Re: .NU Domain Has a Governance Model

["William X. Walsh" <william@wxweb.qnis.net>]

On 04-Feb-99 Michael Sondow wrote:
> Not government, but a coalition of the overriding interests involved with
> managing the TLDs. All or most of the ccTLDs are presently run by some sort
> of private sector/public sector/university/national gov't coalition, in
> accord with RFC 1591. This is apparently going to continue, since most

Actually, that is not really the case.  MOST are not run in this fashion at
all.  Nor are they required to under 1591.

And this is the basic fault of your argument.

> people involved want ti to continue (viz all the support for the RFC
> guidelines in recent comments to the drafting teams). Since the .nu
> management model has been very well organized and works well, why not use it
> as a basis for analyzing all the management models of TLDs?

Because it is just one model, that works for one TLD very well.

Other models will work just as well for other TLDs.

We can't use one model as a way of judging the other models, who must be judged
or managed in their own right.

 
> If you are proposing a strictly "business model", where there will be no (or
> reduced) public sector/national government/university collaboration, well,
> that isn't going to happen with the ccTLDs (perhaps with exception of a very
> few in the CENTR group), and probably isn't going to be acceptable to ICANN
> for the gTLDs, either (and I mean the new gTLDs as well as the old).

Not at all. What Stef is saying I think, or at least the way I am thinking, is
that the term "Business Model" can apply to a private commercially run TLD, a
free "public interest" TLD, or just about any model possible.  But to call them
a "Governance Model" is going a bit to the extreme, because many of us do not
feel that this is as much about Governance as some do.  In other words, the
government doesn't need to have a say just because it works for .NU for the
government to have a say.  

We should not be restrictive in management models, or fashion them all the
same.  If we do, we will be stifling ourselves, as well as this industry, not
to mention the innovation that will be squelched as a result.

We need to be as broad as possible in permitting as many different management
models as we can, and not FORCE any model on any registry.  Remember, the less
regulation the better.  We do not regulate things for the sake of regulating. 
Just because we CAN, doesn't mean we should.



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E-Mail: William X. Walsh <william@wxweb.qnis.net>
Date: 04-Feb-99
Time: 11:42:01
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