A long strange trip

[Jim Dueltgen <jimd@lanminds.com>]

Well, it's been a long and mostly frustrating several hours catching up on
the aftermath of the Draft Spec of the 19th.  I feel the need to contribute
my comments, as I am told over and over again by
members-of-the-IAHC-speaking-for-themselves that they are sincerely
desired.  I do not have an alternate draft spec to propose nor do I think I
can respond to each and every good point made in the last few days.  I will
say that both Simon Higgs and Christopher Ambler are doing good work
creating alternate Spec constructions and I look forward to working on a
compromise draft from the members of this list.  Right now, however, I need
to vent and would like to add my comments to the mix, as concisely as
possible, and assume that the rest of you will be able to pick up the
context from the various threads that are going on.

I will put my biases up front, but only for context, no skipping on to
Perry's next cryptic one-liner just because you think you know what I'm
going to say.  Be it known henceforth:  I am a U.S.-based Internet Service
Provider who is interested in managing one or more new generic Top Level
Domains.

Without further ado:

The Draft Spec of the 19th is lousy.  It failed to significantly
incorporate ideas and concerns raised on this list and others in the last
few months and succeeded in making the IAHC appear to be in the hip pocket
of "registrars for existing gTLDs."  I think we pretty much need to start
from scratch.

The entire draft is predicated on a faulty assumption.  The Internet top
level domain space ceased to be a public trust the minute that NSI started
charging for domain name "ownership."  If it's a pubilc trust then it needs
to be funded by US Federal taxes or UN Sponsorship, neither of which is a
viable option in my opinion.  That said, "any administration, use and/or
evolution of the Internet TLD space IS [emphasis mine] a public policy
issue and must be carried out in an open and public manner in the
interests..." of all Internet participants, NOT "the public."  The Internet
is no longer a managed trust.  It is a vast interconnection of
heterogeneous networks that all agree at some level on how to exchange
information and has achieved sufficient consumer penetation to become
reason enough for the private sector to pump money into its growth and
sustainability.  The I*s are absolutely vital to this growth and
sustainability but they need to fundamentally change their mandate to
reflect the current reality of the net.  "The public" is benefitting from
the greatly increased business focus of the Internet of the last several
years, far more than at any time in the past when it was "managed" for us.
Now is not the time to put the brakes on so that the I*s can stick to the
letter of their original mandate.  You are not losing your power or your
jobs, or selling out your original mandate in this new world, but your
constituency has changed.  Your approach needs to reflect that.

Q: What is driving the need for additional TLDs?  A: The commercial market.
Who should decide what those new gTLDs should be?  The IAHC?  No, same
answer as the first question.  If the IAHC presumes to dictate and regulate
the market in the manner described in their Draft we are all in for a
disaster or at best something so wonderfully consensusized as to be
completely useless.  The IAHC should guide the Internet community in
technical standards not implementation details.  To get specific, I can't
come up with seven TLDs that I would use in a shared enviroment and I don't
think we should for this Spec.  Just as an exercise, can anyone come up
with a good list of seven to start with?  I know I won't post it because I
can just imagine the amount of useless flame-mail that would generate.
Besides, I can't think of any that wouldn't be better managed by a monopoly
except for maybe .ISP ;-).

Shared domains are not a good idea for the Internet.  I appreciate the
idealism of the description of registries, registrars and stewards and I
understand that it is a system that works for 800 numbers, but when this is
presented as a preservation of the "public trust..."  Sheesh.  All we have
done here is come up with an abstraction layer to the problem under the
guise of protecting the "public trust" which doesn't exist.  And then, who
watches the watchmen?  This is not a "useful market control" if such a
thing exists.  If there is ultimately a fixed price resource (in this case
whatever it costs the registrar to register a name with the steward) and a
fixed number of shared gTLDs then there are a finite number of ways for
registrars to differentiate their services and acheive profit.  And make no
mistake, if there is no profit to be had there are no new gTLDs.

TLDs should be awarded to any organization on the following objective
technical criteria:  redundant connectivity to the Internet (either two
physically distant sites, both geographically and in regards to network
connection, and/or multi-homing) aggregated to at least 3 MBps, functioning
root servers and a functioning registry database with a whois interface.

The IAHC Draft section on Choosing gTLD Registrars only makes a business
case for large corporations to participate.  There is very little incentive
for an entrepreneur to be involved.  Most particularly because of the high
entrance fee, the unpredictable nature of a lottery, and the uneven playing
field with regard to NSI until 1998 and quite liekely beyond.  This model
only makes sense for large utility companies that can throw $20,000 away to
buy a seat on the Council of Registrars and is certainly no guarantee of
competence or desire to deliver superior product or service.

And finally, the trademark issue.  Registrars, registries, ISPs, IAHCs,
IANA's and anyone else who participates in assigning a mnemonic to an IP
address should refrain from making any statement about copyright.
Copyright, like every other piece of information on the net should be the
responsibility of the data's owner, not the carrier or any administrative
party.  Any disputes that arise should be handled by entities outside of
the administrative process of assigning names to IP numbers.  Resolutions
should not involve the registries except to cancel one registration and
start another.

There, I've now spent the equivalent of an 8 hour day working on this
issue.  I will now break for a brief vacation and will return to another 8
hour day of catch up.  Thank you for your attention.  I look forward to
your responses.

Sincerely,



Jim Dueltgen
Vice President                           Phone: (510) 843-6389
LanMinds, Inc.                           Fax:   (510) 843-6390
1700 Martin Luther King Jr. Way          Internet: jimd@lanminds.com
Berkeley, CA. 94709                      http://www.lanminds.com