Re: Is IAHC doing enough for the people who have driven change?

[Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>]

On Mon, 23 Dec 1996, Peter Mott wrote:

> Now some of these folk may be outspoken and rebelious in nature.  They have
> been this way for a reason. Now you have some commitment to change, you
> should not diminish their right to equal participation in the future 

> Find a way that encoruages participation from everybody, particularly those
> smaller organisations who have their lives and families on the line right
> now.  

I agree.

One thing that has been completely ignored by the Dec 19th draft is the
concept of a gTLD in which organizations register at the 3rd Level, i.e.
a company could register beef.biz.alt but could not register biz.alt.

I have demonstrated a number of ways in which such a 3LD registration
scheme could be employed to limit the number of gTLD's created, to ensure
that gTLD's cover broad generic categories and to provide a diverse set
of policies and procedures which domain name registrants can choose.

The 3LD concept can solve the monopoly registry problem as well. I do
agree with the IAHC that the root of the DNS is a public resource and
that gTLD's cannot be assigned to companies as a perpetual monopoly.
However, the IAHC could easily create the .BIZ gTLD and assign SLD's
within this gTLD to monopoly registries. For instance, Chris Ambler's 
company could have exclusive rights to WEB.BIZ.

This is *NOT* the same as just going out and registering WEB.COM and
selling names within it. The .BIZ gTLD would be reserved for domain name
registries and companies that apply for an SLD in .BIZ would be required
to sign an undertaking that they would actually use the domain to run a
registry business. While Chris Ambler might not be as happy with .WEB.BIZ
as he would be with .WEB, nevertheless if all other monopoly registries
were relegated to .BIZ then he would at least be on equal footing with
them. He could still apply for shared registry status in other gTLD's
but even if he lost the lottery he would not be out in the cold.

You will note that this proposed .BIZ gTLD does not conflict with the
idea of registrars sharing the gTLD's. Assuming that the .BIZ gTLD has the
type of policy I described above, Chris could apply to the registrar of
his choice for the WEB.BIZ SLD. It is just as well that .BIZ is shared by
all registrars since there are not likely to be a large number of
applications for .BIZ domains.

However, I would still like to see the draft explicitly recognize the
concept of a 3LD, i.e. a portion of the namespace in which exclusive use
with no strings attached does not happen until the third level. In
particular, the concept of a .ALT gTLD in which the registrar of .ALT
maintains all SLD's within .ALT does require some explicit comment by the
IAHC.

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael@memra.com