[governance] It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!

[McTim]

Ian,

As I told Lauren on PFIR list, that ship has sailed, the time to speak
up about it was long ago.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel


On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:
> From Lauren Weinstein - copied from his blog.
>
> The Executive Summary - "The DNS and the domain name infrastructure made
> sense in an era before the universal availability of search engines and
> online directories. But for such massive costs and complexities -- such as
> those inevitably stemming from the ICANN TLD expansion -- to be incurred
> simply to map names to Internet sites is now both technically and
> economically obsolete and abominable".
>
> Internet co-founder Robert Kahn is one of just a number of people working on
> alternative resource discovery systems more akin to todays needs.
>
> Ian Peter
>
> Lauren's missive follows.
>
>  It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!
>
>              http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000776.html
>
>
> Greetings.  I'm going to keep this relatively short and sweet, since
> I've written of my concerns about ICANN's handling of Top-Level
> Domains (TLDs) many times in the past.
>
> The existing Domain Name System (DNS) has been leveraged in multiple
> ways into something akin to a protection racket, with vast sums of
> money being funneled to existing and wannabe registries, registrars --
> and to ICANN itself -- with little or no resulting tangible benefits
> to the Internet community at large.  That is, unless you consider ever
> increasing levels of costs and confusion to be some sort of benefits.
> Dot-com is still the single TLD that most Internet users recognize as
> fundamental among the increasingly disruptive clutter -- and you
> haven't seen anything yet compared with the pandemonium about to be
> unleashed.
>
> "Protective registrations" by trademark owners and other concerned
> parties in new TLDs have become an enormous profit center for various
> players in the DNS ecosystem, with boasting about the income that will
> be derived through such arm-twisting techniques now being commonplace.
>
> The amount of money involved is staggering.  In a few days, ICANN may
> release their new "guidebook" for upcoming TLD applicants
> ( http://bit.ly/9BZUNu [ars technica] ).  The application fee alone for
> a single new TLD is reported to be almost $200K, payable to ICANN.
> The cost of running a new TLD if you're accepted?  A whole bunch,
> likely including (but not limited to) big moola to ICANN every year.
>
> ICANN plans to limit the number of new TLDs to only (only???) about
> 1000 per year -- maybe half that in the first year.  Let's see,
> $185,000 times 1000 ... Nice chunk of change.
>
> Of course, ICANN claims that these fees are justified by the costs
> involved in processing these applications.  Assuming this is true, I
> can't think of a better proof that the entire process is rotten and
> dysfunctional to the core.
>
> The DNS and the domain name infrastructure made sense in an era before
> the universal availability of search engines and online directories.
> But for such massive costs and complexities -- such as those
> inevitably stemming from the ICANN TLD expansion -- to be incurred
> simply to map names to Internet sites is now both technically and
> economically obsolete and abominable.
>
> It's time to end the TLD madness.  It will take both time and some
> heavy lifting.  But there are alternative methodologies -- more
> efficient, extensible, and far more economical, much better suited to
> the Internet of the 21st century, and we need to start working on them
> now.
>
> Vested interests -- basically the entire "domain-industrial
> complex" -- who stand to profit mightily by exploiting the continuation
> and expansion of the unnecessary, counterproductive, and obsolete domain
> name system, can be expected to fight any efforts at significant
> changes, using every weapon in their arsenals.  Various other parties
> will also fight such changes -- since as we've increasingly seen the
> DNS provides an ideal mechanism for centralized censorship and
> heavy-handed intellectual property enforcement regimes -- through the
> disabling on demand of Web site name-based addressability.
>
> Be that all as it may, this is a battle -- nay, perhaps a war --
> necessary for the best interests of both the Internet and its global
> community of users.
>
> Please let me know if you'd be interested in participating.
>
> Thanks.  Take care.
>
> --Lauren--
> Lauren Weinstein (lauren at vortex.com)
> http://www.vortex.com/lauren
> Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
> Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org
> Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org
> Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance):
>  http://www.gctip.org
> Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
> Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
> Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
> Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz
>
>
>
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