On 31 March 2011 13:52, Richard Tindal <richardtindal@me.com> wrote:
You don't see this as a major problem for deferred applicants, whereas I think it would be very harmful to some applicants (and their prospective users).
Whether I see this (deferral) as a major problem for applicants is fairly irrelevant. This is At-Large, after all, which exists to protect the interests of end-users of the Internet who, by and large, are not even registrants. They're not even part of the ICANN food chain. I care more about harm to end users than I care about harm to applicants. And end user concerns are VERY, VERY different. So basing any argument here about You have not demonstrated (sufficiently to me, at least) that end users are harmed by delay. Not registrants, end users. Is there ANY instance that one could name in which the public has been deprived of original Internet content because of limitations of the existing namespace? It is interesting to note Antony's chronology, and the observation that as ALAC has grown more democratic and less appointed, it has cooled to the gTLD hysteria about gTLDs shared by ICANN's more-vested interests. Correlation does not necessarily infer causality, but I do think there's a definite connection here. The more At-Large reflects the Internet end user, and the more that the end user community knows about ICANN, the less it cares about the panic rush for more TLDs. The only exception to this is the IDN fast track for ccTLDs, which did have end-user demand (and my full support). - Evan