[governance] Re: It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level

[JFC Morfin]

At 09:37 05/11/2010, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
>The domain name system does not provide "mapping of names to Internet
>sites", this is very secondary and could be done by other means such
>as DHTs. Its main purpose is to provide stable and reliable
>identifiers. (This is where I would agree with Lauren Weinstein: UDRP
>is an abomination since it breaks this stability: your domain can be
>hijacked with an UDRP at any moment.)

Yes.

However, leasing them to people is worse. One does not rent one's 
name to one's government.

This is why the whole DN issue has to be entirely reshaped (and 
market). Up to now, it was logically advisable. It is now 
strategically urgent, now that IDNA2008 has architecturally triggered 
a separation between the unchanged and solidly confirmed Internet DNS 
function, and the open diversity of the Internet users' open use of 
domain names. "Function" means what everyone can technically do (load 
a running code, provide a nameserver, build db.files, etc.) and "use" 
what everyone can freely do (for exemple, decide as to when he/she 
enters "dumb.nuts" on his/her machine that he/she wants to use to 
reach the ICANN site).

For years people have considered DNs for internet mechanical 
identification only. They forgot that they are names which also 
belong to humans with two consequences:

- they relate to a meaning in a given domain, i.e. to a semantic notion.
- names are for identification (by authority), designation (by me), 
appellation (by us) and denomination (by them).

Both in the linguistic and human diversities context.

Now that the internetwork side of the DNS has stabilized in 
confirming the DNS RFCs in the multilingual context, it is up to the 
interuser side to be worked on. There are at least two major works ahead:

- to explore, design, and document an open use technology that is 
able to match the extension of the users' expectations.
- to test new adminance (long-term planning) schemes, as per ICANN 
ICP-3 document. As such, the testing need is not so much for the 
replication of the existing usage through a FAST TRACK-like legal 
exercise, but rather to support eTLD projects (experimental TLD, 
using a new economic, structural, political, philosophical, etc. scheme).

An example is  our Projet.FRA of a Francophone TLD for an open 
ontology in the French language of which the namespace is the 
taxonomy. This project had to overcome two practical major problems 
created by the "IESOCANNTF" current Internet leading enhanced cooperation:

- the IETF vision of Internet linguistic support, based upon 
Unicode's globalization support strategy (typographic 
internationalization of the media [Unicode/Internet unity], 
localization of the ends [Unicode CLDR project of locale file], 
filtering of the content [based on the Unicode initiated and 
controlled IETF/IANA langtags]).
- the cost, legal obligations, and technical conceptions of an ICANN TLD.

The langtag project was toughly faught and a consensus was found 
(against us) in asking for what we did not want :-). IDNA2008 led to 
some contentions, but the final consensus was found with us. However, 
IDNA2008 does not fully support what we need (for example, French 
"majuscules") or special keyboard signs that are however sold and 
supported by some major registrars). We reported tour solution to the 
IESG they qualified as  research. Wee will actively demand our 
experimental TLD to be entered in the root when we are ready and we 
will enter it in the experimental virtual root matrix as its general 
support and use develop.

IMHO, these are real civil society Internet issues that come prior to 
the MAG or UN, Simply because if they are not addressed, there will 
be no more Internet :-)

jfc

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