[Gnso-newgtld-wg] A few additions to yesterday's post re a different approach to public interest closed generic strings.

trachtenbergm at gtlaw.com trachtenbergm at gtlaw.com
Mon Jul 13 21:14:54 UTC 2020


How many companies, organizations, or systems don’t innovate for twenty years and survive?

Marc H. Trachtenberg
Shareholder
Greenberg Traurig, LLP | 77 West Wacker Drive | Suite 3100 | Chicago, IL 60601
Tel 312.456.1020
Mobile 773.677.3305
trac at gtlaw.com<mailto:trac at gtlaw.com> | http://www.gtlaw.com<http://www.gtlaw.com/>

[Greenberg Traurig]

From: mail at christopherwilkinson.eu CW [mailto:mail at christopherwilkinson.eu]
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 1:52 PM
To: Trachtenberg, Marc H. (Shld-Chi-IP-Tech) <trachtenbergm at gtlaw.com>; Marc Trachtenberg via Gnso-newgtld-wg <gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org>; jeff at jjnsolutions.com; george.sadowsky at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg] A few additions to yesterday's post re a different approach to public interest closed generic strings.


FWIW, During the past twenty years, I have seen very little 'innovation' at the TLD. Which is as it should be. Remember that one of the great strengths of the Internet is that 'intelligence is at the periphery'. Which is also as it should be. The rest follows.

CW
El 13 de julio de 2020 a las 20:32 Marc Trachtenberg via Gnso-newgtld-wg <gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org>> escribió:

Jeff,



I agree that most here are stuck on the one non-innovative model where all the focus is on registrants as opposed to the consuming public.  Apparently, for most in this group the only thing in the public interest is that anyone can register any second level domain in any TLD, which isn’t even true in a fully “open” TLD where registry operators can game the system through premium and reserved names (not saying that there are no legitimate purposes for reserved names but they are also used for gaming purposes).  What happened to the goal of the new gTLD system that everyone has touted since the campaign for the program – innovation?  If you want stay stuck in the same second-level registrant model as the first round then there is no point in even having a second round as it will just further devalue and dilute the existing new TLDs.



That said, it is clear that we will not reach agreement here so I agree we keep the No Agreement section in the report as we have now with only the Board’s direct resolution and no commentary on what anyone thinks they mean and put it out for public comment.



Best regards,



Marc H. Trachtenberg
Shareholder
Greenberg Traurig, LLP | 77 West Wacker Drive | Suite 3100 | Chicago, IL 60601
Tel 312.456.1020

Mobile 773.677.3305

trac at gtlaw.com<mailto:trac at gtlaw.com> | http://www.gtlaw.com<http://www.gtlaw.com/>



[Greenberg Traurig]



From: Gnso-newgtld-wg [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Neuman
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 1:13 PM
To: George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at gmail.com<mailto:george.sadowsky at gmail.com>>; gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg] A few additions to yesterday's post re a different approach to public interest closed generic strings.



*EXTERNAL TO GT*

Wow, lots of comments in the last 24 hours and glad I took a little break



George,



Thanks for the proposal, but I just want to address a couple of assumptions that are being made in your model.



  1.  By definition, a closed TLD is one in which only one eligible to “register” second level names, is the Registry Operator itself.  So there would never be third party registrants.  Thus, Criteria 2 (the second part), 4, 5 and 7 would not necessarily apply.



  1.  Anyone can apply for an open-restricted domain (even with a generic word) and restrict the second level registrants to being not-for-profit or whatever reasonable criteria they wanted to.  That would not be considered a closed domain.  For example, .bank restricts its membership to legitimate financial organizations that meet a pre-defined set of criteria.  It is considered “open” because it allowed for second level registrations by third parties, but it is restricted in which third parties can apply and what they can apply for.  Therefore, unless we were to truly allow the TLDs to be “closed” to only the registry operator, there would be no reason that we would need to create a separate category of TLDs.



  1.  As far as being a not-for-profit organization, that makes sense since not-for-profits must act for the public good.  That is in their charters and if they fail to act for the public good, their not-for-profit status (at least in the US) could be taken away.



  1.    With respect to #7, again there are no third party registrants and so most certainly there would be no fees to the sole registrant (the Registry Operator itself).



And as has been shown on the list, people do not like the .disaster example.  Some have argued that they do not believe the Red Cross is the “right entity” to hold that string.  And that is the crux of the problem we have.  As a community, there is a belief that we should only allow a closed generic to go to the hypothetical organization that is most deserving of it.  And on that, No one will ever agree.  We should never be asking who is the best organization to run a TLD (as we never do that with other strings), but whether the party that actually applied for the TLD will use it to serve a public interest goal.



On the list, Kristine Dorrain brough up a hypothetical example of an artificial heart manufacturer that wanted a .heart TLD where it would use second level registrations to associate with devices so that doctors and patients could monitor certain functions of the heart.  A sort of Internet of Things approach but rather than using random IP Addresses, patients can get assigned specific domains that they can easily remember.  The registrant of each of the names is the manufacturer, so it controls what type of content (or the use) of the domains.  There was much more in the hypothetical, but the Working Group questioned “why does the manufacturer need this name”? Why cant it use its .brand?  This again is the wrong question (in my mind) to ask.  The question should be whether the intended use of the string is for a public interest goal?  It should not be is this the best string?  Or why can’t it use a different string?



And finally, we need to decide who end users are of these TLDs.  We seem to be stuck in one way of thinking where the end users of TLDs are second level registrants.  But isn’t the real end users the actual end users that consume the content contained on a given second level registration?  So long as we are stuck on the one non-innovative model where all the focus is on registrants as opposed to the consuming public, then we will not make any progress on this issue (in my very humble opinion).



If we can’t think of ANY examples that would pass our criteria after thinking about the issues for 4+ years, then I am not sure how productive the exercise will be.



All of that said, here is my proposal:  We keep the No Agreement section in the report as we have now and put it out for public comment.  We explain in the section that we are going to take into consideration comments received and try once more to see if there is way to figure out a mechanism to measure whether a generic closed TLD can serve a public interest goal during the (and after) the draft final report public comment period.









[cid:image003.png at 01D65930.BCA54BA0]


Jeffrey J. Neuman

Founder & CEO

JJN Solutions, LLC

p: +1.202.549.5079

E: jeff at jjnsolutions.com<mailto:jeff at jjnsolutions.com>

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From: Gnso-newgtld-wg <gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces at icann.org<mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces at icann.org>> On Behalf Of George Sadowsky
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 12:32 PM
To: gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org>
Subject: [Gnso-newgtld-wg] A few additions to yesterday's post re a different approach to public interest closed generic strings.



All,



I'd like to add one more criterion for comfort in chartering public interest closed generic string domains:



"7. Registration fees and revenue in general should be set at a level to cover costs and provide a reasonable rate of return for the administration of the domain.  Should assets build up over time for an unrelated reason, it should be required that they be periodically withdrawn and dedicated to an external effort in a manner related to the public interest objective for which the collective management of the domain enjoys rough consensus."



More important, reflecting on my post of yesterday, it occurred to me that there were some general principles behind the detail that might be worth abstracting as guidelines for how we might think about setting ground rules for structuring closed generic domains to obtain the conduct of participants and effectiveness of behavior in the public interest that we might want to see.  I suggest the following (again a rough approximation of what could be possible):



A. The initial applicants for such a domain should all come from a base of organizations already involved in action with regard to the public interest issue to be addressed by the domain's name and purpose, and should constitute a large enough representative subset of that gro p to skeak with some authority about the substance, importance, and legitimacy of the issue.



B. The financial arrangements governing the operation of the domain should provide a reasonable operational return to t he activities of the domain and should preclude any windfall gains to the organization.  Rationale: This should serve to cater to the public service aspects of the activity rather than any significant financial gain.



C. The rules governing the development of the domain should encourage competition among registrants to provide the best, most relevant and most useful information and services for beneficiaries who access information from the site.  Competition should be directed to the area of substantive content and not to competitive structure or direct financial profit.  Rationale: The primary purpose of the domain will be the substantive content that it provides.  Competition among organizations is inevitable, so let's create a structure that focuses that competition on what's most important for the user: helpful and useful content.





Is this too draconian?  If the resulting domain is truly to be a public interest web site, then the incentive for organizations in creating one should be more in the centralization and enlargement of a more useful and more visible collection of helpful information, not hopes for large financial gain.



George



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