[At-Large] At-Large Use of Country and Territory Names as Top Level Domains

[Christian de Larrinaga]

Evan

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

A pause to tune the program is one thing. But a full stop to wait for a
full evaluation that needs an unlimited time maybe ten / twenty or more
years would likely be seen as really being a call for a complete halt.

That would be akin to creating a new layer of "haves" in the Internet
domain space. That seems obnoxious.

Also if the program is so destabilising then the consideration may need
to go further and roll the program back? That isn't going to happen is it.

On the grounds you mention for intervening. Cyber Security is a good hot
topic of course but the expansion of tlds hasn't expanded the problem
space just the domain space it can exist in. For  users the same
caveat's need to apply across all that space. So there is no substantial
change in the problem scope for users.

The monetary return or bankruptcy of speculators is a matter for them
and market regulators. ICANN presumably was well aware of the risk where
a domain may cease to be economically viable and fails to consolidate
into stable registry operators.

But bit-rot is an ever present problem of many Internet protocols. We
see http sites, and services disappearing all the time without systemic
implications for the Internet. It is annoying of course and makes for
appalling implications for the historical record.

But in an era where the right to be forgotten is being made law a few
inadvertent disappearances due to resolution failures that in one
protocol perspective (DNS) isn't in itself a systemic issue.

Of course if the health industry for example should run all online
monitoring services through one tld and that goes down then that would
be a severe disruption for that sector. So probably a bad idea to create
such unhelpful industry integrated dependencies. But when did a silly
idea not become a hot marketing ticket?

The point about user confusion is valid I think. But the problem here is
that no data network or IT device or service I've seen has had users
sufficiently familiar with it before it was introduced. Thirty years
after the introduction of GSX, GEM, Mac and Windows 1.0 most users are
still skimming the surface of using GUIs. It is over 50 years since
Command lines and even fewer can use these effectively. Familiarity to
reach universal acceptance to wait before new innovations is an endless
argument that has no chance of being heard in the market.

What we need are better mechanisms for users to take control themselves
of Internet resources and devices they depend on. In that sense seeing
more from the vast pools of cash being generated by incumbencies created
through the economic and political force that hierarchical protocols
create into empowering users to exert market control over them would be
a good use of our time.

Can a hiatus in new tld roll out achieve a step in that direction?



Christian

Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> On 22 September 2015 at 12:09, Christian de Larrinaga
> <cdel at firsthand.net <mailto:cdel at firsthand.net>>wrote:
> 
>     A *full* evaluation could be a long ... hiatus :-)
> 
> 
> 
> ​What's wrong with that?​
>  
> 
>     That horse bolted and
>     ​ ​
>     took the stable  (ICANN) with it. I doubt it can be put back in its box.
> 
> 
> 
> ​Why not?​
> 
> ​Until a new round is approved ... a new round is not yet approved :-)
> 
> I am not sure what is irreversible in this regard. There is no
> obligation for ICANN to accept new applications if it deems that the
> current expansion did not deliver what was promised and that further
> expansion must be examined before commencing.
> 
> We know, at very least, that the monetary promises of the expansion have
> materialized but a small fraction of what was originally predicted. So
> even based on that a stop to reflect is warranted.
> 
> There are other issues such as public confusion, spikes in phishing
> using new domains, the performance of PICs and the lack of " universal
> acceptance" that collectively make this a stability matter as well.
> 
>  ​- Evan
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Christian de Larrinaga