[At-Large] New gTLDs

[Wendy Seltzer]

Great to meet you all in San Juan,

Here's my write-up reflecting on the problems with the current policy
development process and Board review for new gTLDs.  Overall, I think
the entire framework of allergy to failure is wrong-headed:

Aging the Internet Prematurely, One PDP at a Time
<http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2007/07/01/aging_the_internet_prematurely_one_pdp_at_a_time.html>

After blogging about ICANN's new gTLD policy or lack thereof, I've had
several people ask me why I care so much about ICANN and new top-level
domains. Domain names barely matter in a world of search and hyperlinks,
I'm told, and new domains would amount to little more than a cash
transfer to new registries from those trying to protect their names and
brands. While I agree that type-in site-location is less and less
relevant, and we haven't yet seen much end-user focused innovation in
the use of domain names, I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I think
ICANN is still in a position to do affirmative harm to Internet innovation.

You see, I don't concede that we know all the things the Internet will
be used for, or all the things that could be done on top of and through
its domain name system. I certainly don't claim that I do, and I don't
believe that the intelligence gathered in ICANN would make that claim
either.

Yet that's what it's doing by bureaucratizing the addition of new domain
names: Asserting that no further experiments are possible; that the
"show me the code" mode that built the Internet can no longer build
enhancements to it. ICANN is unnecessarily ossifying the Internet's DNS
at version 1.0, setting in stone a cumbersome model of registries and
registrars, a pay-per-database-listing, semantic attachments to
character strings, and limited competition for the lot. This structure
is fixed in place by the GNSO constituency listing: Those who have
interests in the existing setup are unlikely to welcome a new set of
competitors bearing disruptions to their established business models.
The "PDP" in the headline, ICANN's over-complex "Policy Development
Process" (not the early DEC computer), gives too easy a holdout veto.

Meanwhile, we lose the chance to see what else could be done: whether
it's making domain names so abundant that every blogger could have a
meaningful set on a business card and every school child one for each
different face of youthful experimentation, using the DNS hierarchy to
store simple data or different kinds of pointers, spawning new services
with new naming conventions, or something else entirely.

I don't know if any of these individually will "add value."
Historically, however, we leave that question to the market where
there's someone willing to give it a shot. Amazingly, after years of
delay, there are still plenty of people waiting in ICANN queues to give
new gTLDs a try. The collective value in letting them experiment and new
services develop is indisputably greater than that constrained by the
top-down imaginings of the few on the ICANN board and councils, as by
their inability to pronounce .iii.

"How do you get an answer from the web?" the joke goes: "Put your guess
into Wikipedia, then wait for the edits." While Wikipedians might prefer
you at least source your guess, the joke isn't far from the mark. The
lesson of Web 2.0 has been one of user-driven innovation, of launching
services in beta and improving them by public experimentation. When your
users know more than you or the regulators, the best you can do is often
to give them a platform and support their efforts. Plan for the first
try to break, and be ready to learn from the experience.

To trust the market, ICANN must be willing to let new TLDs fail. Instead
of insisting that every new business have a 100-year plan, we should
prepare the businesses and their stakeholders for contingency. Ensuring
the "stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier
systems" should mean developing predictable responses to failure, not
demanding impracticable guarantees of perpetual success. Escrow, clear
consumer information, streamlined processes, and flexible responses to
the expected unanticipated, can all protect the end-users better than
the dubious foresight of ICANN's central regulators. These same
regulators, bear in mind, didn't foresee that a five-day add-grace
period would swell the ranks of domains with "tasters" gaming the
loophole with ad-based parking pages.

At ten years old, we don't think of our mistakes as precedent, but as
experience. Kids learn by doing; the ten-year-old ICANN needs to do the
same. Instead of believing it can stabilize the Internet against change,
ICANN needs to streamline for unpredictability. Expect the unexpected
and be able to act quickly in response. Prepare to get some things
wrong, at first, and so be ready to acknowledge mistakes and change course.

I anticipate the counter-argument here that I'm focused on the wrong
level, that stasis in the core DNS enhances innovative development on
top, but I don't think I'm suggesting anything that would destabilize
established resources. Verisign is contractually bound to keep .com open
for registrations and resolving as it has in the past, even if .foo
comes along with a different model. But until Verisign has real
competition for .com, stability on its terms thwarts rather than fosters
development. I think we can still accommodate change on both levels.

The Internet is too young to be turned into a utility, settled against
further innovation. Even for mature layers, ICANN doesn't have the
regulatory competence to protect the end-user in the absence of market
competition, while preventing change locks out potential competitive
models. Instead, we should focus on protecting principles such as
interoperability that have already proved their worth, to enhance
user-focused innovation at all levels. A thin ICANN should merely
coordinate, not regulate.


My earlier post, after the Free Expression workshop, is at
<http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2007/06/25/icann_keep_the_core_neutral_stupid.html>

Feel free to adapt any of this.
--Wendy

<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0> (yes, I need to version my
licensing)

-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy at seltzer.org
Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/