Establish a process and timeline sooner rather than later

[Sloan Gaon <turbo44c@xxxxxxxxx>]

ICANN's mandate is to open up the name space and to
serve the interests of its constituencies.  It needs
to setup a process and time schedule for doing so in
short order.  It should take take months or years to
do so.  The market is changing rapidly and ICANN needs
to be a gatekeeper, but not a stifle of innovation.

As a backdrop for this objective, ICANN should be
concerned about registry failure, but not consumed by
it.  Failure is inevitable and the market responds
accordingly (it is no surprise that there was very
little interest in the domain registry business in
2003 given how 5 out of the 7 new TLD's were financial
failures).

As in 2000, every application should be required to
provide market research on need and acceptance for the
proposed TLD.  However, ICANN cannot be and shouldn't
be the arbiter of what is likely to work in the
marketplace.  They have a hard enough time figuring
out how to prevent registrars from circumventing the
existing registration system.  They are clearly ill
prepared to know what the market needs or will accept.

It should be made clear to the community that the
market does indeed work. Indeed, ICANN, as the market
regulator, should be clear in its objectives
(obviously this has been hard to do over the years)
and should have a clear and demonstrable threshold for
new TLD participants.  At the registry level, this
should include baseline market research as well as a
plan for financing which considers various market
contingencies.

Let's not wait another six months.  The market needs
new TLDs and the community needs a clear and definable
process and time schedule.