[NA-Discuss] FW: The European Commission Papers on ICANN

John R. Levine johnl at iecc.com
Wed Sep 7 22:31:49 UTC 2011


> I admit I am somewhat of an outsider and my opinions are subjective. But it
> seems to me that all the vocal opposition to new TLDs is coming from the
> 80s/90s Internet old guard.

Some of it is from us geezers who've been around long enough to understand 
how utterly different ICANN's rhetoric is from its reality, but I don't 
think the EC or the IAB are the old guard.  And in any event, perhaps one 
might take a hint from the observation that the longer people have been 
observing ICANN, the more cynical and hostile they become.  Perhaps it's 
not solely because we're going senile.

Look, I spent three years on the ALAC doing what the ALAC does and going 
to all the ICANN meetings.  I initially asssumed that ICANN was run in a 
more or less straightforward way, but the more I saw, the less I liked it. 
Evan's note is spot on, the blather is all lovely, but as soon as you 
suggest something that might interfere even a little bit with the 
registrars or registries revenue stream, ICANN freaks out.

If you compare the reality of every new TLD added since 2000 to the 
promises made, they are without exception total failures.  If you dial 
back the expectations by about 98%, you could argue that .CAT and .COOP 
are somewhat successful, since they each serve s modest fraction of their 
quirky little communities, but the enormous cost of new TLDs in the future 
ensures that will never happen again.  Why in the would (other than the 
usual Upton Sinclair reason) would anyone expect anything different in the 
future?

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



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