From: Stephen J. Wilcox [mailto:steve@opaltelecom.co.uk] Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 3:29 PM

.. also ORSC sounds techie friendly - it has the word open in so it must be good - but c'mon theres no difference between it and new.net or whoever? having said that maybe it would be better than icann.. only problem is who has to give them the authority and make everyone abide by it?

The effort to remove colliders has been on-going for a little over a year. Over much discussion it was decided that, if a TLD was in contention, none of the zone servers would be referenced for that TLD. Many of the colliders got together and ironed out their differences. In some cases, one party sold their interest to the other party. In other cases, they merged. Yet, in other cases, one-side capitulated. In the remaining cases, neither of the parties are in the ORSC root zone. That sets the initial entry. However, it doesn't resolve the case where a usurper comes along later (like ICANN, with the BIZ TLD, or new.net). The obvious answer is to keep the incumbent and ignore the usurper. However, one can only play that game with commanding market-share and solid FCFS historical precedent. ICANN desires to not play there and refuses to acknowlege FCFS. Therefore, taking their cue from ICANN, new.net plays likewise. Both ignore ORSC efforts. Given new.net resources, comparative to ICANN, we may be facing a serious threat of DNS name space fragmentation. Seeing at least a three-way fracture, of the root, it looks as if this will be resolved in the law. Remember, the law is not about moral rectitude or justice. It is about who can field the most effective squadron of attorney's. The first requirement of that is money which Idealabs has in abundance, ICANN is short of (unless WIPO gets involed), and ORSC has none of.