You wrote:
> By now, many of you have probably read the USG green paper on
> DNS administration. Needless to say, it contains many things that
> are at odds to the gTLD-MoU vision of the future.
>
We did.
<big snip>
> While there are points of agreement, much of what is in the USG green
> paper is
> at odds of our vision of how the generic name space should be managed.
> We need
> some time to carefully prepare our arguments against this vision and
> explain the
> pitfalls. I urge you all to think carefully about the long-term
> implications for
> the Internet in the USG paper and also prepare your arguments.
>
I agree on the fact that we should provide arguments against this
vision, and propose alternatives. As a matter of fact, we have to
compare the two models (GP and gTLD-MoU) and explain why we think the
latter to be the better.
But maybe it will be good also to start thinking "why" the GP is like
that. What is the strategy of the USG? Is there a real model proposed?
IMHO, thew main purpose of the document is just to stop the process of
the gTLD-MoU.
USG has realized that the Internet is self-evolving without the "help"
of the USG (just to be clear: without the "help" of *any* government),
and this is somehow unacceptable. In other words, it is not the gTLD-MoU
solution in itself that is rejected, but the process that cornered
political authorities.
On this, the powerful lobbying of NSI, who is threatened by the
possibility of a serious competition, pushed to the current contents of
the document, in which NSI will be granted three gTLDs while to the
others only one will be assigned (for the time being).
NSI evidently had the time to get ready in advance, pretty much as if
they had the cristall ball to know in advance what the orientation of
the USG would have been: they created the WorldNIC, and are now ready to
split Registrar from Registry, in order to comply with the paper. It is
though very unlikely that they will open up Registry to competitor
Registrars, my little finger said.
Last but not least, at first sight the approach of having competition at
the Registry level on top of the competition at the Registrar level
(which has general consensus, with the possible exception of the current
monopolist) is much more advanced: the perfect model, market laws to
rule everything, free competition at all levels, and so on. Giving a
second thought, it leaks. It is obvious that access to multiple
Registries, each with its own protocols, will be very difficult to
handle by Registrars, that will be forced to have different interfaces
for different gTLDs. Unless the next step will be to come out with the
great idea of defining a common protocol (NSI's, I suppose, rather than
CORE's). Well, this whole story reminds me of the statement of the
Leopard in the famous book + movie "Change everything in order not to
change anything".
A thorough discussion on the reasons why the GP came out at this time
and with this contents is necessary in order to better understand what
our reaction shall be.
Regards
Roberto