Jim and Anthony:
Both of you seem to have missed the essential point.
Which is, that the current administrators of *both* ccTLDs *and* gTLDs have what must
be
treated as a kind of property right in their registries, and that whatever ICANN does
cannot overturn or abrogate those rights without creating problems. This is true
REGARDLESS of whether the registry is a ccTLD or a gTLD. This is the point you keep
evading, or perhaps do not understand. Everything you repeatedly say about the lack of
wisdom in fooling with a ccTLD administration applies equally well to a gTLD or to a
ccTLD run by a commercial entity and marketing itself like a gTLD. There is no
difference.
Jim Dixon wrote:
> OK, I will spell out what I have written here many times before: Postel
> chose, very wisely, to defer to the relevant sovereign government
> _whenever there was a dispute over which server the entry in the root
> zone should point to_.
>
> > I'm sure he would have
> > used the same "common sense" deference if two people from the University of
> > California or the Mitre Corporation came to him claiming to be the system
> > administrator for either of those institutions' domains.
Uh, Jim, you utterly failed to answer this argument. The issue is not "sovereignty" or
"deference to sovereignty." The issue, very plainly, is that there can only be one
administrator of a domain, and Postel wanted the organization, not himself, to decide
who it was. Again, this simple fact applies whether or not the domain in question was a
ccTLD a gTLD or a SLD administered by a corporation. Granted, a "country" is a much
more
loosely defined and complex thing than a corporation or university, so that it is more
likely there will be uncertainty about who in a country is responsible for
administering
a domain. that does not alter the fact that the relationship between a central
coordinating agency and the TLD administrator is the same in both cases.
> No. The point is that wherever there was a dispute and the relevant
> sovereign government indicated a preference, IANA deferred to the
> sovereign government.
As it deferred to whoever in an organization requested the SLD assignment. So? Both
administrators had to follow the same rules.
> > > More like, "do what you like with the gTLDs, but use common sense
> > > when dealing with the ccTLDs".
We've already demonstrated, and you've been forced to concede, that IANA could not and
did not "do what it liked" with gTLDs.
> > > Were ICANN to attempt to assert authority over the ccTLD registries,
> > > the minimal result would be that they would quietly ignore ICANN's
> > > "regulations". A more likely result is an international uproar and
> > > the elimination of ICANN.
I note that you also failed to answer my argument that the exact same statement could
be
made about the gTLDs.
> It may be that under some readings of California or US law ICANN or
> IANA or the US government could drop .FR from the root zone or transfer
> .UK to Milton Mueller's garage registry. The practical effect of either
> of this would be disasterous, so no one in their right mind is going to
> do it.
Same goes for .com. Do you get the point yet? I am getting tired of repeating it. ICANN
does not have arbitrary power over ccTLD registries, and it does not have arbitrary
power over gTLD registries.
> This is what matters here. Not your reading of the law or mine or
> Esther Dyson's. What matters is the very practical fact that for a
> California corporation to attempt to overrule the wishes of a sovereign
> state in this matter would result in an international uproar and at
> minimum the elimination of that California corporation as a force for
> mischief.
This requires some clarification. ccTLD registries are not sovereign states. The
majority of true sovereigns--Presidents, heads of legislatures, etc.--are not even
aware
of who in their territory runs the ccTLD. ccTLD registries are businesses or
organizations who happened to have been granted the right to run one of the TLDs.
But. Just to make it abundantly clear, I am not arguing that ICANN or anyone else has
the right to dictate their policies, throw them out of the root, or any other such
nonsense. I am making the simple--but very important--point that there is no
distinction
in this regard between ccTLDs and gTLDs.
I am insisting on this point because I think the ccTLD-gTLD canard is a sneaky way for
certain people to argue that proprietary registries are BAAAADD when they are called
"gTLDs" but UNTOUCHABLE when they are called "ccTLDs." In both cases, they are, in
fact,
proprietary registries. I think the false and logically indefensible distinction
between
the two will lead to bad policy, in a variety of ways.
--MM
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