John and all, Remarkably as it may seem, we are again largely in agreement. I recall Dr. Baptista's .GOD registry which was relatively successful as far a registrants were concerned, but garnered scorn and discontent by those whom saw .GOD as a misguided attempt to trivialize there perception of God, which Dr. Baptista had no intention in doing and it was clear he did not. We disagree on one small point. I bare no animosity towards Italian people, their government, or Italian americans, and would hope most reasonable people do not either. However Vittorio has on more than one occasion seen fit to slur Americans for reasons that may or may not be reasonable. However it is rather politically correct these days to put all Americans in one slimy bucket of discontent and displeasure. That is IMO is both unfortunate and unwarranted. What the ALAC should be concerned about regarding ICANN's decision on new gTLD's is how to provide users means and methods of protecting them from the likely onslaught of dis and mis information that will spew forth from these new gTLD's and IDN gTLD's and how to advise or potential new Registry operators what at a minimum ALAC members will expect as far as security and safety policies that is to be included in the RAA's for these new gTLD's and IDN gTLD's as well as how users desire and expect ICANN to properly oversee these new gTLD and IDN gTLD's. An additional concern in our members opinion, is that what Mr. Towmey stated as the cost for consideration of such new Registries at from $100,000.00 to $500,000.00 as being far to high and suggesting that ICANN can justify such a fee. I can only suppose that most of this proposed fee structure is going to the legal staff... John Levine wrote:
possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
Well, I was going to point out how utterly unconstructive it is to invent bogus arguments based on hoary stereotypes of national character and and use them as straw men to try to discredit people with whom one disagrees, but then, what else would one expect from an Italian?
I dunno about the other people commenting here, but my issue with the morality rules has nothing to do with US law and everything to do with ICANN's demonstrated inability to establish and follow any sort of process related to the merit of domain applications (like, say, .XXX.)
Furthermore, I see no guidance at all about whose morals apply. The problem won't be with .SEXY6YROLDS which would be unlikely to find hosting anywhere and would be universally blocked if it did, but .CONTRACEPTION or .TIBET or .GOD or .KURD, which are fine some places and not at all fine in others. A morality screen is a prescription for an endless non-process, the fate that has befallen just about every other ICANN initiative.
were thinking of how this new opportunity will benefit the struggle for survival of non-national languages, a category that includes hundreds of languages in Africa, in Europe and elsewhere (including all the native languages of North America, by the way).
If I were making a list of the 100 most important things that a bunch of people who speak a language needed to create a lively and effective online community, I'd put a TLD at about number 97. The .CAT domain is a success because Catalonia is rich, peaceful, and full of Internet users, not the other way around.
R's, John
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