New registry services (Jisuk, Carlos,Marc - please note)

[Milton Mueller]

>>> Chun Eung Hwi <chun at PEACENET.OR.KR> 11/07/03 06:14PM >>>
>One problem is that given the importance of technical stability,
>pre-approval could be preferred. In Carthage meeting, John Klensin noted
>the importance backward stability by taking the example of IDN standard
>when he presented in Sitefinder workshop. They will argue that such kind
>of technical consideration should be done before the introduction of
>new service for the purpose of stability.

This is a good example of why I do NOT support pre-approval.

Klensin is famous for his belief in centralized control by a technical elite.
Unfortunately, he repeatedly uses "technical stability" as a cover
for political, policy and economic concerns. 

For example, Klensin is one of the major opponents of new TLDs. 
He used to pretend that they created technical stability concerns,
but those arguments have been defeated, so now he talks about the
problems of registry failure (which is an economic policy issue, not a 
technical stability concern). In fact, as he has admitted, he just
doesn't like new TLDs because he thinks they "add no value." 
He doesn't believe in letting consumers decide for themselves whether
they are valuable.

If ICANN is given the power to pre-approve registry services on 
"stability" grounds, there is no doubt in my mind that it
will abuse that power to impose on registries and consumers its
own ideas about how they should behave, regardless of whether
it involves real technical stability issues. 

If these guys really know what registry operations do and do not 
hurt Internet stability, let them put it into the terms of a contract. 
If a registry does something that breaks stability, it violates that 
contract, and subjects itself to liability.