On Wed, May 21, 2025 at 10:11 AM John McCormac via At-Large < at-large@icann.org> wrote: The problem with ICANN's approach, especially with the new gTLDs, is that a
lot of the infrastructure on which the new gTLD websites will, theoretically, be hosted in developing countries is still developing.
ICANN's mandate is maintenance of the DNS, of names and numbers. Ethereal assets all, managed by single-purpose infrastructure spread around the world. It doesn't even handle allocation of the numbers, that's done by the RIRs. Websites, content, the means of their delivery and the location of those means are well out of scope. One should be careful imposing a paradigm on others. In my experiences, a substantial chunk of the world's population just uses phone apps to get what it needs from the Internet, never touching the DNS directly. The Microsoft Store brings that capability to PC screens as well; of course web apps also use the DNS but the domain names they use might as well be hexadecimal gibberish. By contrast, "memorable" domain names are largely a Western frill, borne of an increasingly-archaic method to reach Internet destinations, long ago bypassed by the non-Latin-script societies that Universal Acceptance will never win back.
The natural result will be websites hosted outside these countries and money that could have stayed in the economies of these countries going outside it.
From the raw perspective of the ICANN mandate ... so what? If that's a problem, it's for others to solve. ICANN has its hands full just doing what it's supposed to do. - Evan