Hop 255

Dot Asia

ICANN appears to have given the go ahead for dot asia. Official announcement here. Dot scot next?

Dot Scot

ICANN has given the go ahead for dot cat (.cat for the Catalan region of Spain), and .eu for Europe will start operation, soon so why not dot scot.   One the other hand, why anyone would want to go through this process defies belief.

Meanwhile Hop255 is not sure this will solve the world's Internet governance debate but good luck to dot love.

Single Letter Domain Names

ICANN is apparently mooting the release of the reserved single letter domain names. There are some in existence already such as www.q.com which leads to Qwest, www.x.com which leads to Paypal and www.z.com which is used by Nissan.  So why not others? What about numbers? Would 3.com be up for grabs?  There is a mobile company and a ICT company that would battle it out for that domain.

If ICANN does release the unclaimed names it is an ideal opportunity for transparent auctions to be held. But who holds the auctions and gets the money? Some domains have been sold in the past for more than US$1 million? It might be the registrars. But why reward them for simply creating many registrars to access the pool of returned domains with high capacity/high computer power access. The registries could auction the released names but why make a gift of millions of dollars to companies such as Verisign which have monopolies in that segment of the business and, in their case, are getting a proposed right to price increases.

If ICANN does decide to go with this release then a transparent auction with one or more worthy causes would seem the best option.  It would not be easy to pick one or more worthy charities and this is not ICANN's role.  Perhaps a trust fund for training Internet engineers, technicians and so forth in developing countries could be a possibility.

WSIS, RFID and Tin Foil hats

Bruce Peren's blog describes an incident at WSIS where one of the speakers was hassled by security for placing tin foil around his badge (which contained an RFID chip). Long discussion at Slashdot.

WSIS Washup

The WSIS outcome on internet governance is reported here.

Vint Cerf on Net Neutrality

A good letter from Vint Cerf to US policy makers on the need for Net Neutrality can be read on the Google Blog. He fairly much sums it up in this paragraph:

"The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has led to an explosion of offerings – from VOIP to 802.11x wi-fi to blogging – that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design."

FCC Agrees Mergers

The FCC has given the thumbs up for the mergers of Verizon with MCI and SBC with AT&T. The Commission also adopted in the Order as enforceable conditions certain voluntary commitments made by the applicants.

Two of interest are:

15. The applicants committed, for a period of three years, to maintain settlement-free peering arrangements with at least as many providers of Internet backbone services as they did in combination on the Merger Closing Dates.

19. The applicants committed for a period of two years to conduct business in a way that comports with the Commission’s Internet policy statement issued in September.

That should go some way to assuring concerns of walled gardens in terms of what applications users can access and use as well as competition in backbone markets.

ICANN, Verisign .com and com.

This article sets out some of the background to the new ICANN-Verisign deal where Versign keeps .com and Icann gets greater authority over the dot users don't see at the end of the domain. More background here. At Icannwatch they ask a good question. Why do the new arrangements seemingly assign perpetual rights to .com if only a four year renewal was needed?  Karl Auerbach says in commenting on the Icannwatch post that the 2001 agreement was perpetual and Icann is bound by that. He points to his notes from the time to back that up. So it seems the Board at the time bears the responsibility -- and the current Board had little room to maneuver.

That still leaves the question as to what is the benefit to the Internet community of a perpetual lock-in with a 7% permissible annual increase?  This is well ahead of any forecast inflation rate and costs should, if anything, be decreasing. It is hard to see the sense in assigning a monopoly a 7% annual inflator not based on any transparent process or justification. No regulator, and Icann does not like to use that term, in the normal course of events would strike such a deal. They may be stuck with the 2001 Board decision but why 7%?

At a delicate stage of WSIS, which may be why Icann felt under pressure to strike this deal, the down side is that they have sadly handed critics of the present system a powerful argument. Under the new arrangements the dollars flow, in seeming perpetuity without any opportunity for competitive bidding, from the rest of the world to a United States company.

History of Internet Governance

The history of the Internet Governance debate is nicely summed up here.

WISIS washup

Latest WISIS washup summarised here.