Milton Mueller wrote:
>
> http://www.nsol.com/policy/gTLD-Registry-Best-Practices.pdf
>
> I have looked over the Network solutions White Paper. I hope its motivation is as
>transparent to others as it is to me. Basically this is an attempt to persuade ICANN
>to force all new TLDs to adopt standards and practices that increase costs and reduce
>innovation so that competition with com net and org registry is minimized. They are
>trying to raise the bar to entry so high that only a small number of large businesses
>will be eligible.
>
> The same game was played by the telephone companies during liberalization. Imagine
>how many new telephone companies we would have had in 1984 if all of them had been
>expected to offer the exact same level of service and use the same operation
>standards as AT&T. Eventually, of course, MCI and Sprint and other companies grew up
>to the point where they could beat AT&T at its own game. But if AT&T-style
>requirements had been imposed on them as a condition of entry into the market, none
>of them would have been able to enter at all.
>
> The NSI White paper attempts to make the relationship between new registries and new
>registrars *exactly like* the relationship between NSI and accredited registrars in
>com net and org. But most of these conditions were imposed on NSI because of its
>overwhelming dominance of the marketplace. It is not appropriate to apply the same
>conditions to new entrants, who do not have the same market share.
...................................................................
Exactly so. And this new attempt to commandeer all new TLDs for a
few large businesses goes hand in hand with NSI's first paper, at
http://www.nsol.com/news/2000/pr_20000419.html,
in which NSI tries to make a convincing argument for giving even
TLDs that might be reserved for non-profit organizations to big
business interests like the banks.
NSI evidently wants no part of a TLD world in which users have a
choice of what sort of registries they have to deal with, since it
will mean lost business for NSI. And since NSI is funding ICANN, it
is almost certain that ICANN will adopt these policies.
This is the result of allowing the ICANN, as the NewCo, to dispense
with user representation, in contravention of the DOC's White Paper.
ICANN should never have been recognized as the NewCo by DOC, and it
should now be done away with.
Michael Sondow
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