Roeland Meyer wrote:
>In the past few months a means has been discovered to legally protect new
>TLDs, even from the ICANN.
Doubtful, if you are referring to gTLDs. You can have gTLDs outside the
root, thus "protected" from ICANN, but they will remain outside the root.
If they become authorized to be in the root, they fall under ICANN's
spectre of influence. If you trademark a name, and ICANN decides to add
new gTLDs, it will be wise to avoid the name you have chosen. I don't see
any great new discovery here.
>The new Shared Registry System, being beta-tested at this moment, is no answer,
To date, not a single testbed registrar is ready to accept applications
under the new SRS. Thus, the beta test may be over (June 24) before it
ever really began!
>The policies, set by NSI, will be forced on the registries.
>This includes the DDRP. The only result will be to add an extra layer of
>insulation for NSI.
Which registries? If you meant to say registrars, my understanding is that
this is not true. Registrars in the testbed can establish their own
policies as regards registration and presumably their own domain name
dispute policies, too.
>
>When IANA commissioned the IAHC there was much jubilation
IANA did not commission the IAHC. ISOC passed a resolution in June 1996
approving Jon Postel's revised draft proposal in principle (to create new
registries) and encouraged its further refinement. IANA joined forces with
other groups to form a task force called the International Ad Hoc
Committee. And the IAHC Draft Specification for the Administration and
Management of gTLDs, published 12-19-96, was not greeted with much
jubiliation, but with contentious discussion, and heralded the beginning of
a long debate to which ICANN is now heir.
>Jon Postel clearly never intended to allow the IFWP process to complete,
>from the beginning. Jon sandbagged all of us.
I don't think you are in a positiion to say what Jon Postel, RIP, intended
or how he felt as the IFWP process moved forward. And, IMHO, it doesn't
assuage the current abyssmal state of ICANN affairs to cast stones at a
dead man. To his credit, Postel facilitated the development of DNS
archictecture with a tiny staff, who are all being replaced by a humongeous
bureaucratic-like structure that apparently will be on a perpetual world
tour. To his credit, Postel recognized the pressure of the growing
Internet on the gTLD namespace and suggested a means of broadening it. He
also addressed the nature of trademarks vis a vis the domain name structure
and his comments were part of the public record.
Let us agree that the authority of the current ICANN board is both
debatable and dubious, and its imposition on the DNS scene will continue to
haunt ICANN until an elected board replaces this one.
> More than anything else, the ICANN is Jon Postel's legacy.
IANA is Postel's legacy. The significance of RFC-1591 is Postel's legacy.
ICANN is a transmogrification into something substantively different. It
promulgates policies affecting registrants, not solely registrars and
registries.
>At the Berlin meeting, there is intention to validate the various DNSO
>constituencies. Aside from the fact that this mechanism is meant to divide
>the opposition
Amen to that. I fail to see the virtue of establishing DNSO
constituencies, except to pre-occupy its members with various byzantine
definitions. Meanwhile, we run the risk of having an unelected,
unaccountable, closed ICANN board make policies which will have drastic
effect on the future of the Internet.
>Legally, there is also no way to prevent a host from adding to the
>root-zone file, on their own, nor is there any legal way to prevent
>someone else from doing so and making this enhanced root server available
>on the Internet.
AlterNIC, eDNS, uDNS all created such a parallel universe. (see Chapter 13,
The Domain Name Handbook) in 1996. Problem was, without being part of the
authorized root, only 1.5% of the traffic used this alterweb.
Past is prologue, but it appears that history is in the eyes of the beholder.
Ellen Rony Co-author
The Domain Name Handbook ____ http://www.domainhandbook.com
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ISBN 0879305150 (oo) -^-- +1 (415) 435-5010
[EMAIL PROTECTED] W W Tiburon, CA
Dot com is the Pig Latin of the Information Age.
