My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. ----- Dear Board of ICANN, as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience. Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board. Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age. A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle. I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures. Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today. The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft? I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible. There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue. In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed. But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility. I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this. Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Vittorio This is so well said. Thank you!!! Jacqueline Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. -----
Dear Board of ICANN,
as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience.
Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board.
Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age.
A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle.
I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures.
Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today.
The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft?
I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible.
There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue.
In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed.
But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility.
I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this.
Thanks,
Vittorio, can I reprint your comments on my blog at http://www.namecritic.info? You hit the point exactly right. The costs are prohibitive to a small business as well. ICANN is going against it's own charter by removing competition from the process. This high priced proposal from ICANN is anti-competitive and inhibits free enterprise and may even be illegal. A one-size-fits-all approach will never work. ICANN has no right to decide whether or not my or anyone else's business plan is viable. My finances are none of ICANN's business. ICANN is a technical entity and should only be concerned whether or not I can "technically" operate a tld. My failure or success at making a business out of of it is not something ICANN is set up to address. If ICANN is going to analyze business plans and financial stability of each applicant and then approve these applicants and they fail, then ICANN will be liable for that failure and subject to being sued. If ICANN takes the position of assuring people who buy domains in a given TLD through their approval of that business plan and the financial stability of that company, then they are truly liable for any failures right alongside that company. We have courts and laws to deal with what happens if a company fails and someone or somone's business is harmed. ICANN should not be concerned or involved with that aspect at all. Those who sit on the board of ICANN need to get back to ensuring the technical stability of the Internet and stop trying to make "laws" as if they were a government. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jacqueline A. Morris" <jam@jacquelinemorris.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 4:03 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Vittorio This is so well said. Thank you!!! Jacqueline
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. -----
Dear Board of ICANN,
as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience.
Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board.
Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age.
A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle.
I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures.
Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today.
The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft?
I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible.
There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue.
In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed.
But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility.
I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this.
Thanks,
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann...
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Chris, I agree with your comments and also Vittorio's. It may be useful to post them to the relevant comments page on the ICANN web site. Patrick Vande Walle NameCritic wrote, On 7/11/08 13:41:
Vittorio, can I reprint your comments on my blog at http://www.namecritic.info? You hit the point exactly right. The costs are prohibitive to a small business as well. ICANN is going against it's own charter by removing competition from the process. This high priced proposal from ICANN is anti-competitive and inhibits free enterprise and may even be illegal.
A one-size-fits-all approach will never work. ICANN has no right to decide whether or not my or anyone else's business plan is viable. My finances are none of ICANN's business. ICANN is a technical entity and should only be concerned whether or not I can "technically" operate a tld. My failure or success at making a business out of of it is not something ICANN is set up to address.
If ICANN is going to analyze business plans and financial stability of each applicant and then approve these applicants and they fail, then ICANN will be liable for that failure and subject to being sued. If ICANN takes the position of assuring people who buy domains in a given TLD through their approval of that business plan and the financial stability of that company, then they are truly liable for any failures right alongside that company.
We have courts and laws to deal with what happens if a company fails and someone or somone's business is harmed. ICANN should not be concerned or involved with that aspect at all. Those who sit on the board of ICANN need to get back to ensuring the technical stability of the Internet and stop trying to make "laws" as if they were a government.
Chris McElroy
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jacqueline A. Morris" <jam@jacquelinemorris.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 4:03 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Vittorio This is so well said. Thank you!!! Jacqueline
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. -----
Dear Board of ICANN,
as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience.
Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board.
Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age.
A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle.
I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures.
Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today.
The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft?
I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible.
There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue.
In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed.
But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility.
I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this.
Thanks,
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann...
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann...
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Patrick Vande Walle Check my blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu
Be happy to if you can point the way. In the public comments section of ICANN's website I can view the summary of the comments, but not make one. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Vande Walle" <patrick@vande-walle.eu> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 6:49 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Chris,
I agree with your comments and also Vittorio's. It may be useful to post them to the relevant comments page on the ICANN web site.
Patrick Vande Walle
NameCritic wrote, On 7/11/08 13:41:
Vittorio, can I reprint your comments on my blog at http://www.namecritic.info? You hit the point exactly right. The costs are prohibitive to a small business as well. ICANN is going against it's own charter by removing competition from the process. This high priced proposal from ICANN is anti-competitive and inhibits free enterprise and may even be illegal.
A one-size-fits-all approach will never work. ICANN has no right to decide whether or not my or anyone else's business plan is viable. My finances are none of ICANN's business. ICANN is a technical entity and should only be concerned whether or not I can "technically" operate a tld. My failure or success at making a business out of of it is not something ICANN is set up to address.
If ICANN is going to analyze business plans and financial stability of each applicant and then approve these applicants and they fail, then ICANN will be liable for that failure and subject to being sued. If ICANN takes the position of assuring people who buy domains in a given TLD through their approval of that business plan and the financial stability of that company, then they are truly liable for any failures right alongside that company.
We have courts and laws to deal with what happens if a company fails and someone or somone's business is harmed. ICANN should not be concerned or involved with that aspect at all. Those who sit on the board of ICANN need to get back to ensuring the technical stability of the Internet and stop trying to make "laws" as if they were a government.
Chris McElroy
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jacqueline A. Morris" <jam@jacquelinemorris.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 4:03 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Vittorio This is so well said. Thank you!!! Jacqueline
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. -----
Dear Board of ICANN,
as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience.
Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board.
Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age.
A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle.
I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures.
Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today.
The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft?
I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible.
There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue.
In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed.
But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility.
I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this.
Thanks,
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-- Patrick Vande Walle Check my blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu
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See http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-comments-en.htm There is a table at the bottom of the page There are several e-mail addresses for comments on the RFP, each in relation with a specific part. Patrick NameCritic wrote, On 8/11/08 19:46:
Be happy to if you can point the way. In the public comments section of ICANN's website I can view the summary of the comments, but not make one.
Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Vande Walle" <patrick@vande-walle.eu> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 6:49 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Chris,
I agree with your comments and also Vittorio's. It may be useful to post them to the relevant comments page on the ICANN web site.
Patrick Vande Walle
Hi Vittorio, One thing in your e-mail below really stood out to me and I would like to ask you a question. This is a question only and should not be taken as me disagreeing with you. Rather that we, in Nunavut, Canada, are facing a similar problem with an ancient language disappearing and I would like to compare notes with you as an open discussion. The language to which you refer - are only the elderly speaking it or are there any children that regularly use it at home and at play? Here's why I ask: In Nunavut, we have 25 VERY remote communities (total Inuit population of about 26,000). In the smaller communities, I hear the children outside playing and they are speaking to each other in Inuktitut. That means that the language has at least one more generation left. In the capital, though, the children are speaking English. That means that the language is already evaporating there and their children will not be speaking it. To this end, the Department of Education is attempting to make it mandatory that Inuktitut be the language of instruction to at least Grade 5 (with classes in English slowly being introduced as the grade levels increase). This will mean that the language will continue to be a working language and won't die (or so we hope and are leveling best efforts to do). So, if the children in the language that you are discussing have already lost it and there are no efforts at teaching that language, how will having a domain name dedicated to that language help? IMO it will only help a dedicated few because, from what I have seen, the average person just doesn't care. The elders do but the children do not. Again, I ask this to generate discussion because this is an issue very near and dear to my heart (and my regular work) and I would like to hear other's input into it. Thank you, D ________________________________ From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Vittorio Bertola Sent: Fri 11/7/2008 3:43 AM To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. ----- Dear Board of ICANN, as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience. Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board. Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age. A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle. I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures. Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today. The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft? I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible. There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue. In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed. But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility. I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this. Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann... At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>
Darlene, your statement, "IMO it will only help a dedicated few" is plenty of reason to allow someone to operate a tld. ICANN should not be looking for ways to deny someone to operate a tld, but rather ICANN should be facilitating anyone who wants to try. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thompson, Darlene" <DThompson@GOV.NU.CA> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 6:21 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Hi Vittorio, One thing in your e-mail below really stood out to me and I would like to ask you a question. This is a question only and should not be taken as me disagreeing with you. Rather that we, in Nunavut, Canada, are facing a similar problem with an ancient language disappearing and I would like to compare notes with you as an open discussion. The language to which you refer - are only the elderly speaking it or are there any children that regularly use it at home and at play? Here's why I ask: In Nunavut, we have 25 VERY remote communities (total Inuit population of about 26,000). In the smaller communities, I hear the children outside playing and they are speaking to each other in Inuktitut. That means that the language has at least one more generation left. In the capital, though, the children are speaking English. That means that the language is already evaporating there and their children will not be speaking it. To this end, the Department of Education is attempting to make it mandatory that Inuktitut be the language of instruction to at least Grade 5 (with classes in English slowly being introduced as the grade levels increase). This will mean that the language will continue to be a working language and won't die (or so we hope and are leveling best efforts to do). So, if the children in the language that you are discussing have already lost it and there are no efforts at teaching that language, how will having a domain name dedicated to that language help? IMO it will only help a dedicated few because, from what I have seen, the average person just doesn't care. The elders do but the children do not. Again, I ask this to generate discussion because this is an issue very near and dear to my heart (and my regular work) and I would like to hear other's input into it. Thank you, D ________________________________ From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Vittorio Bertola Sent: Fri 11/7/2008 3:43 AM To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. ----- Dear Board of ICANN, as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience. Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board. Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age. A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle. I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures. Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today. The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft? I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible. There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue. In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed. But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility. I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this. Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann... At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Chris, 100% Agreement with your statement and your previous e-mail (and with Vittorio's financial concerns). My question is, "How will this help in language retention?" IMHO it will be of interest to language specialists and, in 20 or so years, to language historians, but how is it going to help the every day person who has lost their language except as passing interest? D ________________________________ From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of NameCritic Sent: Fri 11/7/2008 7:09 AM To: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Darlene, your statement, "IMO it will only help a dedicated few" is plenty of reason to allow someone to operate a tld. ICANN should not be looking for ways to deny someone to operate a tld, but rather ICANN should be facilitating anyone who wants to try. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thompson, Darlene" <DThompson@GOV.NU.CA> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 6:21 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Hi Vittorio, One thing in your e-mail below really stood out to me and I would like to ask you a question. This is a question only and should not be taken as me disagreeing with you. Rather that we, in Nunavut, Canada, are facing a similar problem with an ancient language disappearing and I would like to compare notes with you as an open discussion. The language to which you refer - are only the elderly speaking it or are there any children that regularly use it at home and at play? Here's why I ask: In Nunavut, we have 25 VERY remote communities (total Inuit population of about 26,000). In the smaller communities, I hear the children outside playing and they are speaking to each other in Inuktitut. That means that the language has at least one more generation left. In the capital, though, the children are speaking English. That means that the language is already evaporating there and their children will not be speaking it. To this end, the Department of Education is attempting to make it mandatory that Inuktitut be the language of instruction to at least Grade 5 (with classes in English slowly being introduced as the grade levels increase). This will mean that the language will continue to be a working language and won't die (or so we hope and are leveling best efforts to do). So, if the children in the language that you are discussing have already lost it and there are no efforts at teaching that language, how will having a domain name dedicated to that language help? IMO it will only help a dedicated few because, from what I have seen, the average person just doesn't care. The elders do but the children do not. Again, I ask this to generate discussion because this is an issue very near and dear to my heart (and my regular work) and I would like to hear other's input into it. Thank you, D ________________________________ From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Vittorio Bertola Sent: Fri 11/7/2008 3:43 AM To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. ----- Dear Board of ICANN, as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience. Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board. Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age. A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle. I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures. Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today. The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft? I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible. There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue. In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed. But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility. I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this. Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann... At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/> <http://atlarge.icann.org/> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I understood your question Darlene. It was just a perfect opportunity for me to point out what should be obvious to ICANN. Their philosophy is all screwed up. They are looking for ways to disapprove someone who wants to operate a tld. They are placing unnecessary barriers to doing so. They should be there to help facilitate people who wish to operate a tld, including instructing someone on how to do so properly if necessary. So, Darlene, sorry if I used your post to make this point rather than the one you were trying to make. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thompson, Darlene" <DThompson@GOV.NU.CA> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 7:13 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Chris, 100% Agreement with your statement and your previous e-mail (and with Vittorio's financial concerns). My question is, "How will this help in language retention?" IMHO it will be of interest to language specialists and, in 20 or so years, to language historians, but how is it going to help the every day person who has lost their language except as passing interest? D ________________________________ From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of NameCritic Sent: Fri 11/7/2008 7:09 AM To: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Darlene, your statement, "IMO it will only help a dedicated few" is plenty of reason to allow someone to operate a tld. ICANN should not be looking for ways to deny someone to operate a tld, but rather ICANN should be facilitating anyone who wants to try. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thompson, Darlene" <DThompson@GOV.NU.CA> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 6:21 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Hi Vittorio, One thing in your e-mail below really stood out to me and I would like to ask you a question. This is a question only and should not be taken as me disagreeing with you. Rather that we, in Nunavut, Canada, are facing a similar problem with an ancient language disappearing and I would like to compare notes with you as an open discussion. The language to which you refer - are only the elderly speaking it or are there any children that regularly use it at home and at play? Here's why I ask: In Nunavut, we have 25 VERY remote communities (total Inuit population of about 26,000). In the smaller communities, I hear the children outside playing and they are speaking to each other in Inuktitut. That means that the language has at least one more generation left. In the capital, though, the children are speaking English. That means that the language is already evaporating there and their children will not be speaking it. To this end, the Department of Education is attempting to make it mandatory that Inuktitut be the language of instruction to at least Grade 5 (with classes in English slowly being introduced as the grade levels increase). This will mean that the language will continue to be a working language and won't die (or so we hope and are leveling best efforts to do). So, if the children in the language that you are discussing have already lost it and there are no efforts at teaching that language, how will having a domain name dedicated to that language help? IMO it will only help a dedicated few because, from what I have seen, the average person just doesn't care. The elders do but the children do not. Again, I ask this to generate discussion because this is an issue very near and dear to my heart (and my regular work) and I would like to hear other's input into it. Thank you, D ________________________________ From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Vittorio Bertola Sent: Fri 11/7/2008 3:43 AM To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. ----- Dear Board of ICANN, as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience. Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board. Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age. A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle. I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures. Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today. The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft? I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible. There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue. In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed. But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility. I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this. Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann... At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/> <http://atlarge.icann.org/> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Thompson, Darlene ha scritto:
Hi Vittorio,
One thing in your e-mail below really stood out to me and I would like to ask you a question. This is a question only and should not be taken as me disagreeing with you. Rather that we, in Nunavut, Canada, are facing a similar problem with an ancient language disappearing and I would like to compare notes with you as an open discussion.
The language to which you refer - are only the elderly speaking it or are there any children that regularly use it at home and at play?
I think that the situation is similar to the one that you report, though on a bigger scale. In cities, only people 50-year-old or above usually know and talk the language; they already did not teach it to their children born in the 70s and later. In the mountains and hillsides, however, the language is still common and most young people know it, though they rarely use it. We are talking about a potential speaking base of about 3-4 million people, plus a similar number emigrants in other parts of the world (mainly Argentina) who kept it to a certain extent. But the number of people actually using it in everyday activities is much much smaller. And it's not a single case - there's dozens of similar situations throughout Europe, only in Italy there's at least nine major endangered languages and several minor ones (see http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html if you like - and that's a 15-year-old picture). The problem is that these languages have been dismissed and abandoned throughout the entire 20th century - first in the fascist era, when minority languages different from Italian were considered a threat to nationalism, then in the decades after the second world war, when television unified attitudes and language throughout the country, and when a cultural environment mostly dominated by left-wing thinkers saw these ancient customs as a symbol of the agricultural past and of inequalities. For these reasons, while there is official recognition in certain geographical areas of foreign minority languages (French, German, Slovenian) that are taught at school, there is no recognition of the ancient regional languages of Italy (from Piemonteis to Sicilian), which are not taught at schools nor used in official documents. The biggest problem is that these are mostly oral languages; even if actual literature exists, including poetry and plays, there is no attitude and often no real standard to write these languages down. They are considered to be "a thing of the past", and often associated with the miseries of pre-urban life, and with the ignorance of peasant ancestors. The ones from Northern Italy were also frequently associated with anti-immigration or plainly racist political movements, which didn't help the recognition of their actual cultural value. Now, why would a TLD help? I think that the main issue is that these languages are dying because people underestimate their importance. They do not bother to use them or to teach them to children, because of this perception of something useless, a relic from the past, and also something funny and worthless. People do not feel attached to them, paradoxically because they do not realize that they exist and are in danger: certain ways of saying and of speaking have been always part of the local culture, so that people do not even notice that they are using them (actually, most Italians can easily tell that I am from Turin when I speak Italian, from certain grammatical constructs, pronounciations or uses of verbs that are literal translations of ones from Piemonteis, and that no proper Italian speaker would use). However, the more our world becomes global, the more our roots become important - in a globalized culture, it is this kind of ancient roots that gives you an identity amidst people with other roots living with you. A TLD, in my opinion, could be an effective wake up call - a way to boost the sense of identity and create interest around this cultural heritage: "if they create a set of Internet addresses for this culture, there must be some value in it". And it could be a call in the right direction, that is, transform this culture from oral to written and from analog to digital, and make material available for preservation online. Then, I don't know - maybe it isn't. But it's always better than just sit down and watch it die. Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Just a quick addition to the comprehensive post of Vittorio. In Italy we have also other languages, like Furlan, spoken in the North-East, that, while not taught is schools or recognized officially in the administration, have an entry in the ISO table of languages. Also, the different treatment of the populations who speak French, German or Slovenian vs. those who speak Piemonteis, Furlan, and others, is that the former communities had a sovereign country to back up the population, and it became therefore a matter for international treaties, while the latter were left at the mercy of the Italian Government, who could decide alone, without any challenger. Cheers, Roberto
-----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Vittorio Bertola Sent: Saturday, 08 November 2008 16:22 To: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] My comments on new gTLDs and the role of ICANN
Thompson, Darlene ha scritto:
Hi Vittorio,
One thing in your e-mail below really stood out to me and I would like to ask you a question. This is a question only and should not be taken as me disagreeing with you. Rather that we, in Nunavut, Canada, are facing a similar problem with an ancient language disappearing and I would like to compare notes with you as an open discussion.
The language to which you refer - are only the elderly speaking it or are there any children that regularly use it at home and at play?
I think that the situation is similar to the one that you report, though on a bigger scale. In cities, only people 50-year-old or above usually know and talk the language; they already did not teach it to their children born in the 70s and later. In the mountains and hillsides, however, the language is still common and most young people know it, though they rarely use it.
We are talking about a potential speaking base of about 3-4 million people, plus a similar number emigrants in other parts of the world (mainly Argentina) who kept it to a certain extent. But the number of people actually using it in everyday activities is much much smaller.
And it's not a single case - there's dozens of similar situations throughout Europe, only in Italy there's at least nine major endangered languages and several minor ones (see http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html if you like - and that's a 15-year-old picture).
The problem is that these languages have been dismissed and abandoned throughout the entire 20th century - first in the fascist era, when minority languages different from Italian were considered a threat to nationalism, then in the decades after the second world war, when television unified attitudes and language throughout the country, and when a cultural environment mostly dominated by left-wing thinkers saw these ancient customs as a symbol of the agricultural past and of inequalities.
For these reasons, while there is official recognition in certain geographical areas of foreign minority languages (French, German, Slovenian) that are taught at school, there is no recognition of the ancient regional languages of Italy (from Piemonteis to Sicilian), which are not taught at schools nor used in official documents.
The biggest problem is that these are mostly oral languages; even if actual literature exists, including poetry and plays, there is no attitude and often no real standard to write these languages down. They are considered to be "a thing of the past", and often associated with the miseries of pre-urban life, and with the ignorance of peasant ancestors. The ones from Northern Italy were also frequently associated with anti-immigration or plainly racist political movements, which didn't help the recognition of their actual cultural value.
Now, why would a TLD help?
I think that the main issue is that these languages are dying because people underestimate their importance. They do not bother to use them or to teach them to children, because of this perception of something useless, a relic from the past, and also something funny and worthless.
People do not feel attached to them, paradoxically because they do not realize that they exist and are in danger: certain ways of saying and of speaking have been always part of the local culture, so that people do not even notice that they are using them (actually, most Italians can easily tell that I am from Turin when I speak Italian, from certain grammatical constructs, pronounciations or uses of verbs that are literal translations of ones from Piemonteis, and that no proper Italian speaker would use).
However, the more our world becomes global, the more our roots become important - in a globalized culture, it is this kind of ancient roots that gives you an identity amidst people with other roots living with you.
A TLD, in my opinion, could be an effective wake up call - a way to boost the sense of identity and create interest around this cultural heritage: "if they create a set of Internet addresses for this culture, there must be some value in it". And it could be a call in the right direction, that is, transform this culture from oral to written and from analog to digital, and make material available for preservation online.
Then, I don't know - maybe it isn't. But it's always better than just sit down and watch it die.
Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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At 14:19 09/11/2008, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Just a quick addition to the comprehensive post of Vittorio. In Italy we have also other languages, like Furlan, spoken in the North-East, that, while not taught is schools or recognized officially in the administration, have an entry in the ISO table of languages. Also, the different treatment of the populations who speak French, German or Slovenian vs. those who speak Piemonteis, Furlan, and others, is that the former communities had a sovereign country to back up the population, and it became therefore a matter for international treaties, while the latter were left at the mercy of the Italian Government, who could decide alone, without any challenger.
Roberto, there is an European Commissary to Multilingualism and an international standardisation organisation (ISO), dealing with language compilation at government level, where ICANN belong (ISO 3166). Its extensions on a local level are at work. France for example has 26 "Langues de France" we want to protect. Europe has scores of languages to be developped on the Internet. This is probably the most crucial issue today for the world, Internet and development stability: internationalisation (the support of languages as a localisation of an internationalised Internet) vs. multilingualisation (the support of every script and language as English ASCII today, you can also define as a localised internationalisation). It is crucial because a proper multilingual Internet calls for a complete Internet, able to support multilaterality in many other areas (i.e. the missing OSI layers) and the semantic strata. The recent ITU Chair's position look is simple to read: either IETF develops the multilateral network systemic we need, or the ITU will do it. I am afraid this is very bad new, but very realistic. The real constraints are : - the US Industry interest in rationalising the Internet languistic support (RFC 4645, 4646 and 4647 about language tags, language tags filtering, etc. and their dangers) and limiting them to 150 through locale files support and Search Engines. - the IETF lack of vision in similarly rationalizing IDNs (where Search Engine people are the leaders). - the "Internet of the Rich" now promoted by ICANN - the control of the IANA as the control of the Internet Governance. FLO efforts for the "People Internet" have : (0) engaged into a two year community test-bed conforming with ICANN-ICP-3 requirements over the virtual root and DNS issues, making sure that the IANA is not the core of a distributed (i.e. multilateral) Internet and not worth the attention ICANN and Unicode pay to it. (1) fought to made these RFCs clear enough to be interoperable with other open solutions (2) blocked an Anglo-Saxon Govs supported (UK, IE, US) proposition to "rationalize" the ISO 3166 standard which protects multilingualism (3) taken over the maintenance of the only existing database of more than 20.000 language names and related information which was used in part by ISO for its delayed exhaustive standard (4) introduced the ccTAG multilingual sorting solution (5) different universal fount systems under achievement to permit a secure (police, banks, customs, databases) universal character system (6) are trying to fix with IESG and IAB a formal way to permit a participation of the Internet lead users into the Internet standardization process so an IDNA interoperable and semantic addressing oriented ML-DNS can be documented. (7) started a project to collect, maintain and support new information, communication and services technologies multilingual glossary (8) initiated multilniguistics as the concept of a discipline supporting the diversity of the languages, independently from the languages themselves. With a first meeting in Paris last June (Multilinguistica 2008). (9) work on a simple TLD Registry management system for current ccTLDs and cominng gcTLDs (geocultural) to be easily deployed and maintained by a single person under Windows or Linux. (10) etc. (and as you know there are big political things in this etc. ). jfc
Vitorio - i don't know if i can publish to the atlarge so i'll follow up on the ga. If you have a TLD in mind - make it operational and announce the glue. Also get yourself marketed in your community. You don't need ICANN to run a TLD. You need to run a root for your community. If you have the means to get your community marketing the TLD - you can easily take over root service in the communities sharing the tld. Just remember to protect your rights. ICANN has been know to steal popular tlds. Anybody for a list .BIZ? regards joe baptista On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 3:43 AM, Vittorio Bertola <vb@bertola.eu> wrote:
Since yesterday I could not make my comments at the Public Forum, I sent them by email to the Board, and I am publishing them here. -----
Dear Board of ICANN,
as I was standing in line yesterday morning in the Public Forum, but due to prior commitments was not able to attend the "ad hoc" afternoon session to express my views, I am sending them directly to the Board, copying the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and ALAC Liaison so that at least one of them can forward my message to the Board list, and I will publish them somewhere for yesterday's audience.
Before I get to my point of substance... I guess that several people already expressed their discomfort for what happened yesterday. However, please let me reiterate that the Public Forum, where the community and the Board discuss in plenary mode about the main topics of the moment, is one of the most fundamental elements of ICANN's legitimacy and accountability. Everyone knew since the beginning that at this meeting the Public Forum would have been crowded and well attended, and the decision to allot just one hour for it, then letting VIP speeches eat even more into it, is a terrible mistake. I urge the Board to make sure that there is ample time for Public Forums at every ICANN meeting - given that this situation happens often, I see a need for clear directions to staff by the Board.
Now - I would like to comment as a wannabe applicant for a gTLD application which may or may not materialize, but that constitutes a good proof for the remaining flaws in an otherwise well thought-out draft RFP. Its main purpose is to save an ancient language and culture which have been existing in my part of Italy for about a thousand years, but which will disappear forever in twenty years or so, together with the elderly people that still embrace them, unless we can succeed in transitioning them to the Internet age.
A small group of volunteers has been working pro bono for years to create online resources in this language - including, for example, a Wikipedia edition. The existence of a gTLD specifically devoted to that culture and language would make in our opinion a huge difference. It would boost the sense of identity and community, and provide a visible home to gather all efforts. However, this will clearly not be a business opportunity - it is imaginable that initially the gTLD would have just a few dozen registrations, which we would gladly give away for free through a non-profit vehicle.
I think that what we would like to do is a deserving purpose, at least as good as yet another dot com clone, and possibly better than the abundant defensive registrations of any kind that we will see. To run a TLD with such a few registrations, there is no need for big staff and huge server farms - in fact, we are confident that we could get all the time, skills and technical resources as volunteer work and in-kind donations. However, even if we succeeded in this, we would still be facing an impossible task to raise $185'000 now and $75'000 each year just to pay ICANN fees, and we would likely score very badly against operational and financial criteria designed for multimillionaire global ventures.
Yet, if you think that what we are trying to do is obsolete, amateurish or unimportant, please think again. This is the way all ccTLDs and gTLDs started prior to the ICANN era, and most of them have become pretty successful by now; actually, the only ones going for bankruptcy lie among those picked by ICANN through its carefully drafted RFP processes. This is actually the way almost every innovation happens over the Internet, still today.
The Web? It wasn't invented by CERN, it was invented at CERN, by a couple of individuals, in their spare time, as a byproduct of their real job. Instant messaging? Peer to peer? Even innovations that overturned billionaire industries were invented by one or a few individuals with no money at all, or at most by small garage startups. What would happen to innovation if the IETF required $185'000 to submit a new Internet draft?
I understand that there are costs attached to the establishment of a new TLD, though $185'000 per application, even in an expensive country like Italy, is enough to hire five or six people for one year for each application, and one wonders why do you need all that work; and $75'000 per year to keep a TLD in the root, where the work required in the absence of special events is literally zero, is plainly ridiculous. However, if you want to extract money from rich applicants going for remunerative global TLDs, or from big corporations with deep pockets trying to protect their brand, that's fine; but please don't make other uses impossible.
There are several pricing structures that could address this issue: special prices for non-profit applicants, lower fees for TLDs that don't reach a minimum number of registrations, or panels in cooperation with appropriate organizations (say, UNESCO) to "bless" applications that have specific cultural or technological value. Several people have promised to submit practicable proposals in the next few weeks. But it is paramount that ICANN doesn't sell out the domain name space without putting in place features to address this issue.
In the end, while applicants will be judged by the RFP, ICANN will be judged by the overall set of TLDs that it will add into the root. It may get 500 or more of them, but if 90% of them will be private corporate registrations, and the rest will be dot com clones with some kind of vague specialization, ICANN will have failed.
But, looking also at other aspects, I am also afraid that the failure might end up being much deeper. ICANN is becoming a well managed business entity, through increased staffing and the introduction of corporate best practices. However, ICANN is not just a business entity - it is a strange beast with much more than that into it. What is optimal for a business corporation might actually make parts of the community feel not at home any more; and might make ICANN lose touch with its roots, with the nature and spirit of the Internet. If this happens, ICANN is doomed - all the governmental deals and business partnerships won't be enough to preserve its prestige and credibility.
I see as one of the primary strategic roles of the Board that of ensuring that the decentralized, flat and free nature of the Internet is preserved, or at least not attacked, by the policies that ICANN adopts, and even that these policies contribute to, or at least do not stifle, the fulfillment of Millennium Development Goals and other worthy objectives in terms of development and human rights. These are not just high sounding words, they carry a meaning that must trickle down into everything ICANN does when it comes to policies. When you are tasked with a fundamental role in coordinating the Internet, there's more to life than business as usual. Please do not forget this.
Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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participants (8)
-
Jacqueline A. Morris -
JFC Morfin -
Joe Baptista -
NameCritic -
Patrick Vande Walle -
Roberto Gaetano -
Thompson, Darlene -
Vittorio Bertola