On 7/9/07, Danny Younger <dannyyounger@yahoo.com> wrote:

On 3 July the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a
Request for Quote (RFQ) pertaining to the
administration of the .us TLD.

The language of the RFQ conveys the sense that there
is but a single stakeholder in the .us namespace, and
that sole stakeholder is the U.S. government.  The RFQ
makes it clear that USG alone sets the policy for .us
-- an example follows:

"The Contractor shall implement a process for
accrediting registrars to register names in the
expanded usTLD.  Such process shall include a contract
with each accredited registrar
prohibiting proxy and anonymous registration
services."

The situation is particularly troubling in view of the
fact that the current administrator of the namespace
saw the dissolution of the .US Policy Council over
four years ago.  In all that time, the .us TLD hasn't
even enjoyed the pretense of community-based policy
input.

This heavy-handedness on the part of the U.S.
government is part of the reason for the
embarrassingly poor uptake of the .us TLD that
languishes with just a little more than 1 million
registrations (by comparison Nominet has just reported
it's six millionth registration in .uk).

The .us privacy policies are repressive, the kids.us
namespace has a mere 20 active websites, thousands of
locality-based delegated managers remain unknown to
the current TLD manager, and community-based policy
guidance has disappeared.  This sad state of affairs
requires an intervention from the American community
that should be insisting on a formal public comment
period concurrent with the RFQ.

The RFQ may be read here:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/vendors/usTLD_RFQ_070707.pdf

I would recommend that each American on this list
consider the values offered by CIRA's policy and
privacy approach in .ca, and commit to writing to the
U.S. DOC to advocate for a saner approach to the
management of .us

The DOC contact address follows:

Kalika Boulware, Contract Specialist at kalika.m.boulware[at]noaa.gov.

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