[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Yes, British Telecom *does* want to segregate Web si

["Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Tue, 08 Feb 2000 15:56:03 -0500
To:             	politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Yes, British Telecom *does* want to segregate Web sites
Copies to:      	john.c.lewis@bt.com
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com


**********

Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 12:53:20 -0500
From: Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: Re: FC: British Telecom says idea "distorted," wants other
suggestions

Declan:

Your take on Lewis's policy perspective was exactly correct. I have
been interacting with Lewis and another BT representative on ICANN's
Working Group C on new TLDs for several months. The BT representatives
have consistently advocated a highly regulated DNS name space. For
example, instead of allowing new businesses and organizations to
propose their own new TLD names, BT wants ICANN to establish a
central, fixed classification scheme for new TLDs. Each TLD would have
a very specific "charter" as to who could and could not register
within it.

As Lewis put it, "the TLD structure should embody a framework which
precludes replication of domain types, interest groups or business
areas, to avoid confusing Internet customers."

This has profound implications for the regulation of the Net as a
whole. Your discussion of how pornography might be classified did the
community a service by highlighting one of the dangers of such an
apporach. But it is only one aspect of what could turn out to be a way
to exert sweeping forms of leverage over Internet content. Imagine how
robust the publication market would be if some international authority
decided that there should be a "framework which precludes replication
of [magazine content] types, interest groups, or business areas, to
avoid confusing [magazine] customers." Imagine the regulation that
would be imposed as a relatively unaccountable international
regulatory agency (ICANN) decided which form of publication content
belongs in which category.

Those of you who have not been struggling in the trenches of ICANN's
working groups for the past 8 months probably cannot believe how rigid
and regulatory are the attitudes of the business and political
interests who have gravitated to ICANN's DNSO.

Declan McCullagh wrote:

 > Is BT justifiably annoyed or simply backpedaling from a proposal >
 accidentally sent to a public list? You decide: >   
 http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga-full/Arc00/msg00090.html >




----------------------------------------------------------------------
---- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology
To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this
text: subscribe politech More information is at
http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----
------- End of forwarded message -------