Stephane Van Gelder - Comments

Michele: What's the point of google.aero?

michele@blacknight.ie (Michele) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:35:46 +0100

I thought .aero was strict about who could register domains?

Or has that changed?

rafik: Rethinking public participation in ICANN

rafik.dammak@gmail.com (rafik) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:51:22 +0100

je me pose une question :
pourquoi la public participation est une des rares problematiques uniquement traites par des membres du board et des membres de staff sans l'existence de working group ouvert a tous?

Mike Rodenbaugh: Is there something wrong with the new GNSO Councillors?

icann@rodenbaugh.com (Mike Rodenbaugh) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:57:10 +0200

One of the most important points of the GNSO restructure was to ensure greater diversity of views among the Non-Commercial SG. Is someone really going to argue that the Red Cross is a commercial entity? It is about time that the consumer protection interests of non-commercial users were represented directly in the GNSO, rather than indirectly via the commercial constituencies. Hopefully we might have an easier time overcoming the contrived notion that 'consumer protection' and 'freedom of expression' are mutually exclusive concepts.

chandan: Death of a domain

blogposts@chandan.in (chandan) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:20:10 +0200

RIP

what abt old owners ? they get their domain names in .yu extension on priority basis ?

Stéphane Bortzmeyer: Death of a domain

bortzmeyer+svg@nic.fr (Stéphane Bortzmeyer) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:07:20 +0200

It's a pity: it means every URL including a .YU will have to change, in violation of the Web Good Practices http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

Wil Tan: Russia to launch Cyrillic national suffix in 2010

wil@cloudregistry.net (Wil Tan) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:20:10 +0200

Hello Stephane,

Do you mean ".РФ", or rather the lowercase version, ".рф"?

=wil

Tony: Pay to be told when new TLDs come out!

tony@fedorafx.com (Tony) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:18:16 +0200

? I think chris is confused? of course .web is not available nor .shoes, or .store...And I don't see anywhere on the site where it says available for live use? unless i missed something. Domain names ordered are potential domain names for the near future use. The point of the site is to alert users before general public about these releases.

Christopher Ambler: Pay to be told when new TLDs come out!

chris@ambler.net (Christopher Ambler) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:52:31 +0200

They also lie. They're reporting domains in .Web as available when they clearly are not. They're registered in the proof of concept system that ICANN acknowledged in the first round in November, 2000.

Not surprising, of course.

Stephane Van Gelder: Do new TLDs and IDNs mean tighter government control?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:21:15 +0200

Thanks for the link Rebecca.

Rebecca MacKinnon: Do new TLDs and IDNs mean tighter government control?

rebecca.mackinnon@gmail.com (Rebecca MacKinnon) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:31:43 +0200

Agreed. IDN's are a very good thing for the rest of the world and it's undemocratic not to embrace them.

I was quoted in Crovitz's piece. My clarifications about my own views are on my blog here:

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/07/icann-civil-society-and-free-speech.html

Nic: INDOM signs new ICANN registrar contract

mail@jump.net (Nic) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:54:19 +0200

Very interesting. I had never thought of an extension like this before, but of course, a ccTLD and the sponsored TLDs (eg .aero) have a secondary meaning and therefore are not generic. Many thanks Staphane!

Stephane Van Gelder: .SELL, .WIKI… new gTLDs on alternative roots or just another scam?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:38:31 +0200

Thanks Bradley for a very informative comment.

Bradley D. Thornton: .SELL, .WIKI… new gTLDs on alternative roots or just another scam?

Bradley@TLDAinc.org (Bradley D. Thornton) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:36:49 +0200

Hi Stephane,

Although I understand and appreciate your perspective, I must comment on your relative status as a newcomer to this industry, having entered it around 1999, and although I can't help but point out that most of the current ICANN staff are youngsters too in the arena of Internet Governance, without the benefit of a couple of decades of archives within reach of their fingertips, or even a couple of lunches w/Jon Postel prior to his untimely death.

The facts are, that your point of view is a bit askew of historical record, which, if left uncorrected would cast aspersions upon many legitimate Holder's of Top-Level Domains, including Chris Ambler's .WEB which some of the initial and self-appointed ICANN board members wanted to give to Affilias, but were wisely blocked by Vint Cerf from doing so.

I do applaud you for making a distinction between so-called alternate roots, and scams, of which both exist, while only the former thrives. We don't call them Alternate Roots though. They're called competing roots(Thanks to former ICANN board member and the .EWE TLD Holder Karl Auerbach for that one), Inclusive Roots (Thanks to me and an Internet Draft by Simon Higgs for that one), or just the, "various competing root service providers" that exist in the DNS name space.

Upon browsing your categories, I've gleaned that you follow the "Domainer" industry quite closely, and you pay some attention to Mind and Machines, which is no more than a company that sets up registry software based on a cookie cutter template in order to soak funds from naive would be ICANN hopefuls. Hey, I'm not knockng it, per se, but I certainly don't advocate a business model where you take all comers without any personal investment obo your clients as they do. You got the money? they'll file the paperwork for you and handle the ICANNic roll of the dice. Win or lose, they get their money.

Back in -99-, when you got into this arena of what became the network of "ICANN Accredited" registrars, I'm sure that you will remember that a "CyberSquatter" was almost universally defined as an entity that registered a domain, removing it from the pool of available domain names, on speculation that they could ransom that particular SLDs string of characters to someone who both found it meaningful for their purposes and was willing to pay the ransom.

I also understand that, as a provider of registration services, you personally benefit from these insidious speculators that the US Congress legislated a change in definition for - which resulted in the actual creation of the market we have today of these domain ransomers. That's okay, coz there's not much any of us can do about getting back to the way it was when domains were free to register and $60.00 USD to "Reserve" from Internic (nic.ddn.mil, actually). That was the penalty you had to pay when you didn't just go and set up two geographically equidistant nameservers and send the template in asking for the free registration.

There was no cybersquatting then. If you needed a domain name you registered it and used it. If not, you left it in the pool of availablle domain names or someone else to benefit from.

The problem with things nowadays, is that the introduction of new TLDs into ICANN's deprecated legacy root system means trademark holders must, depending upon their legal counsel, register yet more SLD strings to protect their IP (effectively flattening the name space), and also that "Domainers" (cybersquatters, domain ransomers, whatever you prefer to call them) have less worth for their new industry's products without having to make greater investments, reducing the number of SLD strings in the pool of available (short and meaningful too) domain names all over again. Regardless, this works out great for you either way the cookie crumbles as a provider of registration services

But when you glance at someone's press release and make incorrect assumptions about their business product or model you indeed sell yourself short.

Luke Weyrauch is a young entrepreneur who, with 6 years under his belt as the IT Director of Minnesota Computers Corp., a dealer in primarily aftermarket IBM RISC and Cisco products (http://www.rs6000dealer.com/, http://www.ciscodealer.com/, and a few other sites as well), is making a serious bid for inclusion into ICANN's deprecated legacy root system, honoring the ICANN guidelines for a sunrise period obo Intellectual Property Holders.

Luke is also a member of the Top Level Domain Association, Inc. (http://TLDAinc.org), and the owner of the SERO Registry which you question in your article. This is not a fly by night operation, but rather, a serious endeavor, with a mind toward inclusion into the ICANN Legacy system.

Being a Holder of Top-Level Domains (TLD Holder) and seeking the ICANN route to building critical mass for your TLD(s) is not an excercise only to be routed through such genericly predatory and opportuning professional services like Mice and Men. Anyone can, and many have, acheived it on their own, or with the assistance and support of the TLDA.

The TLDA in fact has been instrumental in assisting TLD Holders with the development and commercialization of many Top-Level Domains, and some have chosen to seek inclusion in ICANN's legacy root system. Some of our members have succeeded in such bids and some have not.

Of noteworthy significance is TLD Member Ray Fassett's .JOBS TLD, which was entered into the ICANN Legacy root system a couple of years ago. It's a long road to hoe, but if that is the desire of the TLD Holder the TLDA, as the only internetational trade organization of TLD Holders, serves to advocate the use and development of their brand and business products.

Not all TLD Members are seeking inclusion of their TLDs into the ICANN legacy root system, many are happy with their existing commercial business models, and many don't operate their TLDs as commercial brands at all, opting to provide free registrations in exchange for populating the Inclusive Name Space with real content, ecommerce, network infrastructure, and helping to build critical mass.

TLDA represents the interests of ALL TLD Holders in the name space seeking to foster a cooperative environment free of collisions and advance the cause of building a stable namespace. Our mmembership is representative of ccTLD Holders, gTLD Holders, and TLD Holders existing without the ICANN legacy root system. TLDA pre-dates ICANN by several years as well, and provides information on all of the cooperating root systems in the Internet Domain Space - Including ICANN.

Not simply because there is NO SUCH THING as a *default DNS setting*, TLDA advocates choice, as part of the Internet's Domain Space decisions on both a personal and provider level, as well as value added stability and healthy competition - another concept surrounding Internet Drafts by Simon Higgs concerning Game Theory (Remember the Movie, A Beautiful Mind - the true story of Dr. John Nash?), a concept of win win situations for all the viable participants also espoused by former ICANN board member and TLD Holder Karl Auerbach.

Yes Stephane, there are scammers out there, there are bad systems out there, and yet there are solid providers of root-level DNS resolution services offering choice for their ISP customers, and TLD Holders operating their registries going back to 1985.

When Luke found your blog (presumably via google alerts, he's very serious about his sunrise period and inclusion in the ICANN legacy root system), he was a bit incensed in his post to the TLDA and then wrote you off as a naive neophyte.

The point I'm trying to make here Stepane, is that neither of you hit the mark, dismissing each other as 'uninformed', 'ignorant', or a scammmer with an agenda seeking some kind of attention.

That's exactly why TLDA was founded a decade and a half ago, to assist with the understanding of the Inclusive Name Space and bring together parties into that common ground where we can all, in the words of Rodney King, "...Just get along."

Indoctrination can blind us to realities, our subjective perpectives and primary focuses can obscure our understanding of each other, and assumptions can lead to missed opportunities, lack of tolerance of each other, and worst of all - an absence of dialog.

In the future, I would welcome and urge you to work with and seek the input of the TLDA regarding new TLD Hopefuls in the ICANN arena, the non-commercial free TLDs that operate as a kind of GPL of the DNS, and also with regards to just whom the diabolical scammers really are (and are not) that we both wish to remove from the Internet.

TLDA can assist you and others in this regard, we've been around for much longer than any of the existing bodys out there, and really know who is who. It's what we do, and we're happy to provide any assistance we can to the Internet community at large in an endeavor to remove misconceptions and help people avoid the fly-by-night scammer, and ransomers that neither of us appreciate existing on the open, numbered network - yes, I read your article about the Lotus Steel Sheet Company

Drop us a line sometime.

Kindest regards,

Bradley D. Thornton

Stephane Van Gelder: INDOM signs new ICANN registrar contract

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:34:50 +0200

Thanks for your question.

In this context, the term "generic" simply refers to a certain class of TLD. These are the .COMs or .INFOs of the world, as opposed to the ccTLDs which denote country code domains.

Under the current ICANN structure, a distinction is made between gTLDs and ccTLDs. Both have their supporting organisations, the one for the gTLDs being the GNSO.

The ICANN accredited registry and registrar system only pertains to the gTLDs. A registrar does not have to be ICANN accredited to sell country code domains such as Germany's .DE, rather it must seek to be accredited by the relevant local registry (DENIC in this case).

However in order to sell and manage gTLDs directly (there are many resellers out there that operate as customers of ICANN-accredited registrars), a registrar needs to be ICANN-accredited.

The RAA only impacts those registrars accredited by ICANN for gTLDs.

Hope this helps answer your questions.

Nic: INDOM signs new ICANN registrar contract

mail@jump.net (Nic) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:52:57 +0200

I can't find the press release you refer to, but I wonder, why would it be relevant in this context, and how would ICANN know, how many TLDs are "generic"? Why differentiate between generic domains and those supported by registered trademarks, or those that incorporate trademarkable terms. (Rhetorical questions.)