+1 I remember the early discussions on the ICANN Board about the introduction of new TLDs. When discussing the risk of failure of the new TLDs, I said that I did not understand where was the problem: we could, for instance, have a .lousy TLD, with names sold at a bargain price, but no guarantee of continuity, and a .perfect TLD with a different profile, but at a higher price. And the consumer will choose, knowing the risk and advantages in either case. To a certain extent, this is what is happening now - for sure there are TLDs that face a higher risk of failure than others - and in the medium term prices will adjust to this. Cheers, R
-----Messaggio originale----- Da: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large- bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] Per conto di Karl Auerbach Inviato: giovedì 10 dicembre 2015 10:56 A: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Oggetto: Re: [At-Large] Fwd: [] Final Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures
On 12/9/15 11:31 PM, Avri Doria wrote:
On 09-Dec-15 17:56, Christopher Wilkinson wrote:
More generally, TLD policy should protect the Registrant. Apparently that is not part of the new gTLD deal. Or is it? To an extent. ... I very much agree with Avri's positions here.
ICANN was not constructed to be a consumer protection agency. It was constructed to assure stability - in fact in the beginning the word "technical" was always pre-pended to "stability". Stability is not permanency. A DNS TLD is stable if it doesn't wobble within time frames measured in weeks and months. But "stability" of anything related to the internet does not extend to terms measured by unbounded numbers of years.
Now it is true, and remains true, that ICANN denies third party beneficiary rights to registrants. Thus domain name registrants have no legal standing to compel TLD operators to meet existing ICANN established standards of operational quality. That is something that would be very valuable and would be easy to put into place but which ICANN has resisted for its entire existence. If anything should be fixed, it is that.
The question should be: "How much larger do we want ICANN's already large footprint to become?"
ICANN's regulatory footprint is already large and heavy.
ICANN required TLD applicants to set aside a full three years of operating costs - that was something I have not seen in any other area of business, even businesses that involve human health and safety. That cost was an enormous burden to applicants, and prevented many people and groups to refrain from even bothering to apply for a TLD. Isn't three years of funded operations "stable"? Should it be ten years, fifty years, a century?
And ICANN already requires the new TLD operators to have hired backup operators on hot standby. That added no small amount of initial cost and creates a significant operational overhead cost.
Much of what is being proposed strikes me as a revival of centralized five- year style planning, but this time for the internet. I can't say that that kind of centralized planning has had a great history of success. And success is particularly unlikely for something that is so rapidly changing and evolving as the internet.
I remember back in the early 1970's when we were playing with packet switched networks that the telephone companies were raising the roofs claiming that we were playing with fire, that we would destroy the wonder- of-the-world which was the national and international telephone network. They were right; we did, eventually. But it was not the economic disaster that was predicted.
ICANN can not be, and ought not to be, a guarantor of anything more than the technical quality of upper tier DNS operations. To do more risks strangling the golden goose of the internet or, more likely, sending the goose elsewhere.
The example of VW's cheating on emissions was raised as some sort of analogy to ICANN. I do not see that analogy. In the VW case, express statements were made to governments and buyers that vehicles would meet certain emission, power, and mileage numbers. Explicit promises to buyers were knowingly and intentionally broken - or in the words of the law, there was a misstatement of material facts upon which people relied to their detriment - in a word, fraud. In most places fraud is unlawful and those harmed can bring actions to recover their losses. And when really bad, fraud can rise to the criminal level and those responsible be punished.
No such promises are made by either ICANN nor TLD sellers beyond that TLD operations will meet certain minimum ICANN established requirements. And no one has said that those requirements are not being met.
ICANN's own long term requirement for many TLDs that domain names registrations be limited to no more than ten years undercuts arguments that domain name buyers some how believe that acquisition of domain names is something with permanency similar to a common law fee simple absolute right in real property. Even the word "registration" rather than "purchase" tends to suggest impermanence.
I believe that some of the new TLD offerings did make it part of their business plans to provide very long term guarantees. But if I remember correctly, those offerings were orders of magnitude more expensive per year than the more routine TLD offerings. In other words, consumers have options to purchase long term guarantees by choosing those TLDs that make such warranties.
If one pushes ICANN to be a consumer protection agency than domain name prices will be forced to significantly rise. Consider how much it would cost to acquire an business continuation insurance policy. The actuaries will crank the numbers in order to maintain 100% continuity for an indefinite period in the face of even unforeseeable risks and come up with a whopping dollar number that will strangle DNS innovation or drive people to do what has always been possible but always been dismissed because the existing system runs very well: competing DNS systems outside of the ICANN realm.
But if one looks at an even longer time scale - say ten years - it is becoming very clear that DNS names - which includes all TLDs - are slowly submerging to become internal internet machinery and not really of much interest to users. Things like Facebook and Twitter handles and URL's (which don't need to contain domain names at all) are becoming the names and addresses of the internet. In that future *all* TLDs are at risk of loosing revenue streams.
ICANN is already bloated to the degree that one fears that it is at risk from just one thin wafer (that's a Monty Python reference). There is not much that is funny when one begins to compare ICANN's staff size and budgets to that of the ITU (especially if one plots the growth of those numbers of each body over time and asks "when will they intersect?")
--karl--
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