It's still technically inaccurate, in many places too, such as confusing third-level domains with ports and protocols: "The 'www.' part identifies to your browser that you are interested in the World Wide Web interface for that domain name." No, it indicates that someone chose to name a server (or round-robin cluster of servers) "www." The "http://" or browser defaults tells your browser to speak Hypertext Transfer Protocol on the standard port when communicating with those servers. As in the past, I would oppose any association of ALAC with this guide. If others want to put out a promo advertisement for a subset of gTLDs, let them do so with their own budget. --Wendy Danny Younger wrote:
Once again ICANN Staff is disregarding ALAC member comments. In a note posted to the ALAC list -- see http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009/0... -- we are once again presented with what used to be Miriam Sapiro's "Guide to Domain Names" that has now been re-branded as the "At-Large Guide to gTLDs".
A bevy of original comments in November of 2006 called for this document to include ccTLD materials. Those suggestions, and even those of director Gaetano who asked for a comprehensive guide, (that for ccTLDs will have a complete list of contact information - something like http://www.iana.org/root-whois/index.html) have been totally ignored by Staff.
While we can all appreciate the "suggestions" originally put forth by NIck Ashton Hart, namely: 1) decide that a subsequent guide will address ccTLDs, but that this one will only address gTLDs. 2) ensure the name is changed to "A Guide to Generic Top-Level Domain Names" 3) add a preamble noting that the guide focuses only on gTLDs and there are 250 country code tld's and these will be addressed in an upcoming "A Guide to Country Code Top-Level Domain Names"
....these suggestions were never agreed to by any of the folk that discussed the original "Guide to Domain Names". In fact, Vittorio Bertola quite clearly stated: "I would not be happy at all by having the ALAC name on anything that might look like (ICANN-paid) advertising for gTLDs over ccTLDs".
In the interest of transparency, perhaps Staff would be good enough to tell us (1) just how much money was expended so far on this work-product of an outside consultant and how much more money they intend to spend on this project; (2) why all members comments pointing to the need to necessarily include ccTLD information within the document were ignored/rejected by ICANN Staff.
Speaking for myself, I'm getting more than a little sick of Staff drafting ALAC statements and putting out documents in the name of the ALAC.
-- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org Fellow, Silicon Flatirons Center at University of Colorado Law School Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.torproject.org/