This was published in the Washington Internet
Daily.
"copyrighted by Warren Communications
News (202-872-9200, www.warren-news.com) and posted by permission."‘Little Downside’
Some
in Names Council Support TLD Task Force
Momentum is building for a task force
to examine the implications to the Internet community from col-liding top-level domain
names (TLDs). Responding to a request from Danny Younger, the newly elected chmn.
of the Domain Name Supporting Organization’s (DNSO) General Assembly (GA), for a
working group on TLD colliders (WID April 16 p1), Names Council (NC) Chmn. Philip
Sheppard said he would schedule the matter for discussion “in the first instance.”
Sheppard asked Younger in a Fri. e-mail to lay out the background of the problem
and an analysis of the issue as it might affect both net users and consumers as well
as registries and root owners.
Concern has grown over the possibility of identically
named TLDs crashing in cyberspace since the ICANN Board approved a new “.biz” TLD
last November. The AtlanticRoot Network Inc. (ARNI), a root server operat-ing independently
of the U.S. Govt. (USG) root which runs a .biz TLD, has strongly criticized the action,
saying it will create consumer confusion online and drive ARNI out of business (WID
Feb 9 p3). Then, last month, New.net opened 20 new TLDs, 17 of which we’re told duplicate
existing TLDs (WID March 13 p5). Beyond the problem of confusion on the Web, some
alternate root servers say, colliding TLDs could pose serious threats to e-mail and
privacy.
Over the weekend, some NC members indicated they would back Younger’s
request. In postings on the
DNSO discussion list, Syracuse U. Prof. Milton Mueller,
who also is NC representative from the Noncommercial Domain Name Holders Constituency,
said he supported the idea of a working group, “fully understanding that the debate
on this topic often takes the form of a religious war and that it is unlikely that
any coherent policy would come out of such a working group soon.” There’s “little
downside” to a study, he said: “At worst, the group will waste bandwidth and time
and accomplish nothing.”
The “relevance of this topic is clear” given the election
of a co-founder of the Top Level Domain Assn. (a
trade association of TLD owners
in alternate roots) as alternate GA chmn., Registrar Constituency NC representative
Erica Roberts said. However, she said, the key question is what guidance the task
force should be given.
Three basic options should be considered, Mueller wrote:
(1) Ignore already existing TLDs. (2) Avoid assigning any TLDs that conflict with
them. (3) Find some technical or procedural way on coordinating with them or incorporating
them in the ICANN root. What a working group shouldn’t do, he said, is rule on the
legitimacy or illegitimacy of a particular claim to a TLD. “That’s a rathole we don’t
need to go down,” Mueller said.
While opposition to his request “is certainly within
the realm of possibility,” Younger told us, “I would hope that concern about the
stability of the Internet is sufficient cause to prompt discussion of the is-sues.”
- Dugie Standeford