IP: ICANN and its Seven Dwarves: bt "Meeks, Brock" <Brock.Meeks@MSNBC.COM>

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

www.meeks.msnbc.com

WASHINGTON--The ghost of Walt Disney must have hovered over the ICANN board
last week during their torturous deliberations in which they eventually
plucked seven new Internet suffixes from a pool of more than 200 being
proposed by 44 applicants. Walt was surely in the room, whispering in their
ears, for the seven finally chosen, ostensibly to compete with the likes of
.com, .org and .net, might just as well have been Dopey, Sneezy, Bashful,
Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Doc instead of Biz, Info, Name, Pro, Museum, Aero
and Co-op.

THAT WALT WOULD HAUNT the Marriott hotel ballroom located in the Marina Del
Rey is not strange. Walt's timeless tribute to childhood, Disneyland, is
just 36 miles away - or a mere three hours by car if you account for the 10
m.p.h. top speed reached on the L.A. freeways.
        At times several of the board members of the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit group tasked with
overseeing the transition of the assignment of Internet suffixes from a
monopoly to a competitive environment, seemed to be channeling the spirit of
Disney during their deliberations.
        Then again, at times the ICANN board also appeared to be a bad parody
of Florida's election process. As when the board required no less than three
"show of hands" recounts alone on the question of whether or not to include
the suffix .web in the final cut.
        The board's deliberations turned bizarre almost immediately as
potentially viable suffixes were placed in imaginary "baskets." When one
board member didn't particularly like how the first imaginary basket was
being filled, she created her own "alternative basket," prompting one
observer to wonder out loud whether she was operating in her own alternative
universe.
Perhaps the ICANN board members unconsciously summoned Walt from the
afterlife to draw on the wisdom of his own parallel experience. You see,
Walt and his visionary staff had to wade through a list of 50 proposed dwarf
names. What? You thought Dopey, Sneezy, Bashful, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and
Doc just magically appeared in the script? Hardly.
        Among the names Walt and company rejected were role-model gems such
as "Awful," "Dirty," "Flabby" and "Shifty." Also rejected were "Woeful" and
"Lazy." "Crabby" "Biggy-Wiggy" and "Biggo-Ego," also failed in the final
analysis. I suppose "Chesty" was a bit too suggestive for Mr. Disney. And I
can't for the life of me understand why Walt didn't take a flying leap and
include "Neurtsy" as one of the final seven.

DESSERT TOPPING OR FLOOR WAX
        ICANN insists that it exists simply to ensure that technical
standards are kept in place as the landscape of Internet domain names
expands and competition is introduced.
        But the very act of picking winners and losers from among the 44
applicants to run these new domain names puts the members squarely in a
policy-making role. The process is capricious at best. It's as if ICANN is
trying hard to live out that old Saturday Night Live sketch in which a hoax
product is marketed as both a "dessert topping" and a "floor wax."

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