Subject: Re: Tired of Waiting

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 98 09:54:56 -0400

From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <[email-masked]> 

    Originally, and the fubar that IOD stepped into, IANA even had a TLD
    registry set up and running. Chris even officially used the published
    process. >poof< Suddenly there was no process and the check was returned.
    Then the scum-bags at CORE decided that the WEB name was so neat that
    they wanted it, since IOD obviously couldn't use it. Does IANA help
    defend IOD? They do not.

The fly in this particular complaint (which does have a smidgen of merit, but
let's not get into the grubby details, they don't matter for this larger, and
much more important point) is that:

+++ New TLD's should not be new "Oklahoma Land Rushes" for entrepreneurs who
+++ are out to make a quick buck.

In other words, it's *critical* that the *Registry* for a new TLD be operated
as a public trust, not as someone's way to "make money fast".

(If you don't see why for-profit, but competing, Registries don't work, ask
yourself how you'd feel once your snappy URL http://my_name.new_tld/foo/bar
is embedded in 10,000 web pages world-wide, and your for-profit Registry then
ups the rate to $1,000 per month....)

>From this observation - that for-profit Registries are a bad idea - one can
see why it was not wholly unreasonable that the original "published process"
was withdrawn.

	Noel

---

From: Jay Fenello <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:09:55 -0400

>ups the rate to $1,000 per month....)

Hi Noel,

You are using faulty logic.

While everyone agrees that it would be bad for a 
private registry to increase renewal costs to $1000,
forcing registries to operate on a bureaucratically
controlled public trust model is NOT the only solution.  

Your argument is misleading at best.

Regards,

Jay Fenello
President, Iperdome, Inc.  
404-250-3242  http://www.iperdome.com

-----------------------------------------------------------
"None of us knows where all this is heading, but if we get 
it right, we have an opportunity that only comes once every 
couple of hundred years." 
                                  -- Ira C. Magaziner

---

From: "Robert Raisch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 11:11:04 -0400

> ups the rate to $1,000 per month....)

If the roles of registry, registrar, and tld-owner are maintained
separately, there is no such danger.

We need to create a model where those who seek to enjoy the financial gain
from the TLD system also shoulder its litigative burden.  This can only be
supported when registries and registrars operate as "common carriers."  If
registries and registrars must accept business from all comers, irrespective
of TLD, then commercially owned TLDs are not only supportable, they
concentrate the litigative pressure where it belongs, with the TLD-owner,
not the infrastructure (registry) or the customer/customer-proxy
(registrar.)

See http://www.raisch.com/DNS-Model.html

--
Rob Raisch, Online Technology Evangelist <http://www.raisch.com/>

"A work of art should also be `an object difficult to pick up.'
It should be made of such a shape that people don't know which way
to hold it.  It should hide its riches, to reveal them little by
little over a long period of time...the slower it opens its petals,
the later it will fade."  - Jean Cocteau (paraphrased)

---

From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:04:38 -0700

>as a public trust, not as someone's way to "make money fast".

This entire point was hammered to death, in the first half of this year, on
DOMAIN-POLICY. You really don't want to go the "public trust" route. See
the archives. I thought it sounded neat too, but there is a specific legal
meaning to the words "public trust".

>ups the rate to $1,000 per month....)

There are folks out there that are perfectly capable of blowing their own
brains out too. The good thing is that they can only do that once.
Similarly for such a Registry. The customers would be inconvenienced, but
they'll go to another Registry, sueing the pants of their old one as they
go. You do realize that such a move is a legal breach of contract don't
you? There *are* remedies available for such breaches. 

Why is it that some folks think that there is no law, or that existing law
does not touch the Internet? There are numerous court cases that prove
otherwise. Contract law is very much in force, as is its application.

>see why it was not wholly unreasonable that the original "published process"

I respectfully submit that you observe incompetently, sir. 

Also, to answer yet another point. Becasue of the legal morass regarding
"Common Carrier" in the US (subject to individual State regulations, etc),
we really don't want to go there either. There isn't a State government
that wouldn't like to tax the devil out of the Internet, even if they kill
it in the process. The biggest pirates of all legislate out of Sacramento,
California. We just got them to place a moritorium on taxation. Going the
Common Carrier route changes all that completely.

BTW, your arguments, as regards the links, is a canard. Most web-servers
reports broken links and re-route them, if possible. They disable them if
not. It's an inconvenience, nothing more.
___________________________________________________ 
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
e-mail: <mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]
Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/
___________________________________________ 
SecureMail from MHSC.NET is coming soon!

---

From: "Robert Raisch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:18:20 -0400

Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
> Becasue of the legal morass regarding
> we really don't want to go there either.

I concede "common carrier" was a poor choice.  My comments regarding common
carriage were meant as a illustrative abstraction, not a legal definition.
Based upon recent law, AOL enjoys a status similar to that of a common
carrier, since it is legally protected from the data flowing through it.
This is the characteristic I tried to invoke.
--
Rob Raisch, Online Technology Evangelist <http://www.raisch.com/>

---

From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:40:19 -0700

>This is the characteristic I tried to invoke.

One need not be a "Common Carrier" to enjoy such protections. Indeed, our
service depends on this. There is much legal precedent that exonerates the
ISP, providing that they take suitable measures, from being responsible for
on-line content provided by another party. One of the key tests is
demonstrating that they have no practicable control over content. Another
test is whether or not the content is indicriminately available as a truely
"public" posting. Sheer volume goes a long way to answering the first and
restricted access answers the second.

---

From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:58:09 +0100

Noel and all,

> +++ are out to make a quick buck.

  No one has said that they should be to my knowledge.  Is this just another
paranoiac personality talking here?

> as a public trust, not as someone's way to "make money fast".

  No one has disagreed with this.  And why can't a for-profit company
achieve this within some specific guidelines?

> ups the rate to $1,000 per month....)

  This is a "Straw Man" argument that just doesn't necessarily hold water.  The
reverse
in a For-profit registry company may also occur if they are receiving a large
amount of registrations that exceeds their business projections.  This would
make it advisable to reduce the registration fee as to draw more registrations
in that particular TLD name space.

> see why it was not wholly unreasonable that the original "published process"

 regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [email-masked]

---

From: Milton Mueller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 18:07:26 -0400

Noel Chiappa wrote:

> New TLD's should not be new "Oklahoma Land Rushes" for entrepreneurs who
> are out to make a quick buck.

I agree. Let's take this a bit further and stop software developers from making a
quick buck. We should have stopped MCI from breaking up AT&T, because they were
just inaugurating a "long distance land rush" and were out to make a quick buck.
We should have stopped the first commercial broadcasters in the early 1920s,
because *they* were initiating a land rush to make a quick buck. We should have
stopped the PC clone makers who undermined the proprietary standards of the
computer manufacturers in the early 1980s because they were out to make a quick
buck. We should have stopped the commercialization of the ISP business because
they were out to make a quick buck.

I'm so glad we have people like Mr. Chiappa to protect us from these quick-buck
artists. Once in a while, though, I wonder what will be left of the Internet and
the information economy once he succeeds in turning it all into a "public trust."

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 21:48:41 -0400

> I agree. Let's take this a bit further and stop software developers
> from making a quick buck. We should have stopped MCI from breaking
> up AT&T, because they were just inaugurating a "long distance land
> rush" and were out to make a quick buck.

There is a difference between making money getting a government
assigned monopoly, and making money by *eliminating* a monopoly and
introducing more competition.

There is also a difference between making money by being the first
person to race across a line and plant a flag, and by being the first
to complete an innovative R&D program.

Noel is criticizing the first kind of activity, not the second.

Perry