Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
Hank Nussbacher hank at ibm.net.il
Tue Apr 28 09:46:23 CEST 1998
At 03:20 PM 4/27/98 -0500, Jim Fleming wrote: In your opinion? Want to make a mess of nTLDs as has happened to gTLDs? RFC1591 defines specific rules as to what is allowed or not allowed. To quote: 3) The designated manager must be equitable to all groups in the domain that request domain names. This means that the same rules are applied to all requests, all requests must be processed in a non-discriminatory fashion, and academic and commercial (and other) users are treated on an equal basis. No bias shall be shown regarding requests that may come from customers of some other business related to the manager -- e.g., no preferential service for customers of a particular data network provider. There can be no requirement that a particular mail system (or other application), protocol, or product be used. 4) Significantly interested parties in the domain should agree that the designated manager is the appropriate party. The IANA tries to have any contending parties reach agreement among themselves, and generally takes no action to change things unless all the contending parties agree; only in cases where the designated manager has substantially mis-behaved would the IANA step in. However, it is also appropriate for interested parties to have some voice in selecting the designated manager. There are two cases where the IANA and the central IR may establish a new top-level domain and delegate only a portion of it: (1) there are contending parties that cannot agree, or (2) the applying party may not be able to represent or serve the whole country. The later case sometimes arises when a party outside a country is trying to be helpful in getting networking started in a country -- this is sometimes called a "proxy" DNS service. The Internet DNS Names Review Board (IDNB), a committee established by the IANA, will act as a review panel for cases in which the parties can not reach agreement among themselves. The IDNB's decisions will be binding. Believe me, if a gov't finds that some Unir organization has appropriated it's nTLD and is running it into the ground - they will find the way to take it over. Everyone, Jim has always been and always will be an "agent provocateur". Lets just ignore his ramblings and leave the matter alone. -hank > >People seem to have no problem allowing the 2 letter TLDs >to be grandfathered to have immunity from the Green Paper >and the U.S. Government. The assumption appears to be >that the 2 letter TLDs have been delegated to individuals, >companies and in some cases governments with care. This >is not necessarily the case. > >In my opinion, the 2 letter TLDs should be treated as generic >tags and should not be given a pass when it comes to requirements >for stable governance and operational excellence. If this is not >done, consumers may be mislead that 2 letter TLDs have the >same industry oversight via the IANA Inc. and self-regulation. >Consumers may find that they are subjected to arbitrary policies, >predatory price increases and shoddy operations unless they >are warned that 2 letter TLDs are immune from IANA Inc. oversight. >This will not be a good thing and may cause well-run 2 letter >TLDs to suffer because of the unsatisfactory practices of a few, >poorly managed 2 letter TLDs. > >Of course, part of the problem is defining what poorly managed >means. In some parts of the world business practices may be >tolerated that are not common in the U.S. For example, people >may choose to discriminate based on a variety of reasons. One >of the most obvious is that companies supporting the government >obtain <SLD>.TLD registrations and those that do not are excluded. > >Much of this assumes that the government is the current delegate >of the 2 letter TLDs. As the domain name debates rage on we >find more and more that governments do not have a clue what is >happening with the 2 letter TLD that was supposedly delegated to >them. Instead, we find that the 2 letter TLDs have been casually >delegated to people and companies that gave the right impression >of representing the government or local people but who actually >use the TLD for their own business purposes. > >None of these things can be easily fixed and there may be no >need to fix them IF the consumer is alerted to this situation. >Unfortunately, the Green Paper and the IANA Inc. might end >up sending the wrong message if they require generic TLDs to >be held to one standard while 2 letter TLDs are immune. In my >opinion, all of the TLDs should be held to the same high standards >of business ethics and operational integrity as agreed upon >by the Registry Industry. The question remains as to how to do >this...? > >To date much of the focus has been on ADDING TLDs to the >legacy Root Name Servers that the U.S. Government supports. >Before TLDs are added, there may have to be a review of the >existing TLDs to see where they stand from a business ethics >and operational standards point of view. In some cases, 2 letter >TLDs may need to be removed from the legacy Root Name >Servers. How this should be handled needs to be debated by >the people actively involved in the Registry Industry. > > >- >Jim Fleming >Unir Corporation >IBC, Tortola, BVI > >http://www.nic.vi > > > > -------- Logged at Tue Apr 28 19:43:34 MET DST 1998 ---------
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