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

Tue Sep 22 18:59:47 UTC 2015

Dear All, 

It is great to see a vibrant discussion on this topic!

To help the penholder (Maureen Hilyard) keep track of the comments and also
to bring more visibility to this discussion, I took the liberty to paste
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https://community.icann.org/x/VIxYAw.

I would encourage you to continue this discussion using the comment function
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Thank you,
Ariel  

Ariel Xinyue Liang
Policy Analyst | Washington, DC

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

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-----Original Message-----
From: <at-large-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Christian de
Larrinaga <cdel at firsthand.net>
Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 12:32 PM
To: Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
Cc: ICANN At-Large list <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Subject: Re: [At-Large] At-Large Use of Country and Territory Names as Top
Level Domains

> 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
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> 
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