FC: SBA letter to ICANN: a veiled threat?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[I am moderating a panel devoted to ICANN and related issues at the
Cato-Forbes ASAP conference in the Bay Area today (Friday). I probably am
not alone when I say that I'm weary of the ongoing debates, but clearly
ICANN is not as open and accountable as it should be. --DBM]

----

> Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 18:28:50 -0500
> From: "Steve Pastorkovich" <SFP () OPASTCO ORG>
> To: <declan () well com>
> Subject: SBA's letter to ICANN
>
> Declan,
>
> I think most on your list might be interested in the U.S. Small Business
Administration's letter to ICANN at
http://www.sba.gov/advo/laws/comments/icann99_1027.html .  Many of the
concerns may be old (echos of the problems raised during the gTLD-MoU
controversy), but SBA spells out the issues clearly and with impartiality.
Unlike many other entities, SBA has no profit motive here.  While it is run
by political appointees, they are not shy about asserting their
independence (which SBA has) when they see the need to do so.  Their only
goal is to promote the interests of small businesses, few of whom seem to
have much say in this matter, despite the fact that they are among the
Internet's most important users.
> Speaking (heretically?) for myself, I'm not sure why delaying (again) the
full transfer from NSI would be so bad, if it would give ICANN (or whatever
oversight body eventually develops) adequate time to get up and running in
a way that takes care of major concerns like those expressed by SBA.  It
seems that would be preferable to trying to stitch together an organization
that works well on the fly.  True, we've already seen long delays, but they
have not been long enough to establish how the changes should work, much
less build the long-awaited consensus.  Yes, thousands of customers have
been mad at NSI.  However, consider that NSI has registered at least 6
million domains so far (and they never dreamed it would get this big); if
just 1% of their customers are unhappy, that's enough to fill a stadium.
Now give everyone in that stadium a megaphone (the Internet), and it's no
wonder NSI gets a bad rap sometimes.  Yet the domain name registration
system works fairly well, today.  Great as free market competition is,
smoothing out the transitional bumps first might be worth the effort.  Is
it really all that imperative to start saving a few bucks on .com, .net and
.org domain registration fees right away, ready or not?  
> Thanks!
>
> Steve

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology
To subscribe: send a message to majordomo () vorlon mit edu with this text:
subscribe politech
More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------