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

[Karl Auerbach]

I am always surprised at how easily people buy into the belief that 
complex and intrusive inquiries are needed before a new TLD applicant 
can go into lawful business.

It is my feeling that the large bulk of the requirements being developed 
by ICANN derive from a highly paternalistic impulse on the part of 
ICANN, an impulse that we see in Lauren's initial posting that triggered 
this thread.

Paternalism is nice and all that, but it does treat people as children 
who ought not to be able to make their own choices within the scope of 
lawful activities.  As such I see ICANN more as a revival of 19th 
century top-down imperialist institutions than as an expression of 
modern popular governance.

Here's what I believe ought to be sufficient:  A simple promise to abide 
by national laws and printed, freely available, widely honored internet 
technical practices.

I drew up the application form for this back in 2007: 
http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000324.html

I figured that it ought to cost less than $100 to file this.

Now, getting through that application would merely place the applicant 
into a pool from which applications would be picked and put into a root 
zone file.

How that latter mechanism I did not address, but it ought to contain a 
significant random-choice or first-come-first-serve component and ought 
not to cost more than a a couple of dollars to administer.

	--karl--
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