Tina Dam answers: Are existing gTLDs going to be aliased to IDN extensions or not?

[blastfromthepast]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

Stay tuned for lesson 2, where we will study delegation and recursive resolving.

Jacksonnm has better technical skills than most, and it behoves everyone in this discussion to learn from him.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by zfreud

Drewbert and Duck, I stand corrected. I was new spacing my thoughts when I should have been aliasing...

grrrr....

jacksonm, i suspect it's not completely out of ICANN's hands. For the same reason Verisign had to pull back on wild carding .com, I don't think they will be allowed to alias without ICANN authorization.

Unlike Jackson, I'm no techy but i think from the business point of view.

Businesses are guided by profits and ethics (no ip infringement, no cheating, no illegal).

There's no rule that says you can't alias 2 domains you own.

If you own .com and .kom (k is the russian k), the registrar can give you the option of aliasing, can't they?? They may even charge for the service!!

Verign wins - they make another $6. ICANN wins - they make 20 cents.

We LOSE!!

Question to Jose - the .es launch, existing ASCII .es owners with similar names are given the priority, aren't they?? Like Espanya.es is given priority for the IDN version? I think i saw something like that at their whois service while searching for names.

Remember that ICANN likes to say that aliasing is not just an IDN issue? hACK! We've got domains for like 20 years, ICANN aliasing has never been implemented since. So at this point, i only see 3 possibilities:

1). Verisign takes idn.kom and then offer it to idn.com owners. If we don't take the name (at a fee of course), it will be up for all to register.

2). Verisign sits on it, it doesn't take .kom and no one else does. No aliasing, no dname, nothing happens (good chance for this next 2 years).

3). Someone else takes .kom, Verisign does not object - we're cooked! Now less to URDP to enforce our rights (if it is still possible!).

I'm just projecting based on what has been discussed on this forum - i may well be wrong.

[Drewbert]

>Verisign does not object

And monkeys might fly out of my butt.

[blastfromthepast]

Originally Posted by touchring

3). Someone else takes .kom, Verisign does not object - we're cooked! Now less to URDP to enforce our rights (if it is still possible!).

According to the rules being cooked by ICANN, Verisign must get .ком. (No monkies for Drewbert, sorry.)

So,

Correction to 3) Verisign takes .ком. Verisign lets someone else register IDN.ком - we're cooking! Now turn to URDP to enforce IDN.com -> IDN.ком rights.

[Drewbert]

> Now turn to URDP to enforce IDN.com -> IDN.ком rights

Which supposedly requires a registered TM, but they let ones through in the past without them.

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by touchring

Unlike Jackson, I'm no techy but i think from the business point of view.

I don't know where you are going with that; are you another one of those that think that technical and business skills are mutually exclusive? I will tell you that I put together business cases for a large multinational technology corporation every day. And I'm better at it than many because I do have a technical background.

When I told you (collectively) a week ago how Verisign would most likely do this (exclusively sell domains in new namespaces to existing dot com holders), from a business perspective, I think it was right on the money. So did Drewbert, whom you invoked in the name of my supposed idiocy, and he also explained why it was a good idea and why it would it is already implicitly sanctioned by ICANN.

Only the super-dense cannot comprehend this, but I suspect by the time the light turns on inside these heads they will think that the idea was theirs.

I personally do not care if verisign wants me to pay for exclusive access to buy my domains in their new IDN extensions, and I will gladly pay them (not for latins, but you get the point). I don't consider that as losing, I consider it as winning.

.

[Alphamale]

as an observor on the sidelines, just a recap of progress made in clearing up confusion and learning anything new about how aliasing will play out:


around the 15th Feb

we knew shit about how this will all play out

then add...

# of threads 6
# posts 139
# views 1062 of posts
# ICANN people pissed off 3
numerous insultants, tantrums and general hair pulling

and today

and we still know shit about how this will play out

[touchring]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

I don't know where you are going with that; are you another one of those that think that technical and business skills are mutually exclusive?

I personally do not care if verisign wants me to pay for exclusive access to buy my domains in their new IDN extensions, and I will gladly pay them (not for latins, but you get the point). I don't consider that as losing, I consider it as winning.

.

If you don't know, please don't assume you know where i am going with that.

I am no techy - this is a fact.

I did not say that technical and business skills are mutually exclusive. You think too much or you mistook me for someone else on this forum.

Being a .com believer, i'm not particularly optimistic on the success of idn tld, so I consider any extra expense as a burden.

Profit = Revenue - Expense.

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

According to the rules being cooked by ICANN, Verisign must get .ком. (No monkies for Drewbert, sorry.)

So,

Correction to 3) Verisign takes .ком. Verisign lets someone else register IDN.ком - we're cooking! Now turn to URDP to enforce IDN.com -> IDN.ком rights.

Roger blast. This will be a nightmare scenario for us!

Also, possibility 4:

4) Verisign takes .ком. Verisign reserves our IDN.ком as premium! Oops, can we turn to URDP for this case?

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by touchring

Being a .com believer, i'm not particularly optimistic on the success of idn tld, so I consider any extra expense as a burden.

Well given the opportunity to gain exclusive (paid) access to my domains in an IDN TLD, I would take definitely advantage of this for Arabic and most likely for Russian. I would also strongly consider taking advantage of it for Chinese and Japanese. This is getting into pure opinion, though, on what we think is best. And that's not the point here.

Originally Posted by touchring

Profit = Revenue - Expense.

Spending 6 or 7 USD to be able to sell Arabic domains for 6-7 figure sums is a no brainer for me :-)


.

Originally Posted by touchring

Also, possibility 4:

4) Verisign takes .ком. Verisign reserves our IDN.ком as premium! Oops, can we turn to URDP for this case?

This is indeed a scary scenario. Probably the only thing that would help you is if you have a TM.

.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

This is indeed a scary scenario. Probably the only thing that would help you is if you have a TM.

.

Ok, worst case scenario. Unlikely, but not impossible.

[clipper]

Originally Posted by touchring

3). Someone else takes .kom, Verisign does not object - we're cooked! Now less to URDP to enforce our rights (if it is still possible!).

This is not possible, according to the ICANN "literature" I've read. And, as a publicly held company, Verisign would have to fight it.

Originally Posted by Alphamale

as an observer on the sidelines, just a recap of progress made in clearing up confusion and learning anything new about how aliasing will play out:


around the 15th Feb

we knew shit about how this will all play out

then add...

# of threads 6
# posts 139
# views 1062 of posts
# ICANN people pissed off 3
numerous insultants, tantrums and general hair pulling

and today

and we still know shit about how this will play out

Thanks for summing it up. Looks like the whole market may have been devalued over the past week. Good news!

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

The model I explained before is simply selling names in a new extension to the owner of the label in another extension. It is nothing more than sales. Everybody gets their money.

The only difference in what I explained to normal sales is that these sales would be restricted to the label owner in another extension, e.g. dot com. It's blindingly simple.

.

Well if that is the case then we have absolutely nothing to worry about. Paying twice as and when it suits my purpose really would not unduly concern me with the portfolio we are holding. This is not one of the long tail operations were you have worry yourself sick about margins. If we have the rights to the domains that matter. we are minted PERIOD. Obviously, under these conditions any attempts to charge a premium would be seen for the extortion it is.

What people are missing here is, however, is the level of control that ICANN exerts. With all the chatter about split roots we need to understand that any and every Internet Service provider, Web Site etc, even in China and Russia runs on ICANN allocated IPs. To truly split the Internet, China would have to establish a totally independent Internet with its own IP allocations.

At the other end of the scale, ICANN has contractual control over not only Registries but Registrars. Registry Fly was not even a bloody Registrar, but a retailer. With this new Escrow service, it means that they will have a complete duplicate of all the Registrar Databases, so I am damned sure they could Clone the dot com registry if they had to. At the end of the day all this chatter about Verisign acting unilaterally without ICANN approval is just bunk. It is just not going to happen.

Originally Posted by Alphamale

as an observor on the sidelines, just a recap of progress made in clearing up confusion and learning anything new about how aliasing will play out:


around the 15th Feb

we knew shit about how this will all play out

then add...

# of threads 6
# posts 139
# views 1062 of posts
# ICANN people pissed off 3
numerous insultants, tantrums and general hair pulling

and today

and we still know shit about how this will play out

Which is exactly what ICANN always tells you unless you can exert a little pressure!

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Well if that is the case then we have absolutely nothing to worry about. Paying twice as and when it suits my purpose really would not unduly concern me with the portfolio we are holding. This is not one of the long tail operations were you have worry yourself sick about margins. If we have the rights to the domains that matter. we are minted PERIOD. Obviously, under these conditions any attempts to charge a premium would be seen for the extortion it is.

I also don't mind paying twice when it suits my purpose. If they go with this model, then I could see a possible scenario where they have a sunrise or pre-sunrise or whatever the hell they want to call it where dot com owners could assert their rights should they so desire. Or maybe they would do it so that nobody other than the dot com owner could ever buy the domain in the equivalent extensions. This is really just a business decision of the registry and has nothing to with ICANN. Of course how they behave could open them up for lawsuits from existing dot com owners, and this is what they would probably like to avoid.

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

What people are missing here is, however, is the level of control that ICANN exerts. With all the chatter about split roots we need to understand that any and every Internet Service provider, Web Site etc, even in China and Russia runs on ICANN allocated IPs. To truly split the Internet, China would have to establish a totally independent Internet with its own IP allocations.

No it wouldn't. IP allocations are completely independent of the ICANN DNS extensions. To prove this point, there are already operations today that are running alternate roots on top of ICANN allocated IP addresses. This has been going on for years.

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

At the other end of the scale, ICANN has contractual control over not only Registries but Registrars. Registry Fly was not even a bloody Registrar, but a retailer. With this new Escrow service, it means that they will have a complete duplicate of all the Registrar Databases, so I am damned sure they could Clone the dot com registry if they had to. At the end of the day all this chatter about Verisign acting unilaterally without ICANN approval is just bunk. It is just not going to happen.

If Verisign is granted an extension called ".xn--xyz", which is an equivalent to ".com", they can sell names individually, give them away for free, keep the namespace closed to the public, or whatever they like. Their only obligation to ICANN is to pay ICANN for each entry they make in this new namespace. Verisign does not need to get permission from ICANN for everything they do. If ICANN exerted the level of control over the DNS hierarchy that you imagine, then I'd need to get ICANN approval (or approval delegated to Verisign) to add new zones and aliases inside of my DNS server.


Keep your cool and I will continue to discuss with you.

.

[Rubber Duck]

Actually, they cannot, because the way names are allocated and charged for is a fundamentally integral part of their submission to be granted a registry or extension in the first place. They have to state all this up front before the allocation occurs and it is then contractually binding upon them. This goes way beyond what is technically feasible. And to some extent that is why it is important to get these things out in the open now, so they are unable to sneak something through a weakly worded draft of a contract, simply because nobody had clearly identified the issues.

Originally Posted by jacksonm

I also don't mind paying twice when it suits my purpose. If they go with this model, then I could see a possible scenario where they have a sunrise or pre-sunrise or whatever the hell they want to call it where dot com owners could assert their rights should they so desire. Or maybe they would do it so that nobody other than the dot com owner could ever buy the domain in the equivalent extensions. This is really just a business decision of the registry and has nothing to with ICANN. Of course how they behave could open them up for lawsuits from existing dot com owners, and this is what they would probably like to avoid.




No it wouldn't. IP allocations are completely independent of the ICANN DNS extensions. To prove this point, there are already operations today that are running alternate roots on top of ICANN allocated IP addresses. This has been going on for years.




If Verisign is granted an extension called ".xn--xyz", which is an equivalent to ".com", they can sell names individually, give them away for free, keep the namespace closed to the public, or whatever they like. Their only obligation to ICANN is to pay ICANN for each entry they make in this new namespace. Verisign does not need to get permission from ICANN for everything they do. If ICANN exerted the level of control over the DNS hierarchy that you imagine, then I'd need to get ICANN approval (or approval delegated to Verisign) to add new zones and aliases inside of my DNS server.


Keep your cool and I will continue to discuss with you.

.

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Actually, they cannot, because the way names are allocated and charged for is a fundamentally integral part of their submission to be granted a registry or extension in the first place. They have to state all this up front before the allocation occurs and it is then contractually binding upon them. This goes way beyond what is technically feasible. And to some extent that is why it is important to get these things out in the open now, so they are unable to sneak something through a weakly worded draft of a contract, simply because nobody had clearly identified the issues.

OK, do you think we can find an application or a contract to examine? At least the applications should be available with some searching. Post a link if you find one.


EDIT: Some info here http://www.icann.org/tlds/applicatio...ss-03aug00.htm

.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

OK, do you think we can find an application or a contract to examine? At least the applications should be available with some searching. Post a link if you find one.

.

The new contracts won't be available until after the policy is finalised, but we can look at the recent examples under the old system. Dot Mobi, and dot Asia have been able to Auction off domains at launch because that was part of the submission for which they were granted the extension. Other registries have not been able to do this. All registries are temporary custodians, with the possible exception of Dot Com where it would seem that Verisign more or less have squatters rights due to the fact that they have been around a hell of a lot longer and ICANN, had huge financial clout and have been skilful negotiators. Everything else, however, is stuck down pretty water tight as far as I can work out. If ICANN feels they have broken their obligations, then they can pretty much just be replaced.

Getting back to your previous point about IPs. Yes, organisation have been running separate Roots on ICANN IPs, although I personally do not regard that to be the case with the Chinese. In their case, it seems to be much more a local fudge. Perhaps they are running DNames to achieve their results, who knows? Whilst, it is a highly unlikely scenario and not one that I would give much thought to, in theory if CNNIC broke their contractual obligation to ICANN, there is a least a theoretical risk that ICANN would pull the plug on the entire Chinese Internet. Of course, the Chinese could implement some kind of back-up system, but if that were to occur, then the Internet would have been split in a real and meaningful way. At the moment, we have a situation where everything that works outside China, also works inside. OK, we have a few bolt on extras that work inside China that cannot work outside, but that is only really because they are waiting for our Luddites to catch up. This does not in any reasonable analysis represent a split of the Internet. On top of that we have had small independent networks working in the Middle East, and a couple of private sector wannabee. But frankly, these other initiatives have had precisely zero impact, and there is little to suggest that that situation might ever change.

[jacksonm]

Hey, here are the existing agreements:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/


They are really not that detailed or controlling.

.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

Hey, here are the existing agreements:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/


They are really not that detailed or controlling.

.

I think you can assume this is pretty much a catch all!

(b) Statements made During Application Process. The factual statements contained in Registry Operator’s application for the TLD, or made by Registry Operator in negotiating this Agreement, were true and correct in all material respects at the time the application was submitted to ICANN and are true and correct in all material respects as of the date this Agreement is entered into set forth above.

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements...nt-06dec06.htm

and what about this?

(i)At all times during the term of this Agreement and subject to the terms hereof, Registry Operator will fully comply with and implement all Consensus Policies, as the same may be applicable to Sponsored TLDs, found at http://www.icann.org/general/consensus-policies.htm, as of the Effective Date and as may in the future be developed and adopted in accordance with ICANN’s Bylaws and as set forth below.

and as a final FY:

Section 5.3 Limitation of Liability. ICANN's aggregate monetary liability for violations of this Agreement shall not exceed the amount of Registry Operator-Level Fees paid by Registry Operator to ICANN within the preceding twelve-month period pursuant to Section 7.2 of this Agreement. Registry Operator 's aggregate monetary liability to ICANN for violations of this Agreement shall be limited to fees and monetary sanctions due and owing to ICANN under this Agreement. In no event shall either party be liable for special, indirect, incidental, punitive, exemplary, or consequential damages arising out of or in connection with this Agreement or the performance or nonperformance of obligations undertaken in this Agreement, except as provided pursuant to Section 4.4 of this Agreement. EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE EXPRESSLY PROVIDED IN THIS AGREEMENT, REGISTRY OPERATOR DOES NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICES RENDERED BY ITSELF, ITS SERVANTS, OR ITS AGENTS OR THE RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THEIR WORK, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[jacksonm]

So basically what the agreement says is that once a proposal is accepted, the registry needs to operate accordingly. They also need to operate according to concensus policies, and there are only like 7 of them now. Essentially, the agreement can be renegotiated at any time by sending a new proposal.

(iv) Process for Consideration of Proposed Registry Services. Following written notification by Registry Operator to ICANN that Registry Operator may make a change in a Registry Service within the scope of the preceding paragraph:

(A) ICANN shall have 15 calendar days to make a “preliminary determination” whether a Registry Service requires further consideration by ICANN because it reasonably determines such Registry Service: (i) could raise significant Security or Stability