Re: Conflict resolution?

[shaw <ROBERT.SHAW@ITU.CH>]

Chris,

>1. NSI retains exclusive use of .COM, .NET and .ORG through 1998, and even
>  after that point, has had an unfair trade advantage in having exclusive
>  use of them to date. Perhaps, if this procedure had been put in place

You're greatly oversimplifying the issues.

Through their cooperative agreement with NSF, NSI is paying 30% of its income 
into a special fund for Internet "Intellectual Infrastructure" which will be
used for the Internet 'community'. Out of the US$ 35 they keep from domain 
name registrations, they are subsidizing NIC IP address allocations, 
assignment of ASN's, IN-ADDR registrations, the .us registry, educational 
activities such as NetScout Services, training support materials, Internic 
News, etc - again all for the Internet 'community'. 

Therefore if competing registries are allocated, it would only be natural 
that NSI insist upon the same terms as other registries so there is not 
(in your words) an 'unfair trade advantage'. 

I think you get the picture. Now I would be very interested to hear your 
scenario to address this. 'Equal terms' could introduce charging for IP
address allocations - is this what the community wants?

>  over a year ago, rather than letting the current IANA TLD applications
>  sit, things would be different. Now, it's just too late. I'm sorry if
>  this business aspect goes against the personal worldviews of some of
>  the participants here, but the cold hard fact is that this is now a
>  situation in which large amounts of money are in the balance.
>

We are concerned with global growth and stability of the Internet. Not 
individual or companies potential to make money out of the domain name 
registration business. We also need to look at the 'big picture', as
I was reminded in a phone conversation a few days ago with someone 
tracking these issues in the White House. He said "I really don't care 
what NSI is making - you should focus on the incredible market 
capitalization of Internet-related companies and how this has helped 
the economy - and he specifically noted how the NIC had supported this."

>2. IANA has accepted applications for TLDs, and has stated publically that
>  prior use should be a deciding factor, as well as making a number of
>  statements and promises that must be kept. This seems to be quite a
>  point of contention, however.
>

It certainly is...

>I believe that sharing an iTLD should be OPTIONAL, and not mandated for,
>at least, these two reasons.
>

I don't think anyone is surprised by this stance.

Robert
IAHC Member, but personal views