Hi everyone,
There's a poorly reported article on the .US ccTLD hearing yesterday at NTIA
at http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/18371.html. For one thing,
the Postal Service rep is misidentified (the name he used was on the agenda,
but they switched). The U.S. Postal Service, while it's conceivable that
they do want to run the whole thing, was pretty good about not saying that
it was the best solution; I'd have to give them credit for being
hands-offish about it.
Also, the "other solution" mentioned came from a proposal for reforming the
.US domain that I wrote with Alan Sullivan almost a year and a half ago,
with the blessing and occassional participation from Jon Postel (you can
view this proposal at http://www.vc.nu/USADNA.html). In the meeting, I made
it abundantly clear that the functional second-level domains in our proposal
were just placeholders, and shouldn't mistaken for real suggestions. Stef
and Tony Rutkowski and others can attest to this.
What did transpire was a pretty good meeting with a variety of views
presented. ISI presented some information, and much more came out through
questioning. The important fact, I thought, was that for the moment the
registrants in .US are non-commercial - either personal domains or
not-for-profit or governmental. This presents an opportunity to leave the
geo-political part of the space as is, and to develop a parallel space that
*is* commericial. Rob Hall from CIRA talked about how the Canadians had
handled their domain, and made the important point (IMHO) that there was an
18-month window for .US to get into the commercial space, because the
competition is not with other ccTLDs, but with gTLDs, and that a ccTLD that
doesn't have itself established as a good choice for a business domain name
within that time was toast. You can have a look at the as-yet-unfinished
CIRA work at http://www.cira.ca.
The proposal I presented, although almost a year and a half old, was
remarkably consonant with what CIRA had spent close to two years coming up
with. The main features are:
1. Shared registry system
2. Almost anyone can become a registrar - very low bar
3. The registry is not-for-profit, this not-for-profit owned by the
registrars
4. Legal contract is between the registry and the end-registrant, with a
paper-based authentication system, which I won't explain in detail (you can
look it up).
5. Complete portability between registrars
6. A variety of second-level domains (remember the names in the proposal are
just placeholders) which should have some meaning to the consumer but are
not enforced by means of a gateway or policing policies. We have seven or
eight, but there was some discussion yesterday about a continual birthing
process of new domains - details, natch, to be worked out.
7. Trademarks disputants should go through a non-binding arbitration
process, to be handled informally by the registry. If they can't agree, let
them go to court.
One idea that is embodied in our proposal found general consensus in the
meeting - namely, that that parallel spaces, one using the current
structure which is used mostly by non-commercial users, another with a
naming structure yet-to-be-determined for commercial use, seemed to resonate
as a good idea with everyone. (BTW, I don't want to take credit for this -
it seems an obvious solution, and was mentioned before my presentation.)
Network Solutions, predictably, thought that .US was just fine as it was, a
non-commercial space -- let .com handle the commercial space for the United
States.
Also attending were a variety of trademark and large business
representatives, who in general were agnostic about the structure and
mechanics, but were clear that they needed to see a way to deal with
trademark disputes. They did not, however, present any ideas for doing so.
There was no definite follow-up meeting proposed, but it seems to me that
ISI, the current administrator of .US, should be the rallying-point, and
there seemed to be some agreement from ISI on that score. Keep you posted.
Questions welcomed.
Antony
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Boundary, n. In political geography, an
imaginary line between two nations, separating
the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary
rights of another. -- Ambrose Bierce, The
Devil's Dictionary
