[governance] A workable, gTLDs process, now

[Thomas Lowenhaupt]

I agree with CW and firmly believe that the ICANN's admirable but 
unworkable one-application-fits-all approach for new TLDs be discarded. 
And I see CW's proposal presenting a reasonable prioritization. However...

I'd like to suggest that group 2, "the public interest, 
linguistic/cultural and geographical/city proposals" be divided into 
public interest city-TLDs and linguistic/cultural TLDs. As a proponent 
of city-TLDs, such a call can reasonably be seen as self serving, so let 
me explain the split and the prioritization in favor of cities.

1.  Both city-TLDs and linguistic/cultural TLDs are long overdue. Had 
the Net's inventors known the scope the Net would take, they'd certainly 
have taken greater care in issuing a more robust DNS taxonomy. But with 
cities being the hope for a sustainable future (if you believe in that 
sort of stuff)  I suggest they get first priority.

2. If one were to weight the two categories for a degree of disruption 
caused by not having a TLD,  I'd again go with cities for sheer number 
of people who will benefit, with more than 1/2 the world's population 
living in urban areas. (Now urban is not necessarily city, and I'll not 
focus on that now, other than to note that we see the .nyc TLD 
facilitating regional consolidation.)

3. The linguistic/cultural TLDs are potentially a can of worms for 
nation-states with .kurd and .kashmir being two examples of where some 
nation-states will strongly object. In many instances Nation-States were 
created to meliorate problems of culture clashes and we should not 
advocate taking that role from them lightly. Some, like those for native 
cultures in North America, can be more easily processed than others, but 
some degree of caution is warranted.

4. A minor issue, the city and cultural/linguistic are different enough 
that they should be handled by different ICANN examiners.

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt
http://bit.ly/OurWiki

On 2/23/2011 2:20 PM, CW Mail wrote:
> Good evening:
>
> As I understand it there will be an important meeting early next week 
> in Brussels which may influence what ICANN does with the new gTLD 
> process.
> For those of you who will be present, I would recommend the following 
> line:
>
> 1.    To disaggregate the process. First, to give priority to the IDN 
> applications. Secondly to separate the public interest, 
> linguistic/cultural and geographical/city proposals from all the rest.
>     Thirdly to address the <.brand> issues as an entirely distinct 
> process where, with WIPO, the related competition and trademark issues 
> can be considered; i.e. postpone.
>     Fourth, to address the <.generic> proposals: these may be 
> supported provided that they are associated with a rigorous 
> registration policy, subject to public consultation .i.e. not to 
> postpone, but they will take longer.
>
> 2.    Regarding Vertical Integration, I have seen nothing which would 
> lead me to amend the posting which I made last August, and which for 
> some reason has not been cited in any of the ICANN Briefing Papers:
>
>     http://forum.icann.org/lists/vi-pdp-initial-report/pdfFZQIl7H2Er.pdf
>
>     In short, the attempt last year within GNSO to associate the new 
> gTLD process with backward integration between Registrars and 
> Registries has (a) caused a breakdown in the bottom-up consensus 
> process (b) been a cause of further delay and (c) flies in the face of 
> ICANN's mandate as the custodian of competition policy in the DNS. No.
>
> I shall post this message to the Lists with which I am associated:    
> Governance, At Large, ISOC.
>
> With regards to you all,
>
> CW
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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