[Random-bits] Milton Mueller on ICANN domain name policy

[James Love]

More on the ICANN domain issue.  Jamie

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Subject: FC: Yes, British Telecom *does* want to segregate Web sites
   Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 15:56:03 -0500
  From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
    To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
    CC: john.c.lewis@bt.com

**********

Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 12:53:20 -0500
From: Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: Re: FC: British Telecom says idea "distorted," wants other
suggestions

Declan:

Your take on Lewis's policy perspective was exactly correct. I have been
interacting with Lewis and another BT representative on ICANN's Working 
Group C on new TLDs for several months. The BT representatives have
consistently  advocated a highly regulated DNS name space. For example,
instead of allowing new businesses and organizations to propose their
own new TLD names, BT wants ICANN to establish a central, fixed
classification scheme for new TLDs. Each TLD would have a very specific
"charter" as to who could and could not register within it.

As Lewis put it, "the TLD structure should embody a framework which
precludes replication of domain types, interest groups or business
areas, to avoid confusing Internet customers."

This has profound implications for the regulation of the Net as a whole.
Your discussion of how pornography might be classified did the community
a  service by highlighting one of the dangers of such an apporach. But
it is only one aspect of what could turn out to be a way to exert
sweeping forms of leverage over Internet content. Imagine how robust the
publication market would be if some  international authority decided
that there should be a "framework which precludes replication of
[magazine content] types, interest groups, or business areas, to avoid
confusing [magazine] customers." Imagine the regulation that would be
imposed as a relatively unaccountable international regulatory agency
(ICANN) decided which form of publication content belongs in which
category.

Those of you who have not been struggling in the trenches of ICANN's
working groups for the past 8 months probably cannot believe how rigid
and regulatory are the attitudes of the business and political interests
who have gravitated to ICANN's DNSO.

Declan McCullagh wrote:

 > Is BT justifiably annoyed or simply backpedaling from a proposal
 > accidentally sent to a public list? You decide:
 >    http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga-full/Arc00/msg00090.html
 >



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Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
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