Anthony, the "natural constituency" argument is an excellent point. But it
applies equally well to proprietary registries, whether commercial or chartered,
that want to adopt their own policies and practices. The argument that ccTLDs
function "locally and not globally" is plainly wrong. There are many ccTLDs that
intend to function globally, and there will be more in the future.
Antony Van Couvering wrote:
> I say this as a matter of practicality. Are you seriously going to tell the
> Chinese how run .CN? If you attempt it, you will see the Chinese interfere
> at governmental levels, making the meddling of the U.S. and European
> governments seem trivial by comparison.
The extent to which this is true is trivial, and the extent to which it is not
trivial, it is not true. To a very important degree, IANA and the RFC process
already do tell the Chinese how to run .CN. There are all sorts of technical
regulations and specifications that they accept and implement. The fine folks at
cn.nic not only accept it, they are (or were) great admirers of Postel, IETF,
and the RFC process. But if you mean that ICANN can issue edicts that tell the
Chinese to, say, not block public access to web sites about Tibetan
independence, well, that is very much an internal policy issue that they would
reject--but of course, it's totally irrelevant to this discussion because it has
nothing to do with domain name policy or the administration of the top level
domain.
Ask yourself this: will the Chinese implement dispute resolution recommendations
or some modification thereof that is adopted by ICANN and has the consensus of
the Internet community as a whole? Those recommendations would impinge very
deeply on their registry practices and policies. Neverteless, the Chinese, and
most other government-run registries, probably would adopt those recommendations
if the rest of the world did. And their decision to do so, or not to do so, is
no different legally or operationally than that of any other registry, including
NSI.
> Each ccTLD has a natural constituency that is properly concerned with local
> matters, and may have customs that, while crucial for them, might be very
> problematic in a western society. For instance instance, Muslim countries
> and obscenities. Most of these ccTLDs have worked out policies that work
> well and have not been contentious, as .COM has been. (BTW, the fact that
> some ccTLDs have very open registration policies doesn't diminish this --
> the locals want to have open policies, god bless them. But some want, and
> I'm sure feel they need, more restrictive policies.
>
> gTLDs function globally, not locally. They are a different beast.
All TLDs function globally. Or had you forgotten how the Internet works? There
is no law, regulation, law of nature, or universally accepted religious
principle that says that gTLDs must be responsive to "all users." This is
nonsense. A gTLD may CHOOSE to go after the market represented by "all users,"
or it may choose some smaller niche. Stop telling the market what it is and how
it must work. Instead, let the free market operate and let the users decide who
and what responds to their needs.
> They
> need to be responsive to all users, which is a much more difficult task --
> and hence the grinding process we've all been through the last few years.
--Milton Mueller
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