Re: The IANA's File of iTLD Requests

[George Michaelson <ggm@connect.com.au>]

I find the nature and inferred motivation of most of the serious lodgements
extremely depressing. Had this process been done 3-4 years ago, I think we
might all have expected to see requests for TLD which reflected concepts such
as:
	.PER	PERsonal naming space, organized along X400 O/R names devolved
		down to a level of uniqueness to permit individuals to be named

	.MED	MEDical related distinct from other educational/research

	.K12	pre-tertiary education, with defined requirements in terms
		of duty-of-care regarding content and controlled dialogue

These are concepts which at least have *some* degree of commonality with
an existing model of MIL/ORG/EDU/NET in terms of scope and aims and intent.

The vast majority of lodgements, especially those where the same person has
lodged 3 or more instances give all the appearance of being about money, and
little else. 

Frankly, I think you should be ashamed of yourselves. And so should we, 
collectively, for letting things degenerate to the stage where we can be
quite so blind to what we used to have, and do, and what we seem willing
to countenance now.

Even SRI-funneled black funding was less corrupting than this. This is crass.

IAHC should concentrate on technical solutions to permit common management
of a small number of TLD, managed in a distributed fashion across the
network. Cost recovery and funding should be considered distinct from technical
merit. Allocation of management of a domain should be by tender, under an
open process, and should reflect leasehold rights to commons rather than an
open-ended freehold to own and run a domain.

creation of new domain names should not be done by bidding. proposals for
naming creation should be divorced from the assignment of rights to manage
that namespace, under a clear understanding that rights are non-exclusive
worldwide unless the name is ISO form. In all probability there should be
a substantive expectation this model recurses inside the ISO 2-letter forms.

-George
--
George Michaelson         |  connect.com.au pty/ltd
Email: ggm@connect.com.au |  c/o AAPT,
Phone: +61 7 3834 9976    |  level 8, the Riverside Centre,
  Fax: +61 7 3834 9908    |  123 Eagle St, Brisbane QLD 4000