Contrast Beckstrom's interview with DelBianco's Argument Against New TLDs

[Alex Gakuru]

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 5:16 AM, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have not seen any studies/reports that show any reasonable well thought
> figures. Probably after the initial investment in infrastructure, people and
> processes the additional cost is probably marginal.

This would suggest that new investors will replicate infrastructural
and institutional investment costs to be passed on to consumers making
the marginal cost further more irrelevant on expect 'first recoup
investment' argument.

> I still need to see a good explanation about how the gTLD program will
> foster competition. At the retail level there is competition already, with
> the new gTLDs and current technology where we have to preserve the
> uniqueness at the registry level we are just creating new but smaller
> monopolies. For sure what consumers will get is additional choices
> rather than competition that will drive down prices.

Maybe we actually expect prices to go up not said competition to lower them?
Increased choices come with "option creation" baggage somebody has to bear.
This smacks of doom to young and fragile registries..

> I don't see how we'll get into a more competitive model when by choice
> most of the people tend to get names under the most popular and
> attractive TLDs such as .com.

Competition will be amongst us the consumers? I've consistently
opposed a "register your name as a domain-otherwise somebody else
will" domain marketing approach by some folks. I find it like "life
insurance" salesperson tactics - create problem then offer insurance
cover solution. Its an unfair way of pushing 'competition' down to the
individual level.

That said, I do not mean to support monopolies as "the one true way"
to lowest prices. I also look forward to a model that optimises on
competition at registries level without proposing that all *everyone*
becomes a registry paying $$ to ICANN. I've just been re-informed DAG
(v3) will be out before 24th Oct.

> On the other hand, and something that I believe was mentioned somewhere
> but not many talk much about it, getting a name in a new gTLD has some
> painful glitches that has been experienced in the past when the new
> TLDs were introduce during the "proof of concept" days.

Didn't know about it. Will look it up.

> There are many applications, canned scripts, filters, etc, that rely on
> a limited number of TLDs and a quasi stable root zone with no frequent
> changes to validate fully qualified domain names. For example some
> popular scripts for processing forms on shopping carts or subscriptions
> to electronic mailing lists do not validate the address you put on the
> forms doing a dynamic query (even in some cases a dynamic query
> may not help for validation because some ISPs are tampering with the
> DNS to manipulate the responses to direct you to a web page of their
> choice), they check the address against a static table that contains
> the ccTLDs and the well known and established TLDs.

Add censored links and the problem gets compounded. Telcos/ISPs in
such regimes may sprinkle some own private net access controls then
blame it on 'complicated' new gTLDs meanwhile.

> When I've got my amodio.biz domain it took me a while to deal with
> all the sites that didn't recognize .BIZ as a valid TLD.
>
> So despite that there will be some confusion with the new gTLDs,
> some things will not work on day one.

Add IPv4 exhaustion in 731 days ( see counter at
http://www.ipv6forum.com/). I think ICANN needs us more than we need
them. They should be on bended knees pleading with NCUC's Civil
Society to help them innovate on advocacy for IPv6 integration e.g.
"expanded online expression spaces", "unlimited IP address for
everyone in the world" etc.

> In some other places people avoid the ccTLDs because of the poor
> service some ccTLD administrators provide, even if they don't charge
> a dime for it (which is a warning sign that there is always a chance
> that the ccTLD operation may become underfunded and not up to
> the task).

ditto. And further, commencing a conversation with Randy Bush and
Michuki Mwangi on AfTLDs.

> Going back the root scalability reports, this is a very interesting
> article that captures what is being said between the lines on the
> reports, ie we may see new gTLDs perhaps in 2012.
> http://www.internetcommerce.org/ICANN_Delaying_New_gTLD

After getting over IPv4 exhaustion and envisaged v6 integration challenges?

> I hope these reports (if not ignored by the board and the rest of
> the community) help to remove some of the pressure from the
> gTLD program and provide another chance to do it right.
>
Any study on the impact of proceeding with both "full-scale" vs.
internet stability?