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

[parminder]

While ICANN functions remain essential, I have always felt that the 
ratio of all its paraphernalia/ costs etc to its actual mandate/ 
contribution/ outcomes is exceptionally and unacceptably high....

The reason for this appears twofold

(1) ICANN has a captive and self-determined tax base and income through 
its monopoly service. They need to spend it to justify it.

(2) There is that real underlying struggle to keep representative (but 
deep) democratic governance out of Internet, and if possible, 
information society, realm, and for that purpose to promote a new global 
governance model that is open, transparent and inclusive in its apparent 
design but in fact serves to reproduce existing social and political 
dominations.

Parminder


On Thursday 04 November 2010 11:41 AM, Ian Peter 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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