ICANN Meetings

ICANN's next meeting will be Nov. 13-16, 2000, in Marina del Rey, CA. The Internet Democracy Project is conducting a meeting of At Large members on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 12, same location, so you don't have work as an excuse to miss it! The new At Large directors will be speaking at the meeting. Following that, the Berkman Center will have its own meeting examining intellectual property and the proposed new TLDs, and they've helpfully provided a set of background materials if you're not quite current with the issues. Note that ICANN "updated" their bylaws to prevent the newly elected directors from actually taking part in the ICANN Board meeting next week - they won't take office until just after all the new decisions about TLDs, etc., which will be made by the unelected directors, so it is very, very important to have some public participation since there aren't any public advocates on the board.

Comments

In the tradition of the Internet, ...

[The Man]

If there's a problem, we should fix it ourselves. And once the problem has been fixed in an actual implementation, then it will become a standard of its own right.

So what's this solution? Alternate root servers. Such a scheme might work like this:

• I set up an alternate root server at foobazco.org. This root server functions as a "gateway" root server in that it's a root server in the alternate network but also has a name in the old network.
• I make and distribute freely a cache file appropriate for my new root server(s).
• I/the users of the new network set policies for name registration that actually make sense (reasonable people can disagree, but I'm sure it'll be better than what ICANN has done).
• Users of the alternate network switch to the new root servers and register names in the new TLDs.
• The new root servers allow access to the old network by adding a .x extension. So for example, what's now known as mycompany.com would be accessible as mycompany.com.x.
• Conversely, users of the old network could reach the new network by appending .foobazco.org - or simply adding foobazco.org to their search path.
• Everyone gets tired of typing the extra stuff and the old network goes away.
• Somebody writes an RFC on the new network to make it official.

So, what do you think? Is this viable? It doesn't require any significant amount of work on the part of sysadmins or users, and in fact it'd be pretty easy to implement here. The only problem I see is getting people to use it, especially the corporations that are abusing the current system to their advantage. The solution to this, I think, is to make sure that the new ruleset offers something for everyone. I would suggest one set of TLDs, one per broad trademark area (media, retail, food, networking, hardware, software, etc.), in which you must hold a trademark in the relevant area to register it, and one set of TLDs in which registration is strictly FCFS. Registration in the trademark-protected TLDs would be expensive, say a one-time $500 fee for legal costs of verifying the trademark. This would be worthwhile, however, because the registrants would know that their property is being protected by us, saving them legal fees down the road trying to take away names from non-trademark holders. At the same time, registering in the non-trademark TLDs would mean that nobody could ever force you to give up your name, and would be much less expensive since no legal research would ever be needed. Registration in this part of the namespace would also be quite inexpensive, maybe just a few dollars a year.

The way I see it, this would offer something for everyone. Trademark holders will have access to a set of TLDs in which both they and the consumers will know they're getting the real thing, breeding confidence in one another and thereby encouraging people to do business. The traditional non-commercial Internet will be equally well-represented in the borderline-anarchy of the non-trademark TLDs. Registrants in this area will be permitted to register any names they like, and consumers should be discouraged from doing business with them. The point of this system would be that there is a place for everyone and no reason for protection of trademarks to be in conflict with the spirit of the Internet. While more TLDs in the current system might help, I think it's unlikely that corporation-run ICANN would ever really accept the idea of no trademark protection for registrants in any TLD.

I'd say this is an RFC, but I haven't implemented it. So instead please consider this a Request for Discussion. :-)

Oh, that explains it...

[wodelltech]

"...the morning of Sunday, Nov. 12, same location, so you don't have work as an excuse to miss it!"

More than half of your fellow Americans could give you an excellent reason to miss a Sunday morning meeting. Out of curiosity, have we ever had a poll here to determine the demographic makeup of /.?