Jon and all,
I think you are a bit confused here in this post, which is surprising!
The White Paper calls for multiple REGISTRIES! That implies, at least,
multiple Roots and Root structures. As such it, and also one of the main
themes of the White Paper was STABILITY, which multiple REGISTRIES
and ROOT STRUCTURES will undoubtedly bring!
Now ICANN on the other hand, in their infinite wisdom (Sarcasm intended)
decided on a providing competition by adding ONLY multiple REGISTRARS
and thereby limiting competition. To date in that effort they have only
succeeded in destabilizing the Internet, as the WHOIS fiasco that is ongoing
shows dramatically...
Jon Zittrain wrote:
> Who would you foresee the bigger root players to be? I'd figure that if
> they're for-profit (and no reason why they wouldn't be), they're going to
> do what's profit-maximizing, which may or may not be equitable along other
> yardsticks. Not that I blame them--that's what for-profits are supposed to do!
>
> If one rejects the White Paper and goes for multiple roots--or a single
> root ministerially run by a non-profit which is in turn instructed by
> bigger players who come up with a scheme to carve it up--the market will
> indeed make order out of chaos. I'm just not sure it'd be a market readily
> open to competition, since, as you point out, everyone will have a strong
> incentive to go with the status quo. Those root players could just vote
> themselves their own registries and be done with it. (Indeed, if Netscape
> or Centraal keywords caught on I wouldn't imagine they'd be interested in
> *giving away* opportunities to register groups of names under their "roots"
> to others--they'd sell them as franchises or partner plans!)
>
> The best way to make the entrepreneurial squabbles dissipate would be
> *tons* of new TLDs. Make them so common that one could find any ending on
> a domain name string and the worries over who gets to register what may
> fade. It'd leave only the issue of domain name portability: after all,
> amazon.com wouldn't be satisfied moving to amazon.biz if, once their lease
> was up on amazon.com, they were told it'd be $50,000 to renew it! And it
> would cause an uproar among some of the trademark interests. ...JZ
>
> At 11:23 PM 7/8/99 , Tony Rutkowski wrote:
> >At 09:20 PM 7/8/99 , JZ wrote:
> >>in your view, what entity would instruct the independent corporation
> >>about what TLDs to enter, and to whom they should point? To be sure,
> >>point 3 (and 1 and 2) may be simple, but 3 is easy precisely because it's
> >>cast as a ministerial task. The "hard" part seems to me to be left open:
> >>figuring out who instructs the TLD quill holder what to write. Unless
> >>you want to go for multiple roots--as many on this list do, but your own
> >>msg seems to exclude--I don't see how you account for this.
> >
> >I don't exclude multiple roots. Inevitably everyone
> >will be incented to maximize inclusiveness - just
> >as in the telephony world, the directory services are
> >incented to a similar end.
> >
> >The bigger root players will have some kind of equitable
> >scheme - maybe a simple lottery is all you need for
> >new TLDs plus recognition of those that have long been
> >operational like IODesign's .WEB
> >
> >It may be a little chaotic, but that's infinitely
> >preferable to the sterile global governance
> >of the ICANN-GAC wrapped around the notion of a DNS
> >singularity. The existing 250 TLDs will continue
> >unperturbed - so they represent an ample safe haven.
> >
> >Life will go on. ICANN will join its brethren in
> >the great OSI void. Wilkinson will retire at the EU.
> >Shaw will find something else putter with at the ITU.
> >Government bureaucrats will get sucked into the endless
> >traditional sinkholes - taxation, gambling, obscenity,
> >etc....
> >
> >
> >--tony
Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 95k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contact Number: 972-447-1894
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208
