[governance] new gTLDs

[Milton L Mueller]

From: parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net]

Neither, the rhetoric of attacking positions that make you feel good, which positions you know I never hold; like, your claim that I am on the side of 'people who want to control and regulate the use of common word in order to ensure that they are used "properly" or "fairly""

When, if I am saying anything at all, I am saying that common words should be allowed to be freely used by all, and not inappropriately pushed into  private domains, which is a form of 'control' over the use of those 'common words'.

[Milton L Mueller] Nice rhetoric, but you are really ducking the argument. I honestly think you don’t understand the issue here, so let me try to explain more carefully. A TLD string must be unique. Therefore it can only be assigned to one entity. That entity, the registrant of, let’s say, .WORD, decides what policies and practices determine what domains are registered under .WORD.

Tell me how you translate the idea that “common words (as domain names) should be allowed to be freely used by all” into a specific policy without violating the uniqueness and exclusivity constraint?

“Internet governance” is a generic term, and yet, <horrors> we at IGP have registered it under .org. And no, it cannot be freely used by all. It’s ours. It is a domain administered by IGP, just as ‘IT’ and ‘change’ are common words that your organization administers as its private domain. Our registration of that generic term Internet governance has not stopped dozens of other organizations having a significant profile in the area – Diplo, IGC, etc.

The only way to implement what you seem to be calling for is to set up a “word authority” that a) defines which words will be generic or common enough to be denied registration by any private actor; b) imposes on these generic terms a specific set of policies regarding how registrations are made. And that is what I mean when I say – with complete sincerity – that you will end up advocating the control and regulation of these common words.

Suppose your Word Authority dictates that .BOOK must follow the same open registration policy as now exists in .COM. Would that be “freely used by all?” No, even then, “open to all” will simply mean that second level domains will be registered on a first-come, first-served basis..COM and .ORG are open to any registrant, but that simply means that if I register BOOK.COM or BOOK.ORG, I get to have this common word all to myself at the second level. So to get what you seem to want, you would have to impose an even more stringent collective governance regime on how names are allocated and assigned within .BOOK.

If that is not correct please explain, in specific, implementable terms, how you would do it differently.

Even more ludicrous is your claim that "It is only a matter of time before you join the trademark lobby in their never ending quest   to ensure that politically approved true rights holders are allowed to use specific words in specific ways "

[Milton L Mueller] OK, I admit it, you will never “join the trademark lobby”, but only because you would never be caught dead with those corporate, commercial types. My point however, is that your argument takes the exact same form and leads to the same kinds of policies: some central authority has to control who registers every name.

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