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US Government Responds Harshly To ICANN gTLD Plans
ICANN posted its proposal for expanding gTLDs late in October, and now the US government has issued its scathing response (PDF, 11 pp., linked from there), from the departments of Commerce and Justice. The initial criticism is that John Levine sent a note to a policy mailing list and summarized the concerns raised as ranging from "...insufficient attention to monopoly and consumer protection, to lack of capacity to enforce compliance, to overreach into non-technical areas such as adjudication of morality, to what they'll do with all the extra money since they are a non-profit. Their first concern is that in 2006 the ICANN board said they would commission a study on economic issues in TLD registrations such as whether different TLDs are different markets, substitutability between TLDs, and registry market power, issues which are fairly important in any new TLD process. Here it is two years later, they're rushing to set up the new TLD process, but there's no study. 'ICANN needs to complete this economic study and the results should be considered by the community before new gTLDs are introduced.'"
"to overreach into non-technical areas such as adjudication of morality"
All the governments that don't have the same level of free speech (pretty much just the US) delve into censorship via guise of morality. Considering the strength of the internet, it would be especially worrisome if the governing authority will start deciding you and what you say is not all right with them. It starts with the things hard to defend (say Stormfront) but are protected under the 1st amendment and the loop will close from there.
This just in, the US government is pissed off at an international organization... Oh...wait, nothing new here.
" and hack up $75/year"
It was $100 for two years and $50 for renewal per year. 1/3 of that went into the NSF's "Intellectual infrastructutre fund" that NSF staffer Don Mitchell (who started and ran this) wanted to "keep the IETF *process* (not the IETF per se) alive. This fund was pretty much stolen by Mike Roberts the first CEO of ICANN. It was his reward for clearing the way for the ICANN steamroller back a decade ago at it's incepttion.
You all understand the institutional purpose of ICANN is to prevent the creation of any new tlds for their buddies in the intellectual property section of the legal departments of large corporations eveyrwhere, right?
If you knew how many tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars had gone into blocking their seeing the light of day you might be quite shocked. So this news, of another delay, isn't exacly news.
When icann does something right, call me, that's news.
Need Mercedes parts ?