Open letter to ICANN Board for approval of new gTLD program

[JFC Morfin]

At 04:28 15/06/2011, Nicolas Adam wrote:
>Now i am not going to dispute that. Nor will, i think, anyone who
>would favor gTLD enlargement (but i might be astray on this last
>assertion and it is possible that some people like ICANN for it's
>centralizing potentialities).  But you were nevertheless implying
>"harm". And while i do see an alternative, i do not see harm
>proceeding from the current gTLD-enlarging path.  I do not see
>anything that wouldn't be fundamentally changed anyhow by the
>alternative solution you introduce me to, and i certainly does not
>see harm being done, irreparable or otherwise, by a gTLD enlargement.

Nicolas,
There is no dispute. There are facts. These facts are simple enough:


1. The Internet has grown into a very, very large network, beyond
what its IETF decentralized technology (RFC 3935) was expected to
support. However, it will continue to grow within the distributed
world digital ecosystem. This growth, among others, calls for a
dramatic gTLD enlargement that must converge with other network and
service namespaces.

The only way the community has been able to control this growth, so
far, is through a political, legal, and financial driven context that
is coordinated by ICANN.

----

2. We discovered 18 months ago - this is what permitted the IDNA2008
consensus - that the built-in power of the Internet technology is
quasi unlimited if the existing RFCs and code are read and used
(without a single coma/bit change) in a new "multiplication by
subsidiarity division" intricate network context.

Highly professional and secure tools for this context are already
available to every Internet user for free (*). They can be made easy
to install in minutes. They are easy to extend for a better and
cheaper "Internet PLUS", but there is still no activated forum to
document the needed extended network layers: IESG and IAB have
identified them as external to the IETF area of responsibility.

-----

3. The gTLD enlargement is part of the DNS and of the whole internet
growth. As such, it will speed up the transition from context (1) to
context (2) above.

  ICANN has not yet considered or tested the implications of a blunt
introduction of this transition or the consequences of denying funded
gTLD projects. Under these circumstances a few times a $200,000
budget makes more than what is needed to compete with ICANN in a
technically legitimate way and create havoc in the DNS commercial use.

No community bottom-up process has considered it, discussed it, or
prepared plans. There is no defense discussed as yet against a blunt
introduction of the single authoritative virtual root even if sites
to document it are prepared. ICANN has not alluded to this
transition, not to its acceleration, neither in its existing and
planned TLD agreements nor in its Accountability Frameworks (ccTLD
will be the first ones to suffer). The GAC has not raised the issue
publicly as yet.

----

ICANN is informed, as it was adequately and actively represented at
the IETF/WG/IDNAbis, that it was proposed for them to take the
leadership in this area by their former Chair, and some GAC Members
discussed the issue informally.

Therefore,

- either ICANN plans to use the impending naming doom to its own
advantage. This would be committing suicide, except if this is to
prepare a crash, an undiscussed "Netkeeper Act" by governments and a
GAC takeover to "protect" TMs, ccTLDs, and gTLDs against "pollution".

- or ICANN behaves responsibly and wants, before unleashing the gTLDs
enlargement, a bottom-up GNSO concern towards a general debate and a
consensual solution that will ensure full community support.

In both cases, that are probably intertwienned together with Google's
own interests and capacity to take over a government/industry
controlled virtual root, we have to carefully review the situation
before committing ourselves. Being clever does not call for long
delays. Just some smart, reasonable and responsible quick thinking.
Before falling into a possible fatal trap or deciding a war at ICANN.

jfc


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(*) I use my own Bind copy or another nameserver on my Windows PC,
with my own root file, and a db file that I maintain for my own root
names (TLDs). Faster, more secure, reliable, protected, and immortal
than any root server system when a mobile is more powerfull than the
largest mainframes of 1983. Cost of my TLD: $ 0 to be used by my TLD
users, by user: $ 0 and by registrant: $ 0.