I have taken the liberty to forward the following from the discussion thread on the NARALO list to highlight my colleague Evan Leibovitch's thoughtful intervention to two previous posts; I have reformatted the content for readibility. The thread is longer...and maybe this will challenge understanding but...... Carlton ============================== On 7 September 2011 13:31, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> responding to <Joly McFie> wrote:
I take it a large proportion of the multistakeholders, the gnso, and the ICANN board, 7 years of process etc, are all as wrong as Milton, are similarly not worth the time.
Yes, of course they are all wrong. As I've said before, ICANN is about as egregious an example of weak leadership and regulatory capture as can be imagined.
But to more pertinent questions, do you not agree that, as TLDs proliferate 1) while many will be unimportant, that some - like for instance .asia which allows trans-regional commercial identity - are going to significantly forward human progress, 2) that "protection racket" schemes will founder as the public becomes more sophisticated, major marks move to .brands, and the URS becomes a familiar process. 3) that the precise reason that the multistakeholder process was initiated in the first place was to avoid EC style shenanigans of the type Milton describes?
No, I do not agree with any of those. That was easy, wasn't it?
R's, John ------
Message: 3 Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 15:52:08 -0400 From: Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] FW: The European Commission Papers on ICANN To: "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi folks. I respect the views of both John and Joly and am somewhat distressed to see them talking at each other rather than to each other. The more time I spend in ICANN At-Large, the more I believe it to be captured in the manner John describes. His cynicism is well-deserved. The pushback against public-interest concerns such as reduced gTLD fees in developing countries and reliable WHOIS date is, to say the least, astonishing. The vitriol launched against Knujon's research and the subsequent personal attacks against its principals have me absolutely convinced that the Bruens are onto something, and touching a very raw nerve. And the funding of registrar outreach events while starving of At-Large ones speaks for itself. ICANN's commitment its the vaunted multi-stakeholder model ebbs and flows depending on the politics of the moment. The fact that the ICANN Board has rejected or ignored every single initiative of At-Large (save for the Summit whose policy recommendations were themselves ALL rejected or ignored) belittles its claim to represent the broader community. Yes, we've been told, At-Large has made tremendous strides. We're respected. We elect someone directly to the Board. Bully for us. Yet the public interest routinely gets trashed in favour of the interests of the domain industry. (Something as seemingly no-brainer as eliminating domain tasting was needlessly drawn out.) And now the governments of the world have woken up to that fact -- thanks to grotesque arrogance of ICANN and its patrons in earlier policy stages -- such that the resulting (and legitimate) debate is whether the cure will be worse than the disease. ICANN has separate sets of openness rules for its contracted parties and everyone else, as At-Large has found when trying to send representatives to ICANN-organized "technical" meetings with registrars. Having said all that, I am still here, not yet having declared my efforts here a waste of time. But I've come close. I *like* to think that ICANN, seeing the oncoming threats from governments, will see "multi-stakeholder" as something else than the "50% domain industry, 50% everyone else" formula which describes the current GNSO. But if that happens it will be a massive change of momentum. Even though the GNSO just came through a major restructuring -- in which the domain industry had far too much influence -- I expect another one is in the cards if ICANN doesn't want its industry capture replaced by government capture. But I also see Joly's points. The namespace needs some new TLDs, if only to relieve (but not correct) a problem of ICANN's own making -- a wild west environment in which having as many names as possible out there is more important than only having names useful to those who are actually looking for or providing Internet content. A few new TLDs, properly marketed, may help remove perception of dot-com as the must-go-to place. It might, but it might just as easily not. And then there are the many communities who think they can duplicate the success of dot-cat. Most are in for a nasty surprise, but some will also survive and maybe even thrive. More depends on the dynamics of the communities themselves than whether the TLD was well-conceived. But some of the efforts are so bad they're unintentionally hilarious< http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=wkvqrzcab&v=001hS7OD_Ihnl...
, some are just merely bad, and some are just sad. Every time Tom Lowenhaupt comes on this list to talk up dot-nyc I practically want to cry for him; the more he promotes it, the less viable it seems to be. Still, I guess they have the right to try, but how much pain will the public go through dealing with both the flood and the subsequent contraction? I'm just glad I'm not one of the ones funding any of them, and I myself would fight strongly against using my municipal tax money for, say, dot-toronto.
Yes, the process is massively tilted in favour of the domain industry, and the interest of Internet content suppliers and consumers is only indirectly (if ever) considered. The existing domain industry -- registry providers, consultants, registrars and speculators -- stands to make an awful lot of money from investors and communities, most of whom are going to endure a financial evisceration not seen since .... dot-travel. Having said that, while a few new gTLDs are needed we will get far more than we need -- to the disgust of information suppliers and consumers but the delight of the domain industry. John is right that the dam has burst, but Joly is also right that we still need to put up some levees. Personally, I am undecided whether governments could be a worse steward of the name system than the domain industry -- through its proxy, ICANN -- has been so far. One way or the other, the status quo will change. I can hope that the ICANN Board sees what's coming, but history has not offered much optimism. This board can't even manage its own staff. Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56
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