[gnso-vi-feb10] Tacit assumptions?

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am wondering whether we are not tacitly assuming things that are not
necessarily true.
I keep hearing that the new gTLDs, as small startups, will be in a very weak
commercial position and not be ableto influence the market.
This might well be true, as the examples given show for the past, but I
wonder whether we are not constraining our framework to the current
situation and making assumptions on the fance that the future will look like
the past.
Let me give you an example.
The majority of the traffic in the list talks about the case of
.MyTinyCommunity, or .MyBigBrand. It might be well true that this will be
the vast majority of the proposed new gTLDs, but are we taking into account
the fact that the rules and policy have to be applied for *all* new gTLDs
equally? Aren't we forgetting something?
It might be because we have chosen conference call times that are
prohibitive, for instance, for members residing in East Asia, or also
because East Asian cultures are less assertive than Americans and Europeans,
that dominate this list, but do not people think that we have elephants in
the room like a possible .com in chinese characters? Wouldn't that TLD have
potentially huge registrations in fairly short time? Wouldn't that TLD be
operated in a completely different way than a niche TLD? Wouldn't the amount
of money on the table in that case be an incentive for "creative" behaviours
that might bend completely the rules and policies we want to establish, if
these rules are not strong enough and with enough safeguards?
I am under the impression that we tacitly think that IDNs will remain
limited to the "fast track", country-related IDN TLDs. This is not true. Or,
at least, not necessarily true.
Or am I missing something?
Cheers,
Roberto