What's that Yeats said about the "worst are full of passionate intensity"?
After all the he said/she said, they can/they can't, they will/they won't,
consider these facts, and their inexorable consequences:
1. No-one that I know of has claimed that Magaziner's plan would do away
with domain name portability, which is clearly the main thing from the
consumer's point of view -- the ability to take her domain name with her
when she wants to change registrars. Magaziner in a personal
correspondence told me I was completely wrong when I suggested that his
plan would do away with domain name portability by setting up competing
monopoly registries -- which means that all the registries have to co-operate.
2. If all the registries co-operate, it means that there has to be some
kind of guidelines to ensure that all registries are interoperable, and
that there is some way to deal with disputes between registrars (forget
about disputes between SLD owners).
3. If there are guidelines, that means that someone has to write those
guidelines and enforce them. This is called "regulation".
4. If Magaziner is willing and able to send CORE/POC into the wilderness,
the only group that could provide this regulation is the U.S. Gov't itself.
5. Ergo, a competing registry plan would mean, willy-nilly, that the the
U.S. Gov't is planning to regulate the domain space itself, albeit
"temporarily", whatever that means in Government terms.
It is completely inescapable.
Now, consider what the Government will have to do in order to implement its
regulation:
1. Pick a group of experts to come up with a plan. This group would then
have to:
2. Pick some names -- which won't please everyone
3. Decide what to do about trademarks -- in concert with trademark holders,
from all countries. Count on big input from trademark concerns.
4. Come up with a dispute resolution policy that works for everyone around
the world, and leaves the domain name space as free as possible from
crippling litigation, while still preserving the right to go to court
5. Decide what a registry would have to do, technically and from the point
of view of operational fairness
6. Decide on the criteria for choosing and regulating registrars so that
they don't contribute to various evils such as cybersquatting, holding up
domain holders for outrageous renewal fees, and so on.
7. Deal with governmental interests, U.S. and foreign.
8. Provide a method for the direct input of domain users
9. Find a way to get input from everyone it could
10. Make decisions and use Occam's Razor to decide how to change things in
the face of valid criticism, and how to ignore dumb (if vociferous)
commentary.
Does this sound familiar? Right, it's IAHC/POC, now with a different name.
Whatever they come up with, it will look a lot like what's in place now.
It will just take a lot longer.
If the triumphalist eDNSers are right, please look forward to another four
years (because it will take at least twice as long) of the same process
that the IAHC/POC has just been through. Except that this time, everything
will be embroiled in all of the ludicrous soap-operas that can happen in
Washington. We might all come up with a solution that pleases everyone
except the distinguished Senator from XX, who, in return for his support of
the President's budget, will insist that the whole thing get turned over to
SAIC, or whoever...
The big winner? Well, since all this won't happen overnight, it will be --
inevitably, surprise, surprise, NSI.
Happy now?
Antony