suggest that a few hours perusing the
way certain political organizations tend to fracture on points of
orthodoxy might be instructive.

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com