on 7/29/2002 9:15 PM Peter Deutsch wrote:
Works? Yeah, maybe for some definition of "works", in that
people can give money to more than one entity to get a
string into .COM, but is that really solving the problem
ordinary users actually want solved?
In this world view, the current state of the DNS namespace -
in which the majority of TLD users live in .COM, and the
vast majority of English (and French and a few other
languages) dictionary strings are already taken - is a
terrible disservice to users and thus is something to be
"repaired".
There is no question that the best way to silence the bulk of the valid
criticism would be to make ICANN an administrative function instead of a
policy function. IOW, they should be handing out TLDs, rather than
deciding which TLDs are handed out.
However, a quick review of the first-round delegations has shown that
there are still a significant number of policy issues that have to be
resolved first -- issues such as sunrise, delegation escrow and recovery
are still not resolved. I'm willing to give them a bit more time to
resolve these issues, but at some point they need to make the cut. Another
of my personal disappointments is that they have not established a
timeline or even a schedule for this, to my knowledge.
I do not believe that any other organization -- neither the alternate root
providers nor the alternate TLDs -- has these interests at heart. Anybody
that wants to perform the administrative role would also have to deal with
these issues, regardless of whether they admit it or not. None of them
have even admitted it yet, and therefore lack essential credibility.
--
Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/