Re: [alac] Fwd: [gtld-com] Draft final report (v4)

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 10 May 2003 10:53:50 +0200, you wrote:

>> I'm concerned that the detailed recommendations perpetuate the 
>> "beauty contest" mode of selecting new gTLDs rather than making
>> name addition a routine process.
>
>Criteria 4 and 6 in particular seem to be going into that direction,
>in particular -- they just don't seem to be accessible to an
>objective evaluation, and should therefore be left for market
>forces.  We might wish to ask for a dissenting opinion to be added
>to these specific points.  (The *objective* in 6 is of course fine,
>but it's not suitable for use in an evaluation...)

I think that these are very high-level principles, so much depends on
how you implement them. If you just keep them as a high level guide,
but don't turn them into practical prescriptions and constraints on
new gTLDs, then they might be fine - a sort of "constitution" that
only rules out clearly undesirable cases. But if you try to implement
them by putting the burden on the applicants to prove that they are
met, or to decline them into a list of allowed and prohibited cases,
you're going to get into top-down regulation trouble.

So I think these principles are fine as long as it is ICANN (and/or
the opponents to the creation of a given new gTLD) that has the burden
to prove without doubt that they're not met to be allowed to reject an
application, rather than the opposite (ie the applicant having to
prove that they're met). Shortly, everything that is not clearly
forbidden should be allowed.

However, it is true that what these conclusions mostly lack in my
opinion is a clear suggestion for this to become a routinary process
rather than an ICANN-initiated call for applications. I'm not sure
whether this was done on purpose or not.

>With respect to 7 (IDNs and confusing similarity between ASCII and
>IDNs' ASCII representation), I can't come up with an example to
>which this should apply, so while I wouldn't recommend opposing it,
>I have a feeling that this recommendation might be moot.
>
>With respect to 8 ("translations or transliterations"), I'm not sure
>I really understand what's meant by this.  I can see an argument in
>favor of specific protection if there is a realistic danger of
>confusion -- but that case is covered elsewhere.  If there is no
>danger of confusion (as seems most likely in the "translation"
>case), then I don't see the need for recommendation 8.  We could
>seek some clarification, and possibly add a dissenting opinion here,
>too.

I understand that #7 means "since .com exists, ICANN should not allow
to create .X as a separate gTLD by another registry/sponsor, if X is
or can be confused with the Japanese, Chinese, Korean... ideogram for
commercial"; and #8 means "if the registry/sponsor for .com asks to
create .X too, .X should follow the same policies as .com".
-- 
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
-------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------