Hi, One of the fundamental points about the ALAC position, and one can assume the At-Large position, is that they do not mind a delay in the start of the new gTLD program. In fact they* have specifically declared that they favor delaying the program until the issues are fixed. I expect the agree with the GAC on this issue. This has been one of the biggest difference in the difference between the NCSG and ALAC. Additionally there is a difference between the NCUC/NCSG and ALAC on the Trademark issues, though NPOC (the candidate constituency) would probably agree with ALAC on this set of issues. The NCSG has not specifically taken a position on categories to my knowledge, but I believe would come out against them primarily because they would delay things. Some of us, myself included, think that categories are an emerging property that we will be able understand after the round and one that can be applied for future rounds. but for now it is only a muddle. a. * I say they, but i am actually a member of several ALS's and thus part of the 'they'. As far as I can tell, decision making doesn't come as low as that in the in the At-large organization - though we do have democratically elected representatives (i don't consider myself as having any decision making in the US gov't either even though I get to vote for representatives there too.) On 29 Mar 2011, at 18:31, Richard Tindal wrote:

no problem. i was hoping someone could address the substance of the question, rather than who's asking it.

Does general ALAC membership understand that a recommendation to numerically limit the first round would substantially delay approval of the Applicant Guidebook? I'm interested to know if this point is well understood.

Thanks

Richard

On Mar 29, 2011, at 11:20 AM, Beau Brendler wrote:

...

My apologies, Richard Tindal's LinkedIn profile says he was VP of registry services/sales and marketing for Neustar, which is a member of the registry constituency, until 2008, and now is SVP at DemandMedia, which recently purchased eNom, so I apologize for that error, and perhaps his current CV on LinkedIn is not up to date.

However, one of Antony Van Couvering's companies, Minds + Machines, markets its consulting services as "covering every aspect of the TLD business. Our flexible, low-cost domain name registry technology is the most widely-deployed on the planet." (http://www.mindsandmachines.com/about/)

According to the Registry Constituency Charter, "The primary role of the RySG is to represent the interests of all gTLD registry operators (or sponsors in the case of sponsored gTLDs) (“Registries”) (i) that are currently under contract with ICANN to provide gTLD registry services in support of one or more gTLDs; (ii) who agree to be bound by consensus policies in that contract; and (iii) who voluntarily choose to be members of the RySG."

According to Minds + Machines' 2009 lawsuit against the celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck and his wife (http://www.newmanlaw.com/download/puck/1.pdf), Minds + Machines "is currently working with clients and business partners to secure and operate Internet domain name registries for .eco, .basketball, .nyc, .sfo, .radio, .zulu and .love," and, apparently, formerly with Mr. and Mrs. Puck, .food.

Under those circumstances, it is difficult for me to see how Minds + Machines would not fit the registry constituency's criteria, but I am not a party to its proceedings and it is not for me to speculate. This is perhaps a matter best addressed by Antony directly with that constituency, or with the ICANN ombudsman.

NARALO's operating principle 17 says that to register as an unaffiliated member, one should "send a short Statement of Interest (SOI) to staff at atlarge.icann.org indicating that you meet the requirements for Unaffiliated Members: * be subscribed to the NA-Discuss list, * be a permanent resident of one of the countries/territories in the NorthAmerican region as defined by ICANN, * not be a member of a certified ALS."

In addition to that, the Unaffiliated Member Representative "must not be employed or contracted by, or have substantive financial interest in, an ICANN contracted registry or accredited registrar," though neither Richard nor Antony have applied for that role.

However, in San Francisco, when we broadly and publicly invited participation of individuals, we said the requirements basically mirrored the requirements for at-large structures, which are:

* Professional societies (e.g. engineers, attorneys, etc.) * Academic and research organizations * Community networking groups * Consumer advocacy groups * Internet Society chapters * Computer user organizations * Internet civil society groups

I reiterate that we have a limited amount of time as volunteers in at-large, and that it ought best be spent working with Internet end-users, and that at the policy-making level we should not be concerned with holding ourselves accountable to registries and their representatives.

-----Original Message-----

...

From: Avri Doria <avri@ella.com> Sent: Mar 29, 2011 3:38 PM To: NARALO Discussion List <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Fwd: Edits and comments to NARALO/ALAC position statement on GAC scorecard

Hi,

But i thought that AT Large, and especially NARALO individual membership, were open to all users, whether business on not. And that in the At-large, profit was not a bad word.

And as they have argued, the GNSO has no place for them, since they are neither Registries nor Registrars the can't join the Contracted Parties House - they don't have a contract and if the forces of delay have their way will never have a contract.

As they are not non-commercial actors they can't join the NCSG, and as the CSG does not accept individuals, they cannot join the CSG. So the only home for them is At-Large which is supposed to take all users no matter what their other concerns. I assume they use the Internet and are subject to the vagaries of URL and domain names just like other users so I can see no barrier to their participation - if they wish to ally themselves with At-large.

Or do they need to join a friendly ISOC chapter to be qualified? I understand a number of them are open.

a.

On 29 Mar 2011, at 12:34, Beau Brendler wrote:

...

In answer to the second part of Avri's question: With all due respect for Antony and Richard, both are CEO/executive-level at for-profit registries and engaged in business development for their companies. Registries are amply represented by other constituencies in ICANN. They hardly need NARALO to get their points across as "individual Internet users."

I would go so far to suggest that NARALO and ALAC spend their valuable volunteer time engaging and working with the user community to make sure its point of view, which is not tied to corporate profits, is heard, and let registry and registrar executives use the significant, well-established ICANN venues for their agendas.

-----Original Message-----

...

From: Avri Doria <avri@ella.com> Sent: Mar 26, 2011 5:11 PM To: NARALO Discussion List <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Fwd: Edits and comments to NARALO/ALAC position statement on GAC scorecard

Hi,

does this meant the RALO's will do a quick vote on the ALAC scorecard position? Or will an ALAC vote be enough. Or is the sort of this that the ExecutiveCommittee can take care of?

Also, couldn't either of the two gentleman join their respective RALO as individuals even if they had the opportunity to be observers in a GNSO constituency?

with kind regards, a.

On 26 Mar 2011, at 14:13, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

...

In the meantime, let's first see if there's even interest in principle about any of the "impossible" things we're asking for before sinking substantial volunteer time into the details.

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

Hi, As far as I know NCUC has not taken a specific position on city names or any other specific TLD or TLD types. I also expect that every potential applicant for a community TLD hates the AG point system, it is rather odious to everyone and few will pass I warrant, and imagine that they all could recommend something special that would work better for their application than for some other application. But it has survived the gauntlet of community opinion, and while in the best of all possible worlds, we could hope for something better (I myself have sent in comments arguing against aspects of the process) this is not the best of all possible worlds and will never be. When the program was first designed we knew that it could not be perfect from every perspective and that there would be learning for the following rounds. We can spend the rest of eternity trying to get the perfect application process that will please everyone and even by the end of days, we will not have succeeded. I trust the Board to find the right balance to make sure that it is a good process. a. On 29 Mar 2011, at 21:00, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

...

One of the fundamental points about the ALAC position, and one can assume the At-Large position, is that they do not mind a delay in the start of the new gTLD program.

Speaking personally, prior to the Cartagena meeting I wrote Heather Dryden and Peter Dengate Thrush on one point in their exchange of notes in September and November -- city names -- and took the opportunity of being able to speak with Heather personally, as well as the GAC delegates with the issue responsibility. That letter is attached should anyone feel compelled to read it.

That Friday when the Board declined to vote to approve DAGv5 as-is, I was in fact pleased that the opportunity to develop policy concerning city names had not been overcome by events.

To pick an example already used in this thread, I think the choice of the DOITT as the applicant for .nyc is a better choice than the outcome of an auction for .nyc, and while a DOITT application for .nyc could be brought as a Community-Based application, and could be crafted to meet the 14/16 requirement to prevail over all other applications, except those Community-Based applications brought by other other parties, perhaps a New York City based public interest organization not affiliated with the City's executive, in general, the name resources of non-capital municipalities is not something to allocate by private auction, nor is ICANN the proper beneficiary of the "market value" of the name resources of non-capital municipalities.

I'm not suggesting what the NCUC's position is on the disposition of the name resources of urban agglomerations, as I don't actually know what position the NCUC currently holds on this, or any policy question.

Eric <letter-to-peter-and-heather-re-city-names.pdf>------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

Eric, As the AG batch limit is already 500 I think the ALAC paper is saying it should be less than that. A number hasnt been proposed but I assume it would be a fairly low number (e.g. 100 or less applications ). My point is that if we have 150 potential applicants then we need a mechanism for deciding which 100 proceed and which 50 do not. If we used some determination of worthiness based on public interest operation then PARIS and NYC might both proceed. Then again, if worthiness was the published mechanism we might find a bunch of new applications emerge that are very focused on worthiness and collectively these new applications push PARIS and/ or NYC out. If we decide random selection is the only fair mechanism (for example) we might again, find that PARIS and/ or NYC are excluded. Until we define the mechanism for 'limiting' its impossible to say who would be successful. Richard PARIS and NYC were just examples. Below you've suggested that , but we would certainly have to find a way to decide On Mar 29, 2011, at 5:01 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

On 3/29/11 6:31 PM, Richard Tindal wrote:

...

Does general ALAC membership understand that a recommendation to numerically limit the first round would substantially delay approval of the Applicant Guidebook? I'm interested to know if this point is well understood.

Nope. I can't say that I've come to that understanding.

Quoting from your earlier note ...

...

Simply put, this limitation mechanism would need to find a rationale way for us to decide that the .NYC application (say) was allowed proceed, and the .PARIS application (say) was not.

While possible in theory, just as in theory a maximum of 500 applications in a round could mean zero, or one, my thinking is that a significant number of the municipal applications I know about -- Barcelona, Paris, New York, ... will be in any 500 or fewer first tranche of applications, even if the majority of the first, and any subsequent tranche of applications are made by domainers or brand managers or generic standard .biz/.info imitators or IDN extensions of Verisign's .com/.net/.name set of franchises.

In theory of course there could be 501 public interest applications by non-profit entities representing public administrations, and a 500 per tranche limit would necessitate finding the one application that would be deferred ...

If you're going to attempt to persuade the NARALO subscribers perhaps using a less unlikely hypothetical than an exclusive choice between one of the first three city administrations to actually engage in the selection of a registry operator would be more credible.

Eric ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

Thanks for those kind words Where we differ is the effect on an applicant of being deferred to the second round due to any 'limitation' mechanism (this would probably be a one or two year delay - i.e. a 2013 application). 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). R On Mar 30, 2011, at 4:54 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

Richard,

First, my condolences. Of the many persons I've worked with while responsible for XRP/EPP standards development at NeuStar and the technical aspects of NeuStar/NeuLevel's .biz and .us applications, and competed with prior to separating from CORE, I consider you to be one of the most level headed and pragmatic, as well as ingenious, of the for-profit advocates, and your lack of employment indicative of how clueless and unenlightened the self-interested actors in the .com following portion of the domain name industry really are.

There are two models to work with.

The Staff model, which for all of our respective advocacy, and that of our peers, we've only decorated slightly since San Juan. That one has one or more tranches of 500 from a single application window, with no policy tools to differentiate applications other than those for the purposes of determining string contention outcomes.

The GAC model, which so far has not much specific form (not that the Staff model has a lot of essential form, though it has a great deal of simulation of form), and which I and some others may manage to decorate slightly. That one has a sub-tranche, and after a period sufficient to resolve some outstanding policy issues, another sub-tranche, possibly both from a single application window.

The Staff model has the feature that it is nominally cyclic, and a second application window, with attractive features like the possibility of lower cost to the applicant, in a year or two after the first round.

The GAC model has the feature that it proposes that the set of policy issues in which applications not policy-qualified (and the term in Heather's letter of Oct. 23rd was "non-controversial" which I hope we can agree means policy-qualified for some statement of policy, regardless of what one's views on the utility or necessity of that policy may be) can be resolved in a period comparable to or less than what Staff proposes as the period between rounds.

Abstractly then, the two models into which to fit our competing assumptions are an application window in which anything is accepted (Staff) and an application window in which less than anything is accepted (GAC), and regardless of the absence or existence of condition on that first application window, recurring windows without restriction.

So if you accept the above, then I suggest that the problem you've posed, Paris before New York (or the reverse), results in no harm to the application which is deferred for lack of capacity in the tranche beyond a delay. Paris, or New York, waits a year or two and then its application is processed. Given the modest level of harm to the municipal governments of Paris and New York of any year of delay, it is not a given that the harm of deciding which to delay is sufficiently great to abandon the putative advantages of the GAC model for the putative advantages of the Staff model.

I commend to you the recent paper prepared for Rod Beckstrom by ICANN Staff on the NTIA NOI for the IANA Functions. You'll find that ICANN Staff are quite committed to the preference of private agency, of necessity for-profit (and of course dominated by the highly profitable), over public agency, to a truely astonishing degree.

As to the mechanism for limiting to N some set of M applications, where all M applications meet some policy criteria (GAC model, generally), where M is greater than N, a spelling bee using words from the first language of the applicant would suffice, as there is, as I pointed out above, little actual loss to qualified applicants in deferring the processing of their application by the interval currently proposed in either model.

Eric

Every year consumers wait they pay higher prices and have more limited choice than they will after new TLDs are launched. We typically don't hear consumers complaining about this because they don't know there's an alternative to the current situation of artificially constrained supply. I dont think its fair to predict the success of new TLDs on the performance of TLDs from the 2000/ 2003 rounds. In those rounds ICANN chose the winners and effectively decided what rules and policies they would operate under. I think the market will be more effective than ICANN at picking products consumers want. Richard On Mar 31, 2011, at 11:40 AM, John R. Levine 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).

Just out of curiosity, since your applicants have presumably been waiting the better part of a decade, what difference does another year or two make?

The main reason I can think that people would want to get into the first round, is that in the second round everyone will have seen that all of the first round TLDs failed, like all the new TLDs before them.

Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

Yes, I mean the currently constrained supply of attractive second level domains, from COM and other TLDs. the market is artificially constrained because there could be more extensions -- which would provide more second level choice. Richard On Mar 31, 2011, at 1:00 PM, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight wrote:

On 31 Mar 2011, at 20:53, Richard Tindal wrote:

...

Every year consumers wait they pay higher prices and have more limited choice than they will after new TLDs are launched. We typically don't hear consumers complaining about this because they don't know there's an alternative to the current situation of artificially constrained supply.

Constrained supply of what exactly?

I assume you're referring to .com?

...

I dont think its fair to predict the success of new TLDs on the performance of TLDs from the 2000/ 2003 rounds. In those rounds ICANN chose the winners and effectively decided what rules and policies they would operate under. I think the market will be more effective than ICANN at picking products consumers want.

Richard

On Mar 31, 2011, at 11:40 AM, John R. Levine 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).

Just out of curiosity, since your applicants have presumably been waiting the better part of a decade, what difference does another year or two make?

The main reason I can think that people would want to get into the first round, is that in the second round everyone will have seen that all of the first round TLDs failed, like all the new TLDs before them.

Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection ICANN Accredited Registrar http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ http://blacknight.mobi/ http://mneylon.tel Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 US: 213-233-1612 UK: 0844 484 9361 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845

they're typically not as meaningful or relevant as a new TLD that reflects the consumer's affiliation if i have a shoe store I prefer richards.shoes over richardsshoes.tm its an example of Antony's Aunt Mille comment. The fact that people aren't eating her 12 year old pudding doesn't mean they're not hungry R On Apr 1, 2011, at 10:35 AM, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight wrote:

On 1 Apr 2011, at 18:28, Richard Tindal wrote:

...

Yes, I mean the currently constrained supply of attractive second level domains, from COM and other TLDs.

the market is artificially constrained because there could be more extensions -- which would provide more second level choice.

Richard

Well I could easily argue that there's nothing to stop someone from registering a name in any of the 250+ ccTLDs

A lot of them are underused :)

Regards

Michele

Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection ICANN Accredited Registrar http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ http://blacknight.mobi/ http://mneylon.tel Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 US: 213-233-1612 UK: 0844 484 9361 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845

Yes, I mean the currently constrained supply of attractive second level domains, from COM and other TLDs.

the market is artificially constrained because there could be more extensions -- which would provide more second level choice.

For the 99.99% of Internet users who have never registered a domain and never will, how does this market constraint affect them? What benefits have consumers seen from .PRO, .TRAVEL, .AERO, and .JOBS? Be sure to keep in mind that, to several decimal places, no consumer has ever heard of them. Or from .BIZ and .INFO, for which awareness is still low but probably distinguishable from zero? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

What benefits have consumers seen from .PRO, .TRAVEL, .AERO, and .JOBS? Be sure to keep in mind that, to several decimal places, no consumer has ever heard of them. Or from .BIZ and .INFO, for which awareness is still low but probably distinguishable from zero?

John, Whatever the success of the past new gTLDs, I don't understand the reasoning behind keeping COM/NET/ORG as the de facto gTLD registration space in perpetuity, blind to the ever increasing number of new Internet users. The logic behind the "let a thousand TLD blooms" meme from the earlier days of the ALAC was not that we needed a thousand TLDs but that markets would be better than committees at picking the expansion names. -- Bret

"If we purport to represent Internet users, we should be hammering on stability and predictability, not advocating for hundreds of useless TLDs that will just be full of defensive registrations and squats." If you purport to represent Internet users, you should come up with some evidence of what they want instead of just throwing out your opinions. Antony On Apr 1, 2011, at 3:56 PM, John R. Levine wrote:

...

Whatever the success of the past new gTLDs, I don't understand the reasoning behind keeping COM/NET/ORG as the de facto gTLD registration space in perpetuity, blind to the ever increasing number of new Internet users.

...

From the point of view of Internet users, the current set of TLDs is consistent and predictable. If ICANN allows a thousand new TLDs, we will have a mess similar to the mess with registrars, only worse since switching TLDs is a lot harder than switching registrars.

Registrars range from the stable and honest to the incompetent and criminal. Nobody can keep track of them all, certainly not ICANN's compliance department, they come and go and sleaze and fail and who knows what else. Verisign, Afilias, and Neustar may not be my favorite organizations, but at least they are competent and stable.

I agree that the new TLD process so far has been deeply flawed, but if there were a demand for new TLDs, I would expect at least some evidence of it. As I've often noted, every new TLD has failed to meet its most pessimistic registration estimates by an order of magnitude, and the only ones with significant uptake are .BIZ and .INFO, which we all know are just clones of .COM and .ORG for people who missed out on the rush the first time.

Other than IDNs, which I think are adequately addressed by the fast track, the demand for new TLDs is from speculators and reality-resistant marketers, not from users. There was a brief flicker of hope that some new TLDs might offer security assurances (.bank is the usual example), but the cynical way the HSTLD process turned out put that fantasy to rest.

If we purport to represent Internet users, we should be hammering on stability and predictability, not advocating for hundreds of useless TLDs that will just be full of defensive registrations and squats.

Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

From the point of view of Internet users, the current set of TLDs is consistent and predictable.

But we need to balance those two goals with others, such as competition, choice, geographic diversity, language diversity, and expression. Monopolies always deliver consistent and predictable services, but we generally view the other policy goals as overriding them. Bret

On 31 March 2011 15:53, Richard Tindal <richardtindal@me.com> wrote: Every year consumers wait they pay higher prices and have more limited

choice than they will after new TLDs are launched.

I reject this assertion. Evidence, please. - Evan

1. On average (this number varies from registrar to registrar) it takes consumers seven lookups to find the second level domain they want to register.

You appear to have misspelled "vanity registrants". The consumers I know and who read my books don't have any interest in registering domains. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

On 3/31/11 1:52 PM, Richard Tindal wrote:

Thanks for those kind words

Where we differ is the effect on an applicant of being deferred to the second round due to any 'limitation' mechanism (this would probably be a one or two year delay - i.e. a 2013 application).

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).

The City of Paris entered into a process to select a registry operator in 2007. The City of New York did so in 2009. These two applicants have been waiting for ICANN to accept applications, for for its own reasons ICANN has refused to accept applications from each, arguing that it, ICANN, had some policy development, unrelated to either application, to resolve as a precondition to accepting either application. At some point, perhaps in 2011, in this one-of-two hypothetical to explore the claim of harm, one of these two application is accepted by ICANN, and in 2013 the other of these two application is accepted by ICANN. Assume Paris before New York (unless you find a good reason to entertain New York before Paris), and describe the harm to New York (or Paris), resulting from this delay. I hope this isn't necessary, but under the GAC model, the status of Paris as the capital of a territory with a code point in ISO 3166, and the lack of that status for New York, is not relevant, as the GAC model proposes, inter alia, to do more than just establish and resolve contention sets. So both .paris and .nyc are to be allocated unconditionally to the applications brought by the municipal authorities of Paris and New York City, respectively. I just wanted to eliminate this as a possible rational for harm, as I believe you're making a much broader delay-equals-harm claim. Eric

R

On Mar 30, 2011, at 4:54 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

...

Richard,

First, my condolences. Of the many persons I've worked with while responsible for XRP/EPP standards development at NeuStar and the technical aspects of NeuStar/NeuLevel's .biz and .us applications, and competed with prior to separating from CORE, I consider you to be one of the most level headed and pragmatic, as well as ingenious, of the for-profit advocates, and your lack of employment indicative of how clueless and unenlightened the self-interested actors in the .com following portion of the domain name industry really are.

There are two models to work with.

The Staff model, which for all of our respective advocacy, and that of our peers, we've only decorated slightly since San Juan. That one has one or more tranches of 500 from a single application window, with no policy tools to differentiate applications other than those for the purposes of determining string contention outcomes.

The GAC model, which so far has not much specific form (not that the Staff model has a lot of essential form, though it has a great deal of simulation of form), and which I and some others may manage to decorate slightly. That one has a sub-tranche, and after a period sufficient to resolve some outstanding policy issues, another sub-tranche, possibly both from a single application window.

The Staff model has the feature that it is nominally cyclic, and a second application window, with attractive features like the possibility of lower cost to the applicant, in a year or two after the first round.

The GAC model has the feature that it proposes that the set of policy issues in which applications not policy-qualified (and the term in Heather's letter of Oct. 23rd was "non-controversial" which I hope we can agree means policy-qualified for some statement of policy, regardless of what one's views on the utility or necessity of that policy may be) can be resolved in a period comparable to or less than what Staff proposes as the period between rounds.

Abstractly then, the two models into which to fit our competing assumptions are an application window in which anything is accepted (Staff) and an application window in which less than anything is accepted (GAC), and regardless of the absence or existence of condition on that first application window, recurring windows without restriction.

So if you accept the above, then I suggest that the problem you've posed, Paris before New York (or the reverse), results in no harm to the application which is deferred for lack of capacity in the tranche beyond a delay. Paris, or New York, waits a year or two and then its application is processed. Given the modest level of harm to the municipal governments of Paris and New York of any year of delay, it is not a given that the harm of deciding which to delay is sufficiently great to abandon the putative advantages of the GAC model for the putative advantages of the Staff model.

I commend to you the recent paper prepared for Rod Beckstrom by ICANN Staff on the NTIA NOI for the IANA Functions. You'll find that ICANN Staff are quite committed to the preference of private agency, of necessity for-profit (and of course dominated by the highly profitable), over public agency, to a truely astonishing degree.

As to the mechanism for limiting to N some set of M applications, where all M applications meet some policy criteria (GAC model, generally), where M is greater than N, a spelling bee using words from the first language of the applicant would suffice, as there is, as I pointed out above, little actual loss to qualified applicants in deferring the processing of their application by the interval currently proposed in either model.

Eric

On 31 March 2011 16:07, Richard Tindal <richardtindal@me.com> wrote:

First a clarification -- I dont think its fair to say that Applicant Guidebook policy development work for the last couple of years is unrelated to .PARIS, .NYC or other geo TLDs. More than 50% of policy work has concerned trademarks, and there will be at least as many trademark issues in large city TLDs as there will be in other TLDs

To your question -- If .NYC is delayed until 2013 due to the 'limitation' method I think domain registrants in New York City will be denied more choice and better prices for an additional 2 years

So what? Most end users are not domain registrants. Your issues are not their issues. Are there any current New York - related websites (or for that matter, ones based in Paris, Berlin or London) that are inaccessible to the public because of the current naming environment? What about the choices offered to consumers who find what they want using search engines and referral services rather than domain names? They're not affected ONE BIT. And I still don't accept your denial assertions, even on behalf of registrants. I note that .co -- a ccTLD that is now marketed as a gTLD -- is charging more than double what .com charges for second level domains. Here is one case in which the entrance of a new (pseudo-)gTLD has most certainly *not* led to lower prices for registrants; just the opposite, in fact. I wonder how much of the scarcity you claim, could be eliminated if the common trademark doctrine of "use it or lose it" was extended to domain names? - Evan

To your question -- If .NYC is delayed until 2013 due to the 'limitation' method I think domain registrants in New York City will be denied more choice and better prices for an additional 2 years

I really have to thank you for this. Never have I seen such a concise demonstration of the fundamental falsity of the entire new TLD process. Anyone in NY who wants a city-specific domain has had new-york.ny.us available for over a decade. If you've never heard of it, that's because nobody was ever interested. I manage the domains for a bunch of upstate counties and municipalities, offering registrations at no charge, and I think I've had a total of three requests in the past decade. The only people who are harmed by delays in new TLDs are the speculators who can't sell their new domains, and even they may turn out to have been protected by ICANN's inaction from squandering $200K on a project that will never recoup its costs. R's, John

... Anyone in NY who wants a city-specific domain has had new-york.ny.us available for over a decade. ...

Back in the late IANA management period I looked at who owned what and found that six people owned over half of the major US metro media markets. When I wrote NeuStar's application for .us, a bid which the US DoC selected, I proposed to end this cyber-squatting on networks-of-cities scale. I was away from the office for something, and upon my return I found that NeuStar management had been convinced of a plan, a plan named after the two colors used on the whiteboard, to retain these parties in their networks of cybersquatting as "regional registrars" or some brain damaged thing, so that the growth and development of the dotted -- and free under the DoC contract -- side of .us would be retarded, and the flat side of .us would grow due to the dead ends of the hierarchies under the squatted-name.state.us stubs. There have been some intelligent uses of the dotted side, but only for names the IANA management period squatters didn't bother to grab, for free, at the time, so my former co-worker at the OSF Research Institute put up harvard.ma.us for the _town_ of Harvard. In their not very serious bid when the .us contract was up for renewal, GoDaddy could have, but failed to offer to reform the hierarchical .us name space. Flat name spaces mean more money to registries and registrars, so no shortage of junk has impeded the development of hierarchical name spaces, though they are quite successful under .edu, .mil, .gov, .uk, ... Eric

Anyone in NY who wants a city-specific domain has had new-york.ny.us available for over a decade. If you've never heard of it, that's because nobody was ever interested.

Of course they're not interested in new-york.ny.us. It has a hyphen and two dots. It's the same reason that museums hate .museum, a ludicrous naming structure (I know this because many of my family work in museums). Under that structure, the American Museum of Natural History in New York would have to be american-museum-of-natural-history.new-york.museum. Are you really surprised they passed on that? Guess what? The City of New York is not interested in it either. Members of the city government expressed to me that what they were really unhappy about were newyork.com not being in their hands. Why? Because it's memorable and short of course. ccTLDs are getting rid of their subdomained naming structures because people can't stand them. Ask .PH how happy they are that they moved to a flat namespace. Ask .DE and .CH how happy they are that they went with a flat namespace to begin with. They prefer a flat structure with an easy-to-use name. Years ago, I talked at length with Jon Postel about the .US domain (and worked with him on a proposal to change how it worked) largely because of this (that and certain unresponsive local admins). Citing as evidence that people won't eat Aunt Millie's Christmas pudding that's been sitting in the back of the freezer for 12 years doesn't mean they're not hungry. Antony

Well, I am perfectly happy to argue with someone who makes up his facts or it might be very lonely here indeed. AMNH did pass on the .museum TLD until they changed their rules. Please also note that they have still avoided the "three-label name" of the original taxonomy. The restrictions on the domain were so bloody awful that they had to change them in 2004 to get anyone to register.

From http://about.museum/policy/new.0430.html:

"It was previously necessary for all applications for names in .museum to be accompanied by a fee to cover the cost of verifying the eligibility of the applicant, and conducting the dialog needed to ensure the correct form and use of subsequently registered names. Applications that can be processed without such discussion are now exempt from the advance fee. When necessary, notification of the fee being due will be issued subsequent to the initial review of the application. The continuing development of the index requires that generic terms which might appear in it are available for shared use. Names in the form city.museum or discipline.museum are therefore reserved for inclusion in three-label names in the form ourname.city.museum. Names with a specific designation on the second level such as, abcde.museum, ourart.museum, or bl�r�d.museum may, however, be registered directly." Antony P.S. Is that jl.ly in your signature one of those "vanity" domain names you're always going on about? Why on earth do you need that when you could use a perfectly good watkins-glen.ny.us name? On Mar 31, 2011, at 9:57 PM, John R. Levine wrote:

...

Under that structure, the American Museum of Natural History in New York would have to be american-museum-of-natural-history.new-york.museum. Are you really surprised they passed on that?

Uh huh.

amnh.museum. 86400 IN NS ns-ext-1.amnh.org. amnh.museum. 86400 IN NS ns-ext-2.amnh.org. american.naturalhistory.museum. 86400 IN NS ns-ext-1.amnh.org. american.naturalhistory.museum. 86400 IN NS ns-ext-2.amnh.org. amnh.naturalhistory.museum. 86400 IN NS ns-ext-1.amnh.org. amnh.naturalhistory.museum. 86400 IN NS ns-ext-2.amnh.org.

I can't argue with someone who makes up his "facts", so I won't try.

Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

I agree that this is somewhat unkind, but it is rather on point to the discussion. I've done pretty well ignoring all the baiting up until now though, don't you think? You have no idea of the steely discipline I have imposed on myself. Antony On Mar 31, 2011, at 11:41 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On 31 March 2011 23:25, Antony Van Couvering <avc@avc.vc> wrote:

P.S. Is that jl.ly in your signature one of those "vanity" domain names you're always going on about?

So much for the claim of good faith attempt to engage without personal attack. Welcome to my troll filter.

- Evan

Hi, I do not understand in what way their application is so special from all other applications that they should jump the queue. As I recall .Berlin was ready a long time ago and they too asked to be given special license to go before everyone. In fact I can think of few applicants who do not think their application is special and should be able to go before all the others. So at least in the presumption that they should go first, they aren't very different. What they all seem to ignore is that any effort to push ahead, necessarily pushes everyone else behind. Or maybe they don't ignroe it, they might just not care. a. On 31 Mar 2011, at 15:07, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

On 3/31/11 1:52 PM, Richard Tindal wrote:

...

Thanks for those kind words

Where we differ is the effect on an applicant of being deferred to the second round due to any 'limitation' mechanism (this would probably be a one or two year delay - i.e. a 2013 application).

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).

The City of Paris entered into a process to select a registry operator in 2007. The City of New York did so in 2009.

These two applicants have been waiting for ICANN to accept applications, for for its own reasons ICANN has refused to accept applications from each, arguing that it, ICANN, had some policy development, unrelated to either application, to resolve as a precondition to accepting either application.

At some point, perhaps in 2011, in this one-of-two hypothetical to explore the claim of harm, one of these two application is accepted by ICANN, and in 2013 the other of these two application is accepted by ICANN.

Assume Paris before New York (unless you find a good reason to entertain New York before Paris), and describe the harm to New York (or Paris), resulting from this delay.

I hope this isn't necessary, but under the GAC model, the status of Paris as the capital of a territory with a code point in ISO 3166, and the lack of that status for New York, is not relevant, as the GAC model proposes, inter alia, to do more than just establish and resolve contention sets. So both .paris and .nyc are to be allocated unconditionally to the applications brought by the municipal authorities of Paris and New York City, respectively. I just wanted to eliminate this as a possible rational for harm, as I believe you're making a much broader delay-equals-harm claim.

Eric

...

R

On Mar 30, 2011, at 4:54 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

...

Richard,

First, my condolences. Of the many persons I've worked with while responsible for XRP/EPP standards development at NeuStar and the technical aspects of NeuStar/NeuLevel's .biz and .us applications, and competed with prior to separating from CORE, I consider you to be one of the most level headed and pragmatic, as well as ingenious, of the for-profit advocates, and your lack of employment indicative of how clueless and unenlightened the self-interested actors in the .com following portion of the domain name industry really are.

There are two models to work with.

The Staff model, which for all of our respective advocacy, and that of our peers, we've only decorated slightly since San Juan. That one has one or more tranches of 500 from a single application window, with no policy tools to differentiate applications other than those for the purposes of determining string contention outcomes.

The GAC model, which so far has not much specific form (not that the Staff model has a lot of essential form, though it has a great deal of simulation of form), and which I and some others may manage to decorate slightly. That one has a sub-tranche, and after a period sufficient to resolve some outstanding policy issues, another sub-tranche, possibly both from a single application window.

The Staff model has the feature that it is nominally cyclic, and a second application window, with attractive features like the possibility of lower cost to the applicant, in a year or two after the first round.

The GAC model has the feature that it proposes that the set of policy issues in which applications not policy-qualified (and the term in Heather's letter of Oct. 23rd was "non-controversial" which I hope we can agree means policy-qualified for some statement of policy, regardless of what one's views on the utility or necessity of that policy may be) can be resolved in a period comparable to or less than what Staff proposes as the period between rounds.

Abstractly then, the two models into which to fit our competing assumptions are an application window in which anything is accepted (Staff) and an application window in which less than anything is accepted (GAC), and regardless of the absence or existence of condition on that first application window, recurring windows without restriction.

So if you accept the above, then I suggest that the problem you've posed, Paris before New York (or the reverse), results in no harm to the application which is deferred for lack of capacity in the tranche beyond a delay. Paris, or New York, waits a year or two and then its application is processed. Given the modest level of harm to the municipal governments of Paris and New York of any year of delay, it is not a given that the harm of deciding which to delay is sufficiently great to abandon the putative advantages of the GAC model for the putative advantages of the Staff model.

I commend to you the recent paper prepared for Rod Beckstrom by ICANN Staff on the NTIA NOI for the IANA Functions. You'll find that ICANN Staff are quite committed to the preference of private agency, of necessity for-profit (and of course dominated by the highly profitable), over public agency, to a truely astonishing degree.

As to the mechanism for limiting to N some set of M applications, where all M applications meet some policy criteria (GAC model, generally), where M is greater than N, a spelling bee using words from the first language of the applicant would suffice, as there is, as I pointed out above, little actual loss to qualified applicants in deferring the processing of their application by the interval currently proposed in either model.

Eric

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

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?

If you see a city such as New York as a complex entity that might benefit from a potentially coherent resource such as a TLD, you can see, minimally, some "lost opportunity costs." If you look at the impact on the city's social fabric - its essence - that the city experiences without the unifying force TLD offers, forcing us to live within a digital diaspora of .com, .org, .net, .edu, .us, etc., one sees another possible loss. It's my opinion that the impact on IBM (.ibm) or the sports industry (.sports) are less severe. And that each day city residents and organizations invest more in the extant obsolescent structure, the less optimum its development. My daily life in New York City tells me that this Internet thing that promised to make finding fellow residents and local organizations easier, has not delivered as promised. Granted the Net has changed the city in innumerable ways - many for the better. But if one looks at a coherent digital development policy, composed of a thoughtful naming structure, access, and the training that should accompany the introduction of a city-TLD, one begins to see why we need a TLD now. Tom Lowenhaupt On 4/1/2011 2:10 PM, Avri Doria wrote:

Hi,

I do not understand in what way their application is so special from all other applications that they should jump the queue. As I recall .Berlin was ready a long time ago and they too asked to be given special license to go before everyone. In fact I can think of few applicants who do not think their application is special and should be able to go before all the others. So at least in the presumption that they should go first, they aren't very different.

What they all seem to ignore is that any effort to push ahead, necessarily pushes everyone else behind. Or maybe they don't ignroe it, they might just not care.

a.

On 31 Mar 2011, at 15:07, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

...

On 3/31/11 1:52 PM, Richard Tindal wrote:

...

Thanks for those kind words

Where we differ is the effect on an applicant of being deferred to the second round due to any 'limitation' mechanism (this would probably be a one or two year delay - i.e. a 2013 application).

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). The City of Paris entered into a process to select a registry operator in 2007. The City of New York did so in 2009.

These two applicants have been waiting for ICANN to accept applications, for for its own reasons ICANN has refused to accept applications from each, arguing that it, ICANN, had some policy development, unrelated to either application, to resolve as a precondition to accepting either application.

At some point, perhaps in 2011, in this one-of-two hypothetical to explore the claim of harm, one of these two application is accepted by ICANN, and in 2013 the other of these two application is accepted by ICANN.

Assume Paris before New York (unless you find a good reason to entertain New York before Paris), and describe the harm to New York (or Paris), resulting from this delay.

I hope this isn't necessary, but under the GAC model, the status of Paris as the capital of a territory with a code point in ISO 3166, and the lack of that status for New York, is not relevant, as the GAC model proposes, inter alia, to do more than just establish and resolve contention sets. So both .paris and .nyc are to be allocated unconditionally to the applications brought by the municipal authorities of Paris and New York City, respectively. I just wanted to eliminate this as a possible rational for harm, as I believe you're making a much broader delay-equals-harm claim.

Eric

...

R

On Mar 30, 2011, at 4:54 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

...

Richard,

First, my condolences. Of the many persons I've worked with while responsible for XRP/EPP standards development at NeuStar and the technical aspects of NeuStar/NeuLevel's .biz and .us applications, and competed with prior to separating from CORE, I consider you to be one of the most level headed and pragmatic, as well as ingenious, of the for-profit advocates, and your lack of employment indicative of how clueless and unenlightened the self-interested actors in the .com following portion of the domain name industry really are.

There are two models to work with.

The Staff model, which for all of our respective advocacy, and that of our peers, we've only decorated slightly since San Juan. That one has one or more tranches of 500 from a single application window, with no policy tools to differentiate applications other than those for the purposes of determining string contention outcomes.

The GAC model, which so far has not much specific form (not that the Staff model has a lot of essential form, though it has a great deal of simulation of form), and which I and some others may manage to decorate slightly. That one has a sub-tranche, and after a period sufficient to resolve some outstanding policy issues, another sub-tranche, possibly both from a single application window.

The Staff model has the feature that it is nominally cyclic, and a second application window, with attractive features like the possibility of lower cost to the applicant, in a year or two after the first round.

The GAC model has the feature that it proposes that the set of policy issues in which applications not policy-qualified (and the term in Heather's letter of Oct. 23rd was "non-controversial" which I hope we can agree means policy-qualified for some statement of policy, regardless of what one's views on the utility or necessity of that policy may be) can be resolved in a period comparable to or less than what Staff proposes as the period between rounds.

Abstractly then, the two models into which to fit our competing assumptions are an application window in which anything is accepted (Staff) and an application window in which less than anything is accepted (GAC), and regardless of the absence or existence of condition on that first application window, recurring windows without restriction.

So if you accept the above, then I suggest that the problem you've posed, Paris before New York (or the reverse), results in no harm to the application which is deferred for lack of capacity in the tranche beyond a delay. Paris, or New York, waits a year or two and then its application is processed. Given the modest level of harm to the municipal governments of Paris and New York of any year of delay, it is not a given that the harm of deciding which to delay is sufficiently great to abandon the putative advantages of the GAC model for the putative advantages of the Staff model.

I commend to you the recent paper prepared for Rod Beckstrom by ICANN Staff on the NTIA NOI for the IANA Functions. You'll find that ICANN Staff are quite committed to the preference of private agency, of necessity for-profit (and of course dominated by the highly profitable), over public agency, to a truely astonishing degree.

As to the mechanism for limiting to N some set of M applications, where all M applications meet some policy criteria (GAC model, generally), where M is greater than N, a spelling bee using words from the first language of the applicant would suffice, as there is, as I pointed out above, little actual loss to qualified applicants in deferring the processing of their application by the interval currently proposed in either model.

Eric

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

Tom, I agree with you that municipal government may use .nyc to ends which are entirely consistent with the public interest, just as PuntCat did using .cat to advance a public interest in Catalan language and culture. Eric

Evan, Our goal is to see how the Internet resource called the DNS can be shaped to help build a better city. The DNS was not designed for that. But if there's the prospect that it can be used to facilitate better local communication, I'm all for giving it a try. Considering the dreadful current state of local communication, it would be a shame if we didn't try. Its use in an Internet of Things application might help make our city more efficient and programmer-friendly. If we can allocate reflective domain names to existing organizations, we'll improve the intuitive nature of the Net. Something that's being lost with its current development trajectory. As well, we might facilitate the creation of a local search engine that works in a transparent manner, vital in tasks such as facilitating fair elections and creating a a level playing fields for local businesses. I wouldn't bet my city's future on a do-no-evil pledge from a global behemoth. And useful portals offering some guidance to residents and visitors - not an easy task, but worth a try. Evan, spend an hour or so on our wiki (http://bit.ly/OurWiki) and blog (http://bit.ly/OurBlog) to see the thinking that evolving into a different DNS. We can really use some help. Just last night I spoke to a top bureaucrat at the city's IT agency who indicated that they are looking to Verisign, NuStar, and other prospective contractors for policy guidance. "Here's how you sell more names, faster, and cheaper. Sign here." There's huge pressure to sell names willy-nilly, both city budget shortfalls and 90% of the industry panting for new TLDs and pointing to historic faults as evidence that a thoughtfully developed .nyc TLD is impossible. We don't believe so and it would be good to have the strong support of NARLO and ALAC and NCUC and other entities inclined toward the public interest in matters Internet to add support to our effort. Best, Tom Lowenhaupt P.S. I've addressed a few of your specific points below. On 4/1/2011 6:41 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On 1 April 2011 16:00, Thomas Lowenhaupt <toml@communisphere.com <mailto:toml@communisphere.com>> wrote:

> 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?

If you see a city such as New York as a complex entity that might benefit from a potentially coherent resource such as a TLD, you can see, minimally, some "lost opportunity costs."

Guess I don't see it.

IMO the city -- any city -- isn't defined by a TLD any more than it's defined by its Yellow Pages.

The city will be defined by a number of factors, including in this instance, its willingness to try and make lemonade from the DNS lemon. With the possible exception of Hong Kong and Singapore, cities have not had the opportunity to be defined by their TLDs. I suspect that, 10 years after their issuance, if you visit a city with a thoughtfully developed TLD and one without, you might come away thinking that one is more Internet-friendly than the other. And that Internet-friendly will translate into a more livable and prosperous city.

We are, after all, just talking about directories and aliases -- not the establishments (ie, hosted sites) themselves.

Not exactly sure what you mean by hosted sites, but we do advocate for a measured allocation of some portal names, for example those of the neighborhoods <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/traditional-neighborhood...>, those that might advance a more sustainable city <http://coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/cities-2-0-the-tlds-role-in-...>, and the voter cloud <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/the-voter-project>.

Does a restaurant get more hits by people typing its URL? or have they, more likely, depended upon: 1) A review site such as Fodor or nyt.com <http://nyt.com> 2) A social-referral system such as Chowhound (or even Facebook) 3) Their favourite search engine (if you type the restaurant name freehand in the browser window, Google will find it regardless of domain it uses) 4) An app on their phone such as Urbanspoon or Yelp

The last two require no end-user interaction with domain names.

We are moving away from local control of our digital environment which we'd like to see reversed by the development of a more intuitive Net, transparent search engines, and fair, perhaps collaborative, portals. These things all take time and one good thing about the ICANN process - as least as I now see it - is that a city need not be rushed to make these decisions. A measured development plan will pay off in the long run.

A rapid growth of TLDs is not going to diminish the appeal of search engines and dedicated apps. Users have worked around the flaws in the existing DNS -- the domainers, the phishers, the park pages -- in very clever ways, and they aren't likely to come back just because there's a new domain in town (let alone hundreds of them) offering more of the same flaws.

The DNS has huge flaws and few are doing anything about it. What actions has ICANN taken to prepare cities for developing their TLDs? It follows the one-plan-fits-all approach. I've tried to get my government to assume some responsibility for the flawed Net, so far to no avail. If the DNS keeps stumbling along pressure will grow for its replacement. I think the more intuitive Net, led by cities, provides a possible path for the DNS' survival.

The Internet is advancing, and domain names are but one method -- and in my opinion, one that is decreasing in popularity -- to bring people together with the web-based content they want. One will rarely get to a typosquatter site using Google or Bing, they try to autocorrect bad spelling and even warn you of bad sites, The DNS alone doesn't do this and won't do it, since the ICANN food chain has become so dependent on speculators and squatters.

You gotta love Google. But let's be prudent and not become overly dependent on it. And let's explore the prospect and advantages of a civicly controlled TLD. It's not too late IMHO.

And we now have our first well-known instance in which desirable content cannot trust the domain name system and bypasses it completely. Look up Wikileaks in Google and it will take you to http://213.251.145.96/

+1 (or does Google own that now?) Another route around the traditional DNS might be Robert Kahn's Digital Object Architecture.

The Internet has always had a wonderful way of routing around obstacles, and the DNS is one of those obstacles. Vested interests would say that the problem can be solved by simply throwing more available domains in the pool .... but the poor performance of so many *existing* TLDs should indicate to anyone with an open mind that the problem is much deeper than that.

I advocate for public interest city-TLDs. (And for TLDs that support cultural groups.) To more effectively and efficiently operate our city we need to better use technology, with the Internet being today's low hanging fruit. And today the DNS can be part of that. If we wait another 10 years before it becomes available, it might be ruined for all practical purposes. So I say cities today. (I say another 10 years because April 19 marks the 10th anniversary of Queens Community Board 3's Internet Empowerment Resolution <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Empowerment_Resolution>, our guiding document.)

As for the assertion that a TLD is necessary at a psychic level, sorry, I'm skeptical in the absence of any harder evidence than exists. I see a collectivist value to cultural and linguistic TLDs, especially ones with a globally scattered diaspora and/or needing non-Latin scripts. But anything beyond that hasn't yet proven to be more than wishful thinking.

I agree on the cultural TLDs. And I hope to have part in creating the proof you desire for city-TLDs. But again, the likelihood of that happening without support of groups such as NARLO and ALAC is diminished. (nudge nudge)

A long time ago ICANN had a choice of whether domain names were to be identities or commodities. It chose the more-financially-rewarding latter, with some exception for trademarks. But, having seen the glut of useless park pages, "this domain for sale" notices, typosquatters and often the best names being used for garbage, the public understands fully that domain names are not identities -- they're just occasionally-reliable places to find stuff. In my time in ICANN I want to raise that level of public trust, but I don't think it can be done just by adding new TLDs.

I agree.

- Evan

If you look at the impact on the city's social fabric - its essence - that the city experiences without the unifying force TLD offers, forcing us to live within a digital diaspora of .com, .org, .net, .edu, .us, etc., one sees another possible loss.

It's my opinion that the impact on IBM (.ibm) or the sports industry (.sports) are less severe. And that each day city residents and organizations invest more in the extant obsolescent structure, the less optimum its development.

My daily life in New York City tells me that this Internet thing that promised to make finding fellow residents and local organizations easier, has not delivered as promised. Granted the Net has changed the city in innumerable ways - many for the better. But if one looks at a coherent digital development policy, composed of a thoughtful naming structure, access, and the training that should accompany the introduction of a city-TLD, one begins to see why we need a TLD now.

Tom Lowenhaupt

On 4/1/2011 2:10 PM, Avri Doria wrote: > Hi, > > I do not understand in what way their application is so special from all other applications that they should jump the queue. > As I recall .Berlin was ready a long time ago and they too asked to be given special license to go before everyone. > In fact I can think of few applicants who do not think their application is special and should be able to go before all the others. > So at least in the presumption that they should go first, they aren't very different. > > What they all seem to ignore is that any effort to push ahead, necessarily pushes everyone else behind. > Or maybe they don't ignroe it, they might just not care. > > a. > > > On 31 Mar 2011, at 15:07, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote: > >> On 3/31/11 1:52 PM, Richard Tindal wrote: >>> Thanks for those kind words >>> >>> Where we differ is the effect on an applicant of being deferred to the second round due to any 'limitation' mechanism (this would probably be a one or two year delay - i.e. a 2013 application). >>> >>> 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). >> The City of Paris entered into a process to select a registry operator >> in 2007. The City of New York did so in 2009. >> >> These two applicants have been waiting for ICANN to accept >> applications, for for its own reasons ICANN has refused to accept >> applications from each, arguing that it, ICANN, had some policy >> development, unrelated to either application, to resolve as a >> precondition to accepting either application. >> >> At some point, perhaps in 2011, in this one-of-two hypothetical to >> explore the claim of harm, one of these two application is accepted by >> ICANN, and in 2013 the other of these two application is accepted by >> ICANN. >> >> Assume Paris before New York (unless you find a good reason to >> entertain New York before Paris), and describe the harm to New York >> (or Paris), resulting from this delay. >> >> I hope this isn't necessary, but under the GAC model, the status of >> Paris as the capital of a territory with a code point in ISO 3166, and >> the lack of that status for New York, is not relevant, as the GAC >> model proposes, inter alia, to do more than just establish and resolve >> contention sets. So both .paris and .nyc are to be allocated >> unconditionally to the applications brought by the municipal >> authorities of Paris and New York City, respectively. I just wanted to >> eliminate this as a possible rational for harm, as I believe you're >> making a much broader delay-equals-harm claim. >> >> Eric >> >>> R >>> >>> On Mar 30, 2011, at 4:54 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote: >>> >>>> Richard, >>>> >>>> First, my condolences. Of the many persons I've worked with while responsible for XRP/EPP standards development at NeuStar and the technical aspects of NeuStar/NeuLevel's .biz and .us applications, and competed with prior to separating from CORE, I consider you to be one of the most level headed and pragmatic, as well as ingenious, of the for-profit advocates, and your lack of employment indicative of how clueless and unenlightened the self-interested actors in the .com following portion of the domain name industry really are. >>>> >>>> There are two models to work with. >>>> >>>> The Staff model, which for all of our respective advocacy, and that of our peers, we've only decorated slightly since San Juan. That one has one or more tranches of 500 from a single application window, with no policy tools to differentiate applications other than those for the purposes of determining string contention outcomes. >>>> >>>> The GAC model, which so far has not much specific form (not that the Staff model has a lot of essential form, though it has a great deal of simulation of form), and which I and some others may manage to decorate slightly. That one has a sub-tranche, and after a period sufficient to resolve some outstanding policy issues, another sub-tranche, possibly both from a single application window. >>>> >>>> The Staff model has the feature that it is nominally cyclic, and a second application window, with attractive features like the possibility of lower cost to the applicant, in a year or two after the first round. >>>> >>>> The GAC model has the feature that it proposes that the set of policy issues in which applications not policy-qualified (and the term in Heather's letter of Oct. 23rd was "non-controversial" which I hope we can agree means policy-qualified for some statement of policy, regardless of what one's views on the utility or necessity of that policy may be) can be resolved in a period comparable to or less than what Staff proposes as the period between rounds. >>>> >>>> Abstractly then, the two models into which to fit our competing assumptions are an application window in which anything is accepted (Staff) and an application window in which less than anything is accepted (GAC), and regardless of the absence or existence of condition on that first application window, recurring windows without restriction. >>>> >>>> So if you accept the above, then I suggest that the problem you've posed, Paris before New York (or the reverse), results in no harm to the application which is deferred for lack of capacity in the tranche beyond a delay. Paris, or New York, waits a year or two and then its application is processed. Given the modest level of harm to the municipal governments of Paris and New York of any year of delay, it is not a given that the harm of deciding which to delay is sufficiently great to abandon the putative advantages of the GAC model for the putative advantages of the Staff model. >>>> >>>> I commend to you the recent paper prepared for Rod Beckstrom by ICANN Staff on the NTIA NOI for the IANA Functions. You'll find that ICANN Staff are quite committed to the preference of private agency, of necessity for-profit (and of course dominated by the highly profitable), over public agency, to a truely astonishing degree. >>>> >>>> As to the mechanism for limiting to N some set of M applications, where all M applications meet some policy criteria (GAC model, generally), where M is greater than N, a spelling bee using words from the first language of the applicant would suffice, as there is, as I pointed out above, little actual loss to qualified applicants in deferring the processing of their application by the interval currently proposed in either model. >>>> >>>> Eric >>> >>> >> ------ >> NA-Discuss mailing list >> NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> >> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss >> >> Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org >> ------ >> > > ------ > NA-Discuss mailing list > NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> > https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss > > Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org > ------ > > > ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56

The DNS was not designed for that.

Well, there's not a lot of difference between DNS as a residential application for a residence area of a territorial jurisdiction with, and without, an iso3166 code point.

Just last night I spoke to a top bureaucrat at the city's IT agency who indicated that they are looking to Verisign, NuStar, and other prospective contractors for policy guidance. "Here's how you sell more names, faster, and cheaper. Sign here."

Writing CORE's .nyc application was a learning experience, if not for DOITT, then for myself, and for CORE.

There's huge pressure to sell names willy-nilly, both city budget shortfalls and 90% of the industry panting for new TLDs and pointing to historic faults as evidence that a thoughtfully developed .nyc TLD is impossible. We don't believe so and it would be good to have the strong support of NARLO and ALAC and NCUC and other entities inclined toward the public interest in matters Internet to add support to our effort.

As this list discussion illustrates, the desire for support from outside of New York may be difficult to fulfill. A similar lack of external interest in a standing problem was brought to my attention in the Summer and early Fall of 2001. I suggested that local utility in the form of solving the standing problem was more important than the absence of external interest, and in November 2001 the standing problem was locally solved. The standing problem was the absence of Han Script labels in the IANA root. The solution was to enter into service a constellation of servers serving the IANA root extended with the presence of Han Script labels. Initially zero internet users were benefited, as is common in the introduction of new infrastructure. Today in excess of 400 million internet users are daily beneficiaries, and after a decade of demonstration, the IANA root now contains an initial set of Han Script labels. Eric

in fact the reason i am involved with ICANN is the blooming of a 1000 blooms

We all have our favorite metaphors, although in this case I think the swarming of a thousand blood-sucking insects is more apropos. Look, there's basically two reasons to set up new GTLDs: ICANN said they would in 1998, and some people think they'll make a lot of money. Everything else is unpersuasive. (In particular, the "choice" argument is silly unless someone can explain what's so special about his favorite domain that it will get people to migrate from .COM when nothing else in the past decade has.) Back in 1998 I felt like you did, what the heck, set up some new TLDs. But since then I was surprised to see both how well Verisign persuaded the world that 2LDs are fashion accessories, and that 3rd levels are for losers, and how thoroughly the domain business has been overwhelmed by speculators and squatters and trademark lawyers and a whole lot of crooks. Now the process has gotten so expensive that you can't afford to apply for a new TLD unless you expect to get hundreds of thousands of registrations, just to cover your costs. I think .MUSUEM is cute and harmless, but there will never be another cute little TLD plodding on year after year with a few hundred registrations, because the registry would lose a fortune. If you need vast numbers of registrations, you can't afford to be fussy about who your registrants are, with predictable results, e.g., I know people who use the presence of a .info domain as a spam filter, with a close to zero error rate. So since we are smart people, isn't it time to look at what we've learned in 13 years, and admit that something that might have seemed like a good idea in 1998 isn't such a good idea now? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

Hi, I totally agree about the pricing issue. There is so much that is wrong with the way the new gTLD program is being priced. On the other hand that is not a reason, at least not for me, to delay or cancel the program. But it is why I spend hours and hours on the Support Wg for applicants from developing economies (JASWG) issues. ALAC on the other hand probably didn't agree, since they removed the work item from the JASWG charter that involved investigating the 100KUSD segment of the fee to see where further reductions for applicants from developing regions might be justified. You mentioned the technical plan. I agree that there needs to be a "technical plan that won't screw up everyone else", but even on the ICANN implementation went overboard, requiring every new gTLD to meet Verisign size technical requirements - even to point of requiring IPv6 support - which a purely political requirement. But then again, the fact that the program is not perfect is no reason for me to delay or cancel the program. Only a reason to work to see its 'availability to all' improved in this round and the next. a. On 3 Apr 2011, at 07:53, Jean Armour Polly wrote:

Avri said:

...

To be honest, I don't really see - why NYC needs a gTLD. - why anyone would want a .sport - or who should care about a .mine for some value of .mine

but so what? they think they need one. or they think someone else needs one. and that is good enough for me.

I agree with Avri. Also agree with John that the barrier of entry moneywise weeds out quite a few flowers before they get a chance to get into a seed packet, and to mix a metaphor, many have and will die on the vine. But if someone wants to enter that marketplace, and has a technical plan that won't screw up everyone else, why not? ICANN's answer is always colored by hmm, how will they sue us if we approve this? and let's not forget the ever-popular, "but what will the GAC say?"

JP

-- Jean Armour Polly http://www.netmom.com/

On 4/3/11 10:46 AM, Alan Greenberg wrote:

I can't speak on behalf of ALAC, but I can say why I opposed the "look at the 100k item"

Cost of application, and Joint Application Support related. In the discussion arising from a Draft ALAC statement on the SSR-RT Set of Issues, drafted by Olivier Crepin-Leblond, in the context of the cost of the DNSSEC requirement, an ALAC contributor has opined that imposing a $100k cost for all technical issues is a negligible burden, within a larger budget of "about 1M US$ soley for the ICANN related burocracy". As the date for consensus set by the drafter is today, and the ALAC contributor holding the views cited above has not responded to a set of questions on the necessity and utility of requirements substantially in excess of those imposed on all but 9 of the existing 332 registry operators, and substantially in excess of the requirements met by the .aero, .coop, .museum, and .pro operators in 2001/2002, and the requirements met by the .cat operator in 2004/2005, it is unlikely that there will be an ALAC consensus statement on the SSR-RT Set of Issues. I find it amazing that anyone has the self-assurance to use the ALAC's comment on the SSR-RT issues to advocate that applications with less than seven figures of capitalization, a tenth of which is allocated to meeting initially non-functional DNSSEC and v6 requirements, have insufficient capitalization and/or subject matter competency, and should be expected to fail operationally post-delegation, or be failed administratively prior to delegation. Eric

- I believe that there are Board members who are more likely to reject our entire package if questioning the $100k is a major component.

Since one of the goals of the new TLD program is to maximize ICANN's revenue, how about suggesting that they raise the price to $250K, and use the extra to subsidize the impoverished worthy groups who can afford all of the other expenses of running a TLD but don't have $185K lying around? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

Hi, And there you touch upon the reason I have always guessed the GNSO Contracted parties have for not being in favor of the JASWG and its recommendations. It has always been a logical conclusion of lowering the prices for one set of applications in the case where we don't find a reasonable explanation for why ICANN does not need to rake in as much excess funds, i.e. a non-profit's profit, as it currently intends to rake in. a. On 3 Apr 2011, at 17:53, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On 3 April 2011 18:29, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

...

...

- I believe that there are Board members who are more likely to reject our entire package if questioning the $100k is a major component.

Since one of the goals of the new TLD program is to maximize ICANN's revenue, how about suggesting that they raise the price to $250K, and use the extra to subsidize the impoverished worthy groups who can afford all of the other expenses of running a TLD but don't have $185K lying around?

I've actually been wondering about this,

If the GNSO policies demand "cost recovery", and staff has determined via statistics and magic that it costs $XXX to process an application, and we want to cut a break for certain applicants, then it's not unreasonable to charge the needy XXX-something and other applications XXX+something. If $XXX is truly $185,000 -- and staff is adamant not a penny less... then John's logic is reasonable.

Since the number of applications meeting the subsidy requirements are surely to be a fairly small proportion of the total, raising the general price to $200,000 would certainly allow the price for less advantaged applicants to $100,000 while still maintaining cost recovery goals.

That's one approach. My own has been to dispute that the entire cost to date of the TLD policy development process -- including the grief ICANN had with .XXX -- should not be amortised into the cost-recovery calculations of applications going forward, and as such the price for everyone should drop. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

- Evan ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss

Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------

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

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

On 1 April 2011 14:09, Avri Doria <avri@ella.com> wrote:

On 31 Mar 2011, at 15:51, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

...

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?

I think that to some extent all people who do not know ASCII are deprived by the absence of the IDN name space.

I'd already indicated IDNs as the exception, I was referring to the predominantly ASCII strings amongst the TLD wannabes. And anyway, we don't need the new TLD program to enable IDN TLDs, which are already underway under the fast track program. - Evan