On 4/3/11 8:53 AM, Jean Armour Polly wrote:
But if someone wants to enter that marketplace, and has a technical plan that won't screw up everyone else, why not?
When Jon selected iso3166 as the means to allocate portions of the task then anticipated to fail to scale as the price for network adapters dropped, the access limitations to iso3166 code points were known. On one occasion that limit has been worked around, allowing a delegation that presented no immediate scale issue, the delegation for the attached-device poor Palestine. On one other occasion that limit has also been worked around, allowing a delegation that presented an immediate scale issue, the delegation for the attached-device rich European Union. What I am pointing out here in this note is that the "if someone" construct appears to assume an equity of condition, a blank slate, a virgin wilderness, to employ a familiar meme, awaiting settlement. However, we know that nearly all of the iso3166 entries did not then, and do not now, meaningfully contribute to a solution to a scaling problem caused by the decreased cost of network adapters. The labor intensive "by-Jon's-hand" editing of the top-level domains of that period has been replaced by orders of magnitude less labor intensive tools for the top-level domains of the present, and on the order of 100 of the 322 in fact are still managed by means Jon would find familiar, and tedious, improved only by the infrequency of having to add names to those zones. Further, we know that many social identities held in common by demographics larger than the populations of the bottom third of the countries and territories allocated iso3166 code points do not have, and cannot ever have, iso3166 code points allocated for their use under the allocation rule of the iso3166 Maintenance Agency. The indigenous populations of the Americas are utterly excluded. Kurds, as regional minorities, or as a transnational peoples, are as well. Basques, as an autonomous government within a nation state are as well. Migratory peoples, expatriated populations, and displaced populations are as well. Additionally, the scripts selected under the ccTLD IDN FastTrack of necessity exclude adaptations of Latin script by non-Latin language communities, and of an additional necessity select only one script where two or more scripts are used by governments allocated iso3166 code points, and of an additional necessity exclude all scripts not used by a government, and of further necessity, restrict the management of top-level domains in non-Latin scripts to governments allocated iso3166 code points. Arabic script, as a transnational script shared by 22 iso3166 allocated code point governments, is utterly excluded, except as a second form of one or more of the 22 existing ccTLDs, with their respective restrictions. The same fact situation exists for Han script, used widely in East Asia, and Cyrillic script, used widely in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. I suggest that a queue exists, and serving that queue is in the public interest. Jon and I discussed 3166 at the time of its adoption. I expect that had we both set aside our respective political concerns, his with Ira Magaziner and mine with the rights of Tribal Governments in at the end of the Termination Period, we could have agreed that the better choice, the hot spot on the Internet growth map, was cities, not nation states, as that is where the machines were, and are. Eric