[CPWG] [GTLD-WG] [registration-issues-wg] Verisign DissingDomainers?

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi again,

However, I must say that the land analogy is exactly the point for ICANN
> and the DNS industry.
>

There are some useful similarities but also some very significant
differences.

   - ICANN has the nearly infinite ability to create more domains, whether
   or not such action serves the public good. Even though its last round of
   gTLD expansion brought limited public benefit and many registries are
   failing or merging, the industry demands that ICANN create more. And since
   the domain industry can compel ICANN to do its bidding, that is the path we
   are headed with little thought to the public interest.

   - ICANN also has the ability to destroy domains. While the power to
   destroy (ie, remove from the root) a TLD is rarely used, ICANN does have
   the technical ability. There is already an example of a domain it would
   like to destroy but has not -- the ".su" domain previously associated with
   the Soviet Union but now unattached to any country since the adoption of
   ".ru" and other ccTLDs formed by the breakup of the USSR. Maybe others
   better versed than I can speak to ICANN's use of this power

   - Rarely does anyone need to buy land "defensively" -- buy it and leave
   it unused forever just so a competitor doesn't get it and pretend it's
   your land. Yes most brands have been swamped by every TLD threatening that
   if the brand doessn't buy the domain someone else with ill-intent just
   might. This is issue has been especially acute in TLDs such as ".xxx" and
   ".sucks" which by their very nature can cause problems if associated with a
   brand.

   - That is, the function of domains is not only one of commodity, it is
   also that of identity -- a dual function that is aggressively promoted by
   the domain industry. This is why there is a massive conflict between ICANN
   and intellectual property holders that has no equivalent in real estate,
   leading to an entire constituency within ICANN, the IPC, to assert such
   parallel ownership rights. And it leads to massive conflict over issues of
   identity which are not technically trademark related, such as whether
   ".amazon" is the entitlement of regional governments or an online bookstore.

   - There is also a social function related to the current "wild west" of
   domains, a negative one, that the industry doesn't care about but has IMO a
   significant impact which ICANN never discusses. That is, we have a
   situation in which common dictionary words such as "dogs", "health" or
   "insurance" can be owned by a single entity which then claims property
   rights to the word itself merely by owning the domain, It is also a
   significant source of confusion (since "cars.something" or "something.cars"
   does not point to general information about cars but to the information
   presented by whomever owns the dictionary word).


For years, we have been discussing issues "within the box".  That is, we
> have been trying to find solutions within the current structure and its
> concepts of domain name ownership, etc.
>

That is by design. Issues discussed within ICANN are heavily limited to
those within ICANN's scope, which is of a very specific way of creating and
managing Internet domains. During the formative years this process was
guided (dictated?) through ICANN's patronage by the US Government. That
patronage connection is gone, but the inertia it has created -- plus the
placing of ICANN policy-making solidly into the hands of the industry it
supposedly exists to oversee -- ensure that substantive change within the
structures of ICANN is pretty well impossible,

We are totally agreed that ICANN has fundamental defects. We may be
disagreed on whether these defects can be fixed within ICANN, given that
its structure is effectively designed to protect the status quo. Incoming
ICANN Board members -- even the ones elected by At-Large -- are sworn to a
fiduciary duty to protect ICANN-the-institution, not the public interest.

As a result, whenever a significant challenge is presented -- as often
happens when the ITU meets and ICANN's defects are laid bare -- we are
presented by fear-mongers with a binary choice. Which serves the public
interest better -- a domain-management regime controlled by totalitarian
governments, or one captured by the domain industry? No third option is
ever presented. However, at the rate things are going, to me it is
inevitable that the ITU will achieve a consensus that even governments
couldn't do worse than the status quo. The "multistakeholder" pretense that
ICANN brandishes to defend its industry capture is increasingly exposed as
a deception, and eventually even friendly governments will have their
patience exhausted.
(These days, to me "multi-stakeholder" means nothing more than "there's no
such thing as conflict-of-interest so long as you declare it".)

You want out-of-the-box? If I had my way, ICANN's power structure would be
flipped. It would be governments and civil society and technicians and
research-based public-interest advocates that would create policy, with
industry serving in a critical but non-voting advisory role. The domain
world would look very different under such a regime, and in any case we
have the world's ccTLDs -- over which ICANN has no say -- to act as
competitive balance.

However, in the industry-captured ICANN of today the mere presence of such
discussion would simply hasten calls by the industry to de-fund ALAC even
below its current austerity levels. The constant threat of reduced funding
and structural tinkering -- which has ALWAYS been held over us -- has been
an effective form of stifling true debate and innovation. An ALAC-endorsed
white paper
<http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-atrt2-02apr13/pdfNKvEtbrZ3u.pdf> I
co-authored some years ago, which merely suggested that ICANN acknowledge
its regulatory role and act like a regulator, was met with either
indifference or hostility.

I'm certainly open to either disagreement or suggestions of how to make
progress. Within ICANN the obstacles to significant shifts in the status
quo are deeply entrenched, and well-funded by a self-interested domain
industry. I'm not sure that significant change from within is possible.

Cheers,

- Evan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cpwg/attachments/20181106/7be9cc50/attachment.html>