excuse the massive amount of snipping in this, but it would be longer than
it already is if I didnt. my apologies.
> There is an important distinction to be made regarding the destablization:
> We are not introducing names that are in conflict with the names that
ICANN
> has chosen. If we were to do so, *that* would be destabilizing as a query
> could result in an answer pointing to differing locations. I do not agree
> however that releasing names that are unused within the ICANN regime
creates a
> destabilization.
What you say is true. You are technically not breaking anything at this
point. It bothers me that ICANN could decide to 'legitimately' release these
TLDs to a different registrar and that horror-story situation would come
true. However, you were probably right in saying that they wouldnt do that.
I am somewhat surprised that ICANN is taking what you are doing sitting down
though. Given the iron fist manner in which they have been giving out TLDs I
would have thought they would have tried to sue you for trampling on their
exclusive contract to do so.
> What standard would you be referring to?(there are lots to choose from.)
> There is one "standard" that I am aware of that we are in conflict
> with which is RFC 2826. This obstensibly technical standard states in part
> that the name space must be administered by a single naming authority. Now
> I don't know about you, and perhaps you'll disagree, but defining an
> administrative structure doesn't seem to fall within the realm of the
> technical. It's a political statement, not a technical standard. Given
> that the IAB/IETF is part of the ICANN structure, it is small wonder that
> there exists such a document.
That is the standard I was referring to. To infer that an administrative
structure shouldnt/doesnt effect the technical realm, IMO, is ultimately
flawed. Especially when you have a single namespace that everyone on the
internet uses. For example: if you were running DNS for a very large
multinational company, would you want more than one of your IT groups to
have control over the root of your domain space? No. It would get very
confusing very quickly. Maybe one other group might not be that bad,
especially if they had everyone's interests in mind. But what if there were
six or eight? I assume that you have signed exclusive contracts with the
ISPs you have signed on, so maybe this may not become an issue. However, if
you are sucessful (as you may well be), people will try to replicate your
success and may not be so scrupulous about it. Imagine if a company decided
to start delegating reserved class A netblocks and made agreements with some
of the large network carriers to route them. It may not give everyone what
they want, but its my opinion that this sort of thing should be ultimately
managed by one body.
> We aren't forcing anyone to do anything they don't want to do. If people
> want to add support for our names, they will. If we can't convince them
> to do so they won't. If we do a good job, then we will succeed. If we do a
> poor job, then we'll go away.
This does sort of bother me. If you do a poor job, youll go away and
thousands of people who have registred names with you will be sitting there
with nothing. Is this any different than registering names with an ICANN
registrar that goes out of business? I think it is. If an ICANN registrar
goes out of business, dont I still hold the registration? I dont think any
ICANN regisistrars have bitten it yet, so I dont know as we have seen an
example of this. You may not be saying anything different to your customers,
but there is something to be said for having one body who has a consensus on
who owns what.
> The beauty of this is the degree of self-determination we enjoy, and the
fact
> that we can offer consumers what they want *now* rather than later(or
> never.)
I truly do admire that. The method is what bothers me. The root namespace is
too important not to be administrated by a single body. Unfortunately this
also creates a single point of failure which is what we're seeing now with
ICANN. If it were put together differently, ICANN could be very effective
and efficient. I think thats the goal we should be trying to achieve. Maybe
thats naive, I dont know.
> Are you certain you know enough about either to make that determination?
> The reason I ask is that I've been involved in this space for several
> years, and the only reason New.net exists at all is because of ICANN, both
> the way in which it was formed, as well as how it has behaved.
Im not certain of anything really. This is a discussion list. Ill be the
first to raise my hand and say I dont know everything. At the same time, one
doesnt learn anything by being quiet and not asking questions. You obviously
do know more about this than I do and I will readily conceed that. The
reason I have tried to keep this thread going is because I want to
understand this situation better than I do. If people on the list are
annoyed by it, Id be happy to shut up, but Id think that this is and should
be of interest to everyone on it.
- Matt
ps: i apologize for lack of grammar, rambling, ranting, etc.. the amount of
time i have to do this sort of thing is very limited, so there isnt much
proofreading that goes on. : - )
