[NCSG-Discuss] Closed Generics - a letter together

[Milton L Mueller]

Kathy dearest
We are in total agreement as to the facts. Yes, ICANN contracts and policies impose all kinds of heavy and often quite arbitrary and unnecessary burdens on registries and make it 10,000 times more difficult to get a TLD than a SLD. Yes, the AG is a conservative document that "preserves your (current) view of the world" (although it does not rule out so-called closed generics and did anticipate them).

What you don't want to acknowledge is that those facts are products of political deals and political power. They arenot laws of nature, not required by technology. And the political constellation that produced those facts typically do not operate in the interests of this stakeholder group or of the individual registrant.

And it is what the policy _should_ be, how ICANN _should_ behave, what is in the _public's_ interest, that we are supposed to be debating here, not whether various interest groups have succeeded in hard-wiring economic and TM protectionism into ICANN's AG.

In the past, you've played a valuable role in challenging those arbitrary restraints but I guess you find them convenient to uphold now. I wonder why.

By the way, DNSSEC has to be implemented by registrars as well as registries.

--MM

From: Kathy Kleiman [mailto:kathy at kathykleiman.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 11:24 AM
To: Milton L Mueller
Cc: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [NCSG-Discuss] Closed Generics - a letter together

No, Milton, I disagree completely.  Second levels, third levels and top levels are different. You can try all you want to wish it away, but you can't.  Network Solutions, Inc., back when it was THE REGISTRY AND REGISTRAR of .com, .org, .net and more operated in a way far different than you or I as registrants did.

Registries, whether you like it or not, are imbued by the ICANN Community (and through contract with ICANN) with obligations to the protect the security and stability of the Internet. These are NOT magic words, they are substantive commitments that registries work on every single day.

DNSSEC, the ability to lock domains and ensure that they have not been hijacked (among other features) is a Registry-level implementation.

The Applicant Guidebook preserves my view of the world, not yours. It imbues Registries with obligations towards ICANN, the ICANN Community, and especially the Internet. These are real obligations, and ones the Registries will take very seriously -- or lose their TLDs.

Kathy


From: Kathy Kleiman [mailto:kathy at kathykleiman.com]


Because a domain name is not a Top Level Domain.
[Milton L Mueller] Sorry, Kathy, you're just wrong here. .FOO is a domain name. FOO.FOO is a domain name. FOO.FOO.FOO is a domain name. The DNS is recursive, is recursive, is recursive, is recursive...(repeat 64 times)

If we follow your reasoning, there's no reason to perform extensive Technical, Operational and Financial Showings/Review of New Registries.  We don't examine registrants, so why should we examine New gTLD Registries?

[Milton L Mueller] BINGO! You've just unmasked ICANN.

Fact is, there is _no_ reason to perform those showings other than the very fervent and politically potent desire of trademark interests, law enforcement, incumbent operators and governments to gain regulatory leverage over the domain name users and market. And I strongly suspect that you know that as well as I - but only when you are performing in your normal role as domain name rights advocate and not as lawyer for a client. ;-)

"Extensive technical, operational and financial showings" are regulatory mechanisms that reflect layer 9 policy demands. As layer 9 phenomena, they could be applied to SLDs as well as TLDs. Yes, the scary thing about your argument, Kathy, is that we COULD examine SLD registrants as intensively as we examine TLD registrants if the political demand exists. Indeed, some countries already do so (we will be visiting one in April). When you think up rationalizations for those regulations at one level, you are providing fodder for their application at any level.

Even in the most narrow technical sense, there is no difference. A badly operated TLD is no more or less impactful on "Internet stability" than a badly operated SLD. You may try to reply, "but wait, if .ORG goes down then millions of people are affected" but I will quickly reply "but wait, if FACEBOOK.COM goes down...." You get the picture. What matters is how many people use it, not what level of the DNS it is at.

If you are basing your entire argument against closed generics on the "special status" of one level of the DNS, you've lost the argument.





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