Milton wrote,
>
>
> 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.
It's "natural" because it has history -- in other words, the constituency
exists because of conditions that arise from long custom and practice. For
instance, the Vatican is a Roman Catholic state, Muslims react very badly to
having Allah defamed. Ask Salman Rushdie.
New gTLDs have none of this, chartered TLDs do to the extent that they
succeed in tailoring their charter to a constituency that already exists,
for instance .BARD for Shakespeare fans.
I don't think it applies equally well; I don't think it applies to gTLDs at
all. What is natural about a gTLD, what long-standing custom, practice or
history surrounds them?
> that ccTLDs
> function "locally and not globally" is plainly wrong.
To me it is not plain at all. Any person, regardless of their residence or
nationality, can register a name under .co.uk -- but that is a determination
made to be acceptable to local standards, in this case those of the UK. In
Russia only Russians can register directly under .RU, but anyone can
register under .COM.RU -- another local decision. In the Philippines, only
residents can get a name -- and so on. There are endless rules and policies
made in keeping with a local sense of what is right.
There are
> many ccTLDs that
> intend to function globally, and there will be more in the future.
Do you mean that the names can be resolved from anywhere on the Internet.
If so, then all ccTLDs function globally, that's the nature of the DNS. If
you mean that they market themselves outside their area, so what? Wouldn't
you agree that Coca-Cola is an American company, subject to American mores,
even though they sell Coke in China?
>
> 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.
Now you're showing off. I wish for the life of me I could remember who
uttered these bons mots first. If you would let me know I'd be grateful. I
can't understand how it applies here, though. It seems that you say that
Chinese governmental involvement, if it happens, would be trivial; but that
if that if were a substantial involvement, it would not be true.... Is that
because it is impossible for the Chinese government to cause trouble
whenever they want? Residents of Tibet, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as
veterans of the Korean War, might have a different opinion.
>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.
Agreed. This is the level at which ICANN should be involved.
> The fine folks at
> cn.nic not only accept it, they are (or were) great admirers of
> Postel, IETF,
> and the RFC process.
I won't be the only to tell you that the ICANN process does not closely
resemble the IETF or RFC processes.
> 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.
However, if you're saying that the ICANN's role with regard to ccTLDs is
limited to encouraging compliance with relevant RFCs, then we are close to
agreement. But presumably with regard to gTLDs you think that ICANN's
involvement should be more broad, going beyond the RFCs. For instance, you
probably wouldn't condone ICANN allowing a small cartel of registrars fixing
prices for gTLD domain names. Yet presumably you wouldn't (because you
haven't) complained about the same behavior occurring in ccTLDs (UAE, for
instance). gTLDs and ccTLDs are different, and they should be handled
differently by ICANN.
>
> 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?
You may have noticed that we are a long way away from such a consensus.
> 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 if we had strawberries, we could have strawberries and cream, if we had
cream. They might adopt them, if such an unlikely thing were to come to
pass, and then promptly flout them, as they do currently, for instance in
the their multi-billion dollars music piracy business.
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.
>
If you establish beforehand that ICANN will treat gTLDs and ccTLDs exactly
the same way "legally and operationally", then your statement is true by
definition. If not, then not.
> > 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?
I should have said, "function in response to global concerns, not local
concerns." Sorry if it wasn't clear.
>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.
Sure it's nonsense, except that the examples of gTLDs we do have are
constituted that way. But you're quite right, there may be other, more
specialized TLDs (I have taken to calling them charter TLDs, to distinguish
them from the "all-user" gTLDs), and for the purposes of argument I'm happy
to include them with gTLDs. Let me therefore amend "responsive to all
users" to "responsive to its users," and probably that will fall under some
kind of regulation, if not a religious principle. And gTLDs, while they may
specialize into a chartered TLD, are nonetheless international, and won't
exclude a registrant because of his or her residence. The concerns of their
users are therefore global.
>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.
It would be fruitless to tell the market anything, and I didn't. Are you
arguing with me, or someone else? In any case, the market niche wouldn't be
based on geography -- the ccTLDs already have that covered. Or maybe you
think there should be a .CHINA as well as .CN? Do you suppose that the
reaction of the Chinese gov't would be trivial then. If it were true, I
mean.
Antony
>
> > 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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