I've filters for the na-discuss traffic. I skip the writings of Evan Leibovitch, Carlton Samuels, and Darlene Thompson, which I don't expect comes as a surprise to everyone. Because this was quoted in RJ Glass' post, I saw it. I think it worth comment.
I find myself treating current At-Large approach to the gTLD expansion as an exercise in damage mitigation.
This was not the purpose for which people then associated with At Large, myself included, worked to ensure that the public interest, not restricted to the interests of governments, would have standing to participate in the implementation of the policy defined, in part, in the evolving Draft Applicant Guidebook of the past five years, and at this stage of the implementation process, object to those applications for which a public interest harm is manifest, using what standing to object had been conceded to "At Large" by an indifferently or worse lead Staff, the narrow self interests of the Contracted Parties, and the equally narrow self interests of the remaining primary actors of the GNSO -- the IPC and its captured Constituencies.
My cynicism has strangely led to indifference about the appropriateness of most specific applications,
The author of this remark can cure his cynicism and indifference and carry out the task for which the author "volunteered", displacing others neither cynical nor indifferent, or withdraw and allow others not sharing the strangely linked cynicism and indifference to attempt to carry out the policy for which so much effort by so many was expended.
as I sincerely think that most TLDs will crash and burn anyway.
This is beside the point. Further, as pure, standalone business operations, all of the 2000 round applications failed or found external sources of revenues, as did all of the 2004 round applications, with the single exception of .cat, which was profitable in the 2nd quarter of operations and remains so to the present. NeuStar (.biz/.us) was saved by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator contract revenues ($.01/call terminated in country code "1"), Afilias (.info) was saved by the .org redelgation and legacy revenue. Gier's adventure (.name) failed and was acquired by Verisign, and the .pro mess never even took off. The 2004 recital is no prettier. With external revenues, the minority of 2000 and 2004 round applicants that have survived to cost recovery capable revenues took more than five years to achieve it. Even accepting the "most will fail" conceit, the application of the policy developed for FailOver is not something that should be walked away from. Further, each round is a learning experience, not necessarily for the applicants, many of whom from 2000 and 2004 are defunct, and not necessarily for the Corporation Staff, as the last managerial experience purged much of the 2004 and 2000 round corporate memory, and not necessarily for the Corporation itself, as its tenure is not necessarily indefinite, but for the policy development record, for learning what can, and cannot be done, with the mnemonic-string-to-resource association, and the business models that succeed, and the business models that fail, in the larger environment of settlement-free peering, advertizer pays, trademark primacy, and service-for-fee in a network with no other anchored source of address block or name delegation, and a vast and as yet unpolicied amount of criminal purposing of universal access.
Many, many registrants will be hurt along the way, many of them domainers for whom I have zero sympathy. But what can we do along the way to minimize harm to end users, knowing we can't reopen the present gTLD creation process?
We, assuming that word actually means something, can exercise the current stage of the Dengate-Thrush management period generated process (Rod was just along for the ride and of no consequence) and implemement the process available to "us" to the best of "our" abilities during the Fadi Chehade management period. To minimize the harm to end users we can sure that applicants know that they are required to implement the commitments made in their applications, and that the Corporation knows that it will be the recipient of published advice concerning the public interest, so the process is policied, by the better Staff and the better members of the Board, and the GAC, and the SSAC and RSAC, and yes even by the ALAC, and not by some subset of those, less the ALAC. Doing less than that is surely not going to more effectively minimize the harm to end users. I ran against Evan Leibovitch for a policy role in the last NARALO election because he does not speak for me. Eric Brunner-Williams