on 7/29/2002 9:15 PM Peter Deutsch wrote: > Works? Yeah, maybe for some definition of "works", in that > people can give money to more than one entity to get a > string into .COM, but is that really solving the problem > ordinary users actually want solved? > In this world view, the current state of the DNS namespace - > in which the majority of TLD users live in .COM, and the > vast majority of English (and French and a few other > languages) dictionary strings are already taken - is a > terrible disservice to users and thus is something to be > "repaired". There is no question that the best way to silence the bulk of the valid criticism would be to make ICANN an administrative function instead of a policy function. IOW, they should be handing out TLDs, rather than deciding which TLDs are handed out. However, a quick review of the first-round delegations has shown that there are still a significant number of policy issues that have to be resolved first -- issues such as sunrise, delegation escrow and recovery are still not resolved. I'm willing to give them a bit more time to resolve these issues, but at some point they need to make the cut. Another of my personal disappointments is that they have not established a timeline or even a schedule for this, to my knowledge. I do not believe that any other organization -- neither the alternate root providers nor the alternate TLDs -- has these interests at heart. Anybody that wants to perform the administrative role would also have to deal with these issues, regardless of whether they admit it or not. None of them have even admitted it yet, and therefore lack essential credibility. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/