<html><body><span style="font-family:Verdana; color:#000000; font-size:10pt;">For many years, there has been the argument by many that the Root determined by ICANN and IANA was THE root and any other occurrence was "alternate" or somehow lessor. Regardless of how you or ICANN may feel about this trend, as soon as China and the Arab League or other government bodies started running their own root, ICANN was relegated to the US root and all other nations or even individuals who can set their own DNS in their PC would then choose whose root they would subscribe to. <br> As long as the US had the only "Official" root and all others were "alternate" amd without government backing or following, ICANN and IANA ruled the roost and it made sense that the UN or other nations would want to share influence and control over what it did. With the trend toward designer roots for different governments and groups of governments, it now becomes the responsibility of every government to develop their own root or choose which other they choose to sign on to. <br> Under no circumstances should ICANN, set up as a public trust by the US government for the US people, be allowed to carry any assets away from the US ultimate control. It is no longer THE root, but one of several competitors. The US owes nothing to the world in this regard. Each government who thinks they can run a better root should do so.<br> What we need now, is something that coordinates the use of strings of characters in top level domains so that all roots have a single place to check to see that a new TLD in their root would not collide with an existing TLD in another root, ideally so that those who chose to, hopefully most, would run all the TLDS from all the roots and have no collision. There is such an organization long envisioned and now coming into readiness to handle just this responsibility. That is the Top Level Domain Association, Inc. While not quite there, progress has now sped up greatly and it WILL be ready before the JPA decision is made. Anyone, government or private club that wants to run a fully competent and complete root would be able to get a definitive list and necessary detail to carry every TLD that meets all criteria will be able to know they have done so by simply incorporating this list. Those that, for whatever reason, like China or the Arab League, would want to vary the list could do so by limiting some choices and adding others, but still such that no colision need occur for those that show everything out there.<br> I think it is about time for this conversation...<br><br>-Karl E. Peters<br></span></body></html>