ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs

Mon Jun 20 18:57:06 UTC 2011

ray,

> ... only trust ".band" and that ".com" et. al. are "less secure".

"secure" is not a well-defined term.

as the .com registry access model accepts credit card fraud risk,
a hypothetical registry, say .giro, with wholesale registration at
the same dollar price point but an access mechanism accepting less
risk than credit card fraud would have less "insecure" registration
events.

as john levine pointed out, the hstld advisory group attempted to
address a property of "zone file(s)." as a member of that advisory
group i made public comments on the issues, technical and process,
it encountered.

> With a $185,000 application fee this tends to really kill small
> businesses and conditions the public to favor ecommerce with the
> giants, not to mention a nice revenue boost for ICANN.
> 
> Would love to hear the dirt on backroom conversations that led to this
> decision...

a mainer has been invovled in policy development since, before there
was an icann. a vermonter is on the current icann board.

when looking for root causes, while the policy recommendation made by
the policy development body did not restrict the implementation of the
new gtld application process to a single event, staff adversity to law
suit risk precluded distinguishing between types of applications based
on policy -- say "high policy" applications like the original sponsored
applications before "low policy" applications like the original standard
applications -- and evaluating one type before the other. i suggest to
you that institutional risk adversity (there exists a litigation history
with the legacy monopoly operator) is the answer to questions of the
form "wny one single, indivisible, wicked expensive, evaluation process
for all?"

> ... there will be enough public outcry to reverse it... but I'm
> not optimistic.

i would prefer "participation" over "outcry", and the act of "involvment"
seems to be more on point than the mental state of being "optimistic",
but milage always varies.

on thursday there will be a text from the governmental, and the at
large, advisory groups, on applicant support from developing economies. 

-e