Open letter to ICANN Board for approval of new gTLD program

[JFC Morfin]

At 20:30 14/06/2011, Nicolas Adam wrote:
>Dear JFC
>Would you care to elaborate instead of asserting stuff peremptorily 
>(and implicitly, and vaguely) please?

I am neither peremptory nor vague. I gave you the RFCs and I_D. The 
ICANN gTLD book is vague and administrative. It deals with 
Intellectual Property, not with Internet Protocols.

I keep explaining that we consensually agreed at IETF the RFCs 
5890-5895, under Vint Cerf chairmanship, and that IAB published the 
RFC 6055. These RFC exemplify that diversity is supported by 
subsidiarity in the Internet architecture. It means that the largest 
the system is, the weaker are the (de)centralized solutions; and the 
stronger are locally distributed deployments. Supporting 256 ICANN 
constained TLDs can be centralized. Not over priced gTLD sales 
against free root names like ".FRA" I technically documented.

I brought my support to the consensus of the RFCs I quote because 
they imply that the DNS can support an unlimited diversity of TLDs, 
supported by billions of users as a unique virtual root.  At the IUCG 
(iucg at ietf.org) mailing list and site we started documenting the 
resulting architecture.  Then we put it on hold in a responsible 
manner because ICANN was not ready to consider this situation (Vint 
Cerf wanted them to take it over - they did not want). Then IETF 
declined to take care of this is area because it is beyond the IETF 
Internet area. This kept the situation stable a few months more.

But as soon as ICANN starts selling K$ 250 TLDs, they will break the 
market equilibrium. Technology will update quickly and thousands of 
free virtual root names will mushroom. A root name is a TLD by anyone 
for everyone under his/her own terms and conditions. It will take 
some time, but this will be the end of ICANN because ICANN has not 
prepared itself to the change of the Internet Use that it is going to trigger.

Technically no one needs a root server system to use the Internet, 
either by ICANN or open-roots. I dont for years. What users only need 
is a home DNS nameserver and the lists of the TLD/Root Names they 
want to use. This can be entirely free, will bring new services, 
speed, security, reliability and quality. This should have been a 
progress from the onset However, since ICANN did not prepared it, it 
will be initial confusion. ICANN still wants to lead and sell a root 
file while it should be prepared and ready to serve the virtual root system.

jfc