[NA-Discuss] Fwd: [IP] from Dyson -- ICANN What’s the .rush? - The Washington Post

[Evan Leibovitch]

I really am tired of attempts to paint the debate as "anti-gTLD" versus
"pro-gTLD", that's being disingenuous and needlessly distractive. One can
acknowledge that there is a real need for a measured rollout that addresses
current deficiencies -- especially in non-Latin character sets -- while
asserting that the current plan is designed to extract rather than create
value, while increasing end-user confusion and ultimately making the DNS
less useful.

I don't know of anyone who says "no new TLDs, absolutely, anywhere", but I
know many that believe that the current  plan is designed is deliberately
planned to maximize revenue for the domain industry -- specifically
contracted parties, consultants and domainers -- while maximizing risk and
problems for gTLD investors, Internet content providers, poorer economies
and end-users everywhere.

There are some very sensible ways to do a staggered rollout that would
allow mistakes to be identified and corrected quickly, while determining
if/when we reach a saturation point after which more TLDs cause more harm
than good. The current plan does not allow for this, enabling a one-time
"goldrush" that makes mid-stream corrections impossible.

So there are some genuine reasons to believe that the current proposal does
not serve the public interest. That is NOT THE SAME as being against having
new TLDs. It is not At-Large who is saying that ICANN's way is the one and
only way. By the time we were allowed to get involved, the machine was at
full speed and we were given a done deal. We we not part of the process
that created it and our current ability to apply tweaks and mitigate the
damage is minimal.

Given a binary choice between "the current plan" and "no new gTLDs" I
choose the latter because the plan is *so* flawed that its public benefits
are vastly outweighed by the public harms, and our attempts to fix things
have met with minimal success(*). I myself believe that "no gTLDs" is also
an extremely poor choice -- but ICANN has rigged it so there are no other
options so I am forced to cast my preference for the lesser evil.

- Evan

(*) while minimal success is a great achievement compared to utter failure,
it's still minimal.