Hi Jim, As far as I'm concerned and WRT TLDs, the "exclusive is bad" applies ALWAYS. Having an individual UNILATERALLY and with no consensus decide how things are to be done is bad always. In the case of country code TLDs, the population that is going to get the service is pretty obvious; in general it will be those companies/organisations/individuals located in that specific geographical area, and what is important is to try and make sure that it is that population that is -in general- happy at the way things are run in that TLD. All lovely words of course, but lets see where the problems are... It is generally accepted that how a certain ccTLD is governed is a question to be answered by the government in place in that place. And whether you like it or not, it is ALWAYS the local government that is allowing that TLD to be governed in that way. They do it by either actively participating, by just letting things happen, or simply by not bothering to intervene. They ARE responsible for it though (another thing is arguing about dereliction (sp?) of duty... and personally I think ".us" would be a prime candidate). Nominet (for ".uk") is generally taken as an example of how to do things. However, much as you dislike the way a certain ccTLD is run, if it is not for your government, the only way to change it is to get THAT government to change it. It's not a question of "can they or can't they?" but rather "will they or won't they?" The fact that countries with flawed corrupt and non-democratic governments are part of the U.N. doesn't mean that the U.N. is flawed, corrupt and non-democratic. Those countries are not shaming the U.N. in any case, they are shaming themselves. However, trying to enter into how a foreign government applies its laws (or lack of them) and/or how it runs its ccTLD is naive at least. Yours, John Broomfield. P.S. Before you attack me for "exclusive control of ccTLDs", you know very well that we operate with full consensus of the local ISPs, and we are forming a (very small) non-profit which will operate (albeit in a much reduced fashion) to some extent a-la-Nominet. In any case, glad you can get some good discussions going every now and then. You had me worried... Even so, I'm sure you knew the answers already.

On Friday, June 19, 1998 10:55 AM, Robert Shaw[SMTP:robert.shaw@itu.int] wrote: @Hi, @ @At http://www.itu.int/net/cctlds/nics.htm is a preliminary survey

Robert,

With so many 2-letter TLDs being operated by people with an exclusive personal interest and little or no association to a country, how do you see the future position of the ITU/ISOC/IAHC/PAB/POC/CORE evolving with respect to those TLDs ?

In other words, why are those TLDs exempt from the "exclusive is bad" model that you promote ?

Do you think the new IANA will bring all of the 2-letter TLDs into conformance with the ITU/ISOC/IAHC/PAB/POC/CORE model ?

Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com 1998 - The Year of the C+@