Re: Conflict resolution?

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

Hank Nussbacher allegedly said:
> 
> On Mon, 18 Nov 1996, Gert Blij wrote:
[...]
> > 
> > (If  I have misunderstood the present conflict resolution policy and there
> > is an easy way to get the domain names back, pease let me know. I and many
> > others here in South Africa would be very grateful :-) )
> 
> The way to resolve this is to make .com insignificant or to create
> many better alternatives.  Then companies abroad have alternatives
> to the overpopulated .com domain.
> 

Well, that's one possible way out of a very large potential solution 
space.  Unfortunately, making .com insignificant would require 
changing public perception, and I don't know of any reliable way to 
do that.  Do you?

An alternative proposal would be to open registration of the .com
domain to multiple registries, and mandate that the multiple
registries work out a sharing protocol.  To express this differently,
ownership of all iTLDs is vested in some body (the IANA, say), and
this body grants *non-exclusive* licenses to registries to serve a
particular iTLD.  Part of the license agreement is the requirement
that the licensee must agree to cooperate and coordinate with any
other licensee for the iTLD.

Thus, for example, when NSI's contract runs out the IANA (or whoever) 
grants to NSI a non-exclusive license to register .com.  IANA might 
at a later time grant another non-exclusive license for .com to some 
other entity (say AT&T).  The terms of the license would be such that 
AT&T and NSI must work out a sharing protocol, using a small database 
of SLDs managed by an escrow company, perhaps.

In the meantime, the IANA (or whoever) can create new iTLDs and 
license them with non-exclusive licenses, as well.

The important idea is that *all* iTLD delegations from the IANA (or
whoever) are non-exclusive.  This would get us away from the corrosive
idea that iTLDs are "hot properties".

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com,kc@llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke...
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