[NA-Discuss] Opinions requested from the At-Large community on objection comments received on new gTLD applications.

Eric Brunner-Williams ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Tue Jan 29 22:18:02 UTC 2013


I've filters for the na-discuss traffic.  I skip the writings of Evan
Leibovitch, Carlton Samuels, and Darlene Thompson, which I don't
expect comes as a surprise to everyone.

Because this was quoted in RJ Glass' post, I saw it. I think it worth
comment.

> I find myself treating current At-Large approach to the gTLD
> expansion as an exercise in damage mitigation.

This was not the purpose for which people then associated with At
Large, myself included, worked to ensure that the public interest, not
restricted to the interests of governments, would have standing to
participate in the implementation of the policy defined, in part, in
the evolving Draft Applicant Guidebook of the past five years, and at
this stage of the implementation process, object to those applications
for which a public interest harm is manifest, using what standing to
object had been conceded to "At Large" by an indifferently or worse
lead Staff, the narrow self interests of the Contracted Parties, and
the equally narrow self interests of the remaining primary actors of
the GNSO -- the IPC and its captured Constituencies.

>                                                 My cynicism has
> strangely led to indifference about the appropriateness of most
> specific applications,

The author of this remark can cure his cynicism and indifference and
carry out the task for which the author "volunteered", displacing
others neither cynical nor indifferent, or withdraw and allow others
not sharing the strangely linked cynicism and indifference to attempt
to carry out the policy for which so much effort by so many was expended.

>                         as I sincerely think that most TLDs will
> crash and burn anyway.

This is beside the point. Further, as pure, standalone business
operations, all of the 2000 round applications failed or found
external sources of revenues, as did all of the 2004 round
applications, with the single exception of .cat, which was profitable
in the 2nd quarter of operations and remains so to the present.
NeuStar (.biz/.us) was saved by the North American Numbering Plan
Administrator contract revenues ($.01/call terminated in country code
"1"), Afilias (.info) was saved by the .org redelgation and legacy
revenue. Gier's adventure (.name) failed and was acquired by Verisign,
and the .pro mess never even took off. The 2004 recital is no
prettier. With external revenues, the minority of 2000 and 2004 round
applicants that have survived to cost recovery capable revenues took
more than five years to achieve it.

Even accepting the "most will fail" conceit, the application of the
policy developed for FailOver is not something that should be walked
away from.

Further, each round is a learning experience, not necessarily for the
applicants, many of whom from 2000 and 2004 are defunct, and not
necessarily for the Corporation Staff, as the last managerial
experience purged much of the 2004 and 2000 round corporate memory,
and not necessarily for the Corporation itself, as its tenure is not
necessarily indefinite, but for the policy development record, for
learning what can, and cannot be done, with the
mnemonic-string-to-resource association, and the business models that
succeed, and the business models that fail, in the larger environment
of settlement-free peering, advertizer pays, trademark primacy, and
service-for-fee in a network with no other anchored source of address
block or name delegation, and a vast and as yet unpolicied amount of
criminal purposing of universal access.

> Many, many registrants will be hurt along the way, many of them
> domainers for whom I have zero sympathy. But what can we do along
> the way to minimize harm to end users, knowing we can't reopen the
> present gTLD creation process?

We, assuming that word actually means something, can exercise the
current stage of the Dengate-Thrush management period generated
process (Rod was just along for the ride and of no consequence) and
implemement the process available to "us" to the best of "our"
abilities during the Fadi Chehade management period.

To minimize the harm to end users we can sure that applicants know
that they are required to implement the commitments made in their
applications, and that the Corporation knows that it will be the
recipient of published advice concerning the public interest, so the
process is policied, by the better Staff and the better members of the
Board, and the GAC, and the SSAC and RSAC, and yes even by the ALAC,
and not by some subset of those, less the ALAC. Doing less than that
is surely not going to more effectively minimize the harm to end users.

I ran against Evan Leibovitch for a policy role in the last NARALO
election because he does not speak for me.

Eric Brunner-Williams




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