No, I didn't.
[...]
>
> Talk about how to conduct experiment with monopoly registries. Talk
> about how to set things up so that if a monopoly registry goes bad
> it is possible to recover from it. This would make much more sense
> then just crying anathema! unbeliever! from the rooftops.
Striving to ignore Jim's rhetoric and assertions about my beliefs and
behavior:
The issue is not monopolies -- the issue is for-profit monopolies. I
don't care if there are multiple registries; what I care about is that
gTLD registries be run in the public interest, and my assessment is
that the only viable way to do that is if they are required to be
non-profit. It seems fairly clear that it is a policy nightmare to
have some registries for-profit and others not, and that it is
absolutely untenable to have all registries be for-profit.
The argument for competing registries assumes that there is meaningful
competition possible between gTLD registries. Many people -- from
what I can see a substantial majority of those who understand the
issues -- believe there is no such meaningful competition, and that
the nominet vs name committee case is not a valid example.
Having multiple non-profit registries with different policies is
doable. But it implies that gTLDs should have different policies;
that registrars and customers need to deal with different policies and
different dispute resolution mechanisms. Because of the much
explained phenomenon of lock-in there will be no competition between
these policies -- they will just continue to exist as they started,
indefinitely, unless some public policy process comes along and makes
changes. That might be a reasonable way to go. But it won't be
competition, in any normal sense of the word, that makes registries
change their policies.
-- Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html