Re: Delegation Rate Scenarios for New gTLDs

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karla,

I've commented during the public comments periods for prior iterations 
of the delegation rate scenarios. Here I'm just dealing with the text 
as-is.
According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 
Population Division, in 2015 the 30 largest urban agglomerations will be:
rank, city, population, cumulative total
 1. Tokyo, 37.05m, 37,05m
 2. Delhi, 24.16m, 54.21m
 3. Mumbai, 21.80m, 76.01m
 4. Sao Palo, 21.30m, 97.31m
 5. Mexico, 20.08m, 117.39m
 6. New York, 19.97m, 137.36m
 7. Shanghai, 17.84m, 155.16m
 8. Kolkata, 16.92m, 172.08m
 9. Dhaka, 16.62m, 188.70m
10. Karachi, 14.82m, 203.52m
11. Buenos Aires, 13.40m, 216.92m
12. Beijing, 13.33m, 230.25m
13. Los Angeles, 13.16m, 243.42m
14. Manila, 12.59m, 256.00m
15. Lagos, 12.43m, 268.43m
16. Rio de Janerio, 12.40m, 280.83m
17. Al Qahirah, 11.66m, 292.49m
18. Osaka-Kobe, 11.37m, 303.86m
19. Istanbul, 11.16m, 315.02m
20. Paris, 10.78m, 325.80m
21. Kinshasa, 10.67m, 366.47m
22. Moskova, 10.64m, 347.11m
23. Chongqing, 9.85m, 356.96m
24. Shenzhen, 9.83m, 366.79m
25. Seoul, 9.77m, 376.56m
26. Jakarta, 9.71m, 386.27m
27. Guangzhou, 9.67m, 395.94m
28. Lima, 9.66m, 405.60m
29. Bogata, 9.52m, 415.12m
30. Chicago, 9.51m, 424.63m

Delivery of just 30 delegations could provide 424,630,000 people with 
urban gTLD registry service. Delivery of just 100 delegations could 
provide 424,630,000 people with three or more choices of urban gTLD 
registry services.
The construction of a demand model that places "brands and famous 
marks" as the second of three key sources of input is profoundly flawed.
That is 3.5bn people who are less visible to what appears to be a 
drunken for-profit located on the peak of some dot-bomb valuation 
curve, than the new media marketing campaign of a Japanese camera 
manufacturer.
There are some useful bits in the delegation rate paper, but the gee 
whizery of "it is natural to wonder what the delegation rate would be 
in the event of very, very large number of applications", the almost 
pornographic imagination of "extreme circumstances" that is oblivious 
to population and need, is inexplicable.
It is important to keep in mind that for whatever reasons, the Charles 
River Associates study authors, in forming their "demand study", in 
the ICANN political context of forcing ICANN to "show economic 
necessity for new gTLDs, overlooked Peoples not afforded an iso3166-1 
(alpha-2) allocation, Languages other than Latin, and urban 
agglomerations -- all easily modeled as finite multiples the size of 
the current IANA root -- and focused on bounded commercial subscriber 
and inherently unbounded corporate marketing exploits.
The Board has in the past declined to unconditionally accept the CRAI 
recommendations, and it should maintain this position of intellectual 
distance from a corporate subscriber capture and corporate marketing 
vision of why ICANN exists, and why the DNS exists.
At the Paris meeting the Board adopted the recommendation of the GNSO 
for a new gTLD process. ICANN has met in, and been the welcome guest 
of the city governments of Paris, Cairo (Al Qahirah), Mexico, Seoul, 
Delhi, Los Angeles, Sao Palo, Rio De Janero, and Shanghai, as well as 
other smaller cities. Yet not one delegation has been made to an urban 
agglomeration throughout the entire ICANN period to date, and 
according to the plan as of 28 October, in 2011 nothing will change, 
and in 2012 we can hope for ... hundreds of brands, with more every year.
I would like to see ICANN develop some sense of its own purpose and if 
it is simply a for-profit publisher for brands, embrace marketing as 
its mission and brand promotion as its reason for continued existence.
I recommend that the paper be re-written, and the authors at least 
exercise the hypothetical that (a) types of applications can, and 
should be prioritized, consistent with prior public comment by 
advocates for Non-Profit, Public and related application interests, as 
well as correspondence from the GAC, and (b) the certainty that no 
policy exists for "brand" applications other than the policy for 
standard applications, with all the DRP consequences that entails, and 
(c) rigorous rejection of "gee whiz" speculation and an equally 
determined commitment to serve human needs for name to resource 
mapping, which is fundamentally all that the DNS is.
Eric Brunner-Williams
In a personal capacity