Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re: [governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

[Karl Auerbach]

Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
> I would distinguish between new.net & IPC3.

I agree that new.net did a poor job informing consumers about what they 
were getting - which makes it a consumer mis/representation issue rather 
than a matter of internet governance.

I was thinking of some of the statements made by ICANN management that 
went beyond that and tried to create an image in the press that new.net 
offered technology that was dangerous - which it was not - and thus was 
bordering (to my mind on the wrong side of the border) of commercial 
defamation or interference with another's contractual relationships.  (I 
vaguely remember some legal action being contemplated against ICANN on 
this basis.  I do not know if it ever occurred or not.)

> On the underlying issue, it's clear that alternate roots, ... It's hard at present to see the value 
> proposition given the risks for investors, which is why it's not 
> happening. Economics, not law, I think.

And that is precisely the point of my discussion - competing roots are 
an economic and business matter, not a matter of internet governance.

As I have suggested before, there is a potential commercial value:  Most 
people forget that the traffic that hits root servers almost always 
contains the full domain name being queried.  Consequently root servers 
are in an admirable position to do data gathering and apply statistical 
methods to produce a real-time stream of "what's hot and what's not" on 
the internet.

For example, by using the queries coming into a root server, an 
advertiser during the US Superbowl game could evaluate the effectiveness 
of its competitor's adds (at least those that contain URL's) and react 
with counter-ads before the game is over.

Of course that marketing data is of value and accuracy in accord with 
the number of queries going to those roots.  And thus there is a startup 
issue: How to drive queries to those roots?

The answer is to take a cue from Google - pay people to use the 
competing root.  Send a check for $100 for every million queries that a 
user/ISP sends to a given root system.  That, just like Google's AdSense 
program, could prove a real attractant.  (Of course, like Google's 
AdSense there would have to be protection against synthetic clicks or 
queries and an caching would have to be taking into account [i.e. a user 
should not receive more $$ if he/she turned of caching in his/her DNS 
resolver.]  But those are problems that I am sure could be constrained, 
if not completely eliminated.)

There are other commercial forces that would be unleashed by relaxing 
the dogma that the internet must have one catholic root.  For example, 
the current TLD business model is filled with rather expensive ICANN 
mandated bells and whistles - yearly cycling being the most obvious, 
whois and the use of registrars being next in line.  I figure that a 
streamlined business model could get the cost of names down to a few 
cents per year, or less - rather less than the $7 level that ICANN has 
gifted unto Verisign.  The savings to internet users could be enormous - 
by my estimate ICANN has created a system that extracts over 1/2 of a 
billion dollars every year as a gift to the registry operators - 
Versign, PIR, etc.

It would be nice if internet users had a choice.

And yes, there should be enough information so that it could be an 
informed choice.

		--karl--
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance