iTLDs

Daniel,

>thanks for your comments. What I would be most interested in 
>however would be your comment on the one statement in that 
>particular message which you did not comment on:
>

Fish that live to an old age have learned long ago to avoid the
easy bait - there's usually a hook behind it. ;-)

>  > None of this is *any* reason for those with particular interests to 
>  > succeed in establishing Internet regulation or even rushed legislation 
>  > anywhere. THIS IS THE REAL DANGER!
>
>Is the ITU currently viewing the Internet as something they should 
>regulate? If so, why? If not, why not? ;-)
>

No, the ITU does not view the Internet as something that should be
regulated. (unless you're using the word "regulate" in the sense of 
encouraging "deregulation") which is what the folks like us and the 
Commission have been trying to do. 

While it may be fun to deride folks in DG XIII as clueless bureaucrats,
in fact they are strangely your allies because they're trying to force 
open competition in Europe which drives down ridiculous leased line 
prices, etc. This is a tremendous enabling factor for the Net. That's 
a contributing factor to why Internet penetration in Finland is almost 
twice that of the US. Despite populist belief, the Internet doesn't exist 
in some vacuum - it's layered on top of the public telecommunications 
infrastructure which is a giant industry under tremendous transformation.

It hasn't been lost on too many people of the correlation between lack
of "top-down" involvement in the "Net" and its success. However, to 
quote Peter Ustinov: "Revolutions have never succeeded until the 
establishment does three-quarters of the work". And this will also 
hold true for the Internet, one of the great revolutions of this 
century. The embracement of the Net by a mainstream 'establishment' 
has assured its success. But this establishment includes many new 
stakeholders in a several hundred-billion dollar global communications 
industry of consumers, mega-corporations, Internet service providers, 
telcos, equipment manufacturers, the legal profession, broadcasters, 
content providers, governments, regulatory bodies and many others. 

Over the next few years, you will find the core Internet 'community' 
values increasingly at odds with the values of other communities (and 
there are many other communities in the new Internet establishment). 
This is an inescapable consequence of the strategic and commercial 
importance of the Net for global trade and commerce.

The current problem issues with DNS are only the tip of a much 
bigger iceberg. Imagine the problems that will come up when IP 
telephony takes off or when you've got to do interexchange 
settlements for RSVP. Then we'll be having big-time fun.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that it behooves the 
'Internet technical community' to recognize potential allies and not 
immediately assume that everyone is a "foe" to their cause. In this
aspect, the technical community can often be their own worst enemy. 
If you want to maintain your Net culture and ethics in an adversarial
world, it seems to me that you've got to try and educate others why 
they are important.

</off soapbox>

Cheers,

Bob