IMS/ISC: Final Response: Full Stop

In fact, the rumors “on the street” are that the new TLDs have been beset by problems. Several requests for the voluminous reports on the operation of the new TLDs required in Appendix U were met with protests from ICANN that the materials might be confidential, needed to be reviewed by staff, and that staff didn’t have the resources to do the review. We don’t understand why standard reports on operations should have any confidentiality for a public utility. The reports required by ICANN do not serve the purpose of documenting and promoting transparency and there are no market pressures for VeriSign or the mini-VeriSigns to voluntarily do so.

[…]

On June 14-15 1992, 11 people were called into a small conference room at the old National Science Foundation headquarters to evaluate proposals submitted to provide registry services for certain Top Level Domains. The call for proposals was issued March 19, 1992 and bidders had two months to prepare their proposal.

The proposals received fell into two camps. Rick Adams, then of UUNET and now an IMS board member, submitted a bare-bones simple proposal. We note that the Adams proposal called for a split between “registry” and “registrar” functions several years before this split was re-proposed in the White Paper.

The other supplicants, including General Atomics, Network Solutions, AT&T, and one of the then-high-flying Big 5 firms all submitted full-blown proposals which waxed eloquent about enhanced information directory services and other buzzwords of that era. The review panel was intrigued by the Adams proposal, but ultimately threw it out because it was “too simple” and “could not be implemented with the costs proposed.”

Talk about history repeating.

posted October 03, 2002 09:55 PM (Technology) #

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Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)