[alac] new gTLDs

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some quick personal points on the new gTLD round - we should add
others and turn them into our comment on the document that was
presented in Rio.

- It should really be "a limited number", not "a few". Moreover,
selection should work by threshold, not by top ranking. All proposals
which are ranked above a minimum threshold should be approved.

- Fees should be divided in two parts: a first part paid by all
applicants to cover costs of initial examination, and a second part
paid only by approved applicants to cover costs of final negotiation
and implementation. Otherwise the losers are paying for the winners!

- Fees should be diversified according to the type of applicant:
    * >= cost for commercial entities
    * = cost for already existing non-profit organizations
    * <= cost for purpose-built and members-owned non-profit orgs
This should be an incentive for bottom-up proposals - you are a
community? Then form a new no-profit org, open to all members of the
community, owned and managed by them, and apply for your TLD.
Registries should be encouraged to work this way - there's nothing bad
in for-profit registries, but no-profits should be helped, otherwise
only commercial entities will be able to bet the money to apply.

- Applicants should be allowed to make more than one proposal and
negotiate on the TLD string. Judgements such as "the TLD name actually
represents the community" are quite subjective, so rather than
disqualifying people because they think the right TLD string for them
is ".xyz" and ICANN instead thinks it should be ".zyx", there should
be a negotiation on it.

- Applicants should also be allowed to present more than one technical
option to establish the registry - for example, a plan to develop
internal operations *and* tentative agreements with existing registry
operators as a fallback in case the (more complex) internal plan
fails. Otherwise everyone will go for the existing registries just to
be sure not to lose points on that evaluation item. The odds of
practical implementation are not easily foreseeable, so the evaluation
should be focused on the technical and managerial know-how of the
applicant, rather than on its current plan, which may be outdated
anyway by the time the TLD is awarded. You want to be sure that these
people can do it, not to force them to state in advance up to the last
detail how they will do it.
-- 
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
-------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------