To Assist in funding the activities of the TLDA in it's mission, seeking to foster cooperation among Internet participants and advance the cause of building a stable namespace.
Leah Gallegos and supporters invested more than a quarter million dollars in establishing a stable, robust registry system for her TLDs. JV Team is awarded a completely empty version of one of her TLDs by ICANN, and ICANN claims, "What? we worry?"
A lot can be said about the image that Dr. Vinton Cerf postured himself into while testifying at the House Subcommittee on energy and commerce hearings on that snowy February day in 2001.
On 08 February 2001, Dr. Cerf made reference to, "Default DNS Settings" on computers, inferring that they arrive, preconfigured, from the manufacturer at retail stores, and also uttered statements such as, "We're only responsible for what's in 'Our Root'...", which miserably failed to carry the day's confidence in an otherwise incongruous round of testimony from different business and individual interests.
Any apprentice desktop computer technician can tell you, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DEFAULT DNS SETTING ON A COMPUTER - but more on that later!
Leah Gallegos, President of Atlantic Root Network, Inc. (ARNI), pleaded before Congressmen and women on that day to save her from an incoherent steamroller, empowered by the US Government, Hell-bent on destroying her business product simply by ignoring her very existence.
Yeah, that's right. Ignoring her. Dr. Cerf barely cast a glance in Ms. Gallegos' direction during the proceedings, although in other informal settings leading up to the subcommittee hearings the casual atmosphere imbued mutual candor and was cordial.
If a picture tells a thousand words, then archeologists will oneday unearth digital remnants with thousands of words contained in them, and one of those remnants will be the Alamo of the ARNI .BIZ TLD.
For those who are puzzled, there 0nce was a .BIZ TLD that was created in 1995 and existed for almost seven years before being usurped by ICANN's arrogant selection of a TLD operator completely unrelated to ARNI's .BIZ... yes, an 'award' to operate a completely different .BIZ TLD in the US Government's (USGs) legacy root system.
As a fill in, a little bit of history reveals that the .BIZ TLD operated by ARNI was generally understood as the primary target focused on by ICANN in order to break the backs of Longtime TLD Holders operating their TLDs in the Inclusive Name Space, some for more than a decade and a half.
.BIZ was a robust and popular TLD, providing registrations at the rate of over a thousand a day at times, a record still unsurpassed in TLDs existing solely in the Inclusive Name Space.
During the hearings, Ms. Gallegos states that ARNI's business product is the victim of unfair and anti-competitive acts (Federal Crimes, actually) committed by ICANN, in a campaign to destroy her business product.
When Congress asked her why she did not compete in ICANN's lottery for selection and inclusion of new TLDs into the USG root, she made it abundantly clear that her lack of investment into a process which does not precede her business products existence was partially, or perhaps primarily, precipitated by the complete and categorical dismissal of her company as a serious entity by ICANN.
In other words, it was clear and evident that no matter whether she paid the 50 grand to have her application accepted was not only an exercise that would place her under the jurisdiction, contractually, of ICANN (A position her company had no interest in placing itself), but also, that her TLD and the thousands of SLD registrants under .BIZ would never be introduced into the Alternate Legacy system operated by ICANN anyway.
Sitting at the same table with the folks who were designated to obviate her product, complete with a re-branding of their name as "Neu-Level" (They were calld JV Team on their application to ICANN), the ARNI President conveyed an ominous, and obvious message about governmental abdication to special interests in the process of attempting to stimulate free trade for private commerce on the world-wide numbered network.
Below are thousands of words for you to listen to. We've chopped it up into really small parts so you can glean the meat of the meal. What's astonishing, is that Davey is telling it like it is while Goliath is quite blatantly lying to Congress...
On this audio recording, you should note the Dr. Vinton Cerf knowingly perpetuates a bold faced lie - the common mis-conception that a consumer's DNS settings are set to a default from the factory when purchasing all new PCs.
As any educated technician is aware of , ALL NEW PCS (and even ALL the old ones collecting dust) DO NOT COME WITH ANY DEFAULT DNS SETTINGS FROM THE FACTORY. When you connect to the ISP to which you have subscribed for Internet services, they offer their own choice of DNS and other settings for you by default, and this may be DNS Settings that point to any of a myriad of DNS Root systems, or more precisely, name spaces not necessarily the USG root system either.
In other words, to put it quite factually, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DEFAULT DNS SETTING ON A BRAND NEW COMPUTER!
Liar Liar pants on fire Dr. Cerf! A Bold faced lie indeed it was.
Dr. Cerf tries to wriggle out of Congressman Tauzin's direct questions as to whether his company is using it's governmental prowess to destroy a businesswoman's brand and business product - one that they could merely acknowledge or even avoid!
When pressed, Dr. Cerf offers up two things:
1.) That ICANN is ONLY responsible for the business products contained in their support infrastructure - "OUR ROOT.", a direct reference to ICANN's legacy DNS system.
2.) That the Inclusive Name Space Root service providers have the potential to "Overrun OUR ROOT". Yet another, direct reference to the alternate, deprecated, Legacy root system now under the tutelage of ICANN.
The second point is a very important point, with the implication of 'market share', and 'critical mass' of users percentage-wise, and free market choice as to which competing root system any particular ISP or individual chooses to use - whether it be for nostalgic reasons, or in order to see a much greater subset of the entire DNS name space.
In a free commercial marketplace, competing business enjoy the incentives, benefits, and disadvantages of being encouraged to offer the best product or services to the customer. In an environment where everyone co-exists, everyone benefits to a greater degree than either a single entity would, and even the sum of their individual businesses would by themselves.
Unfortunately, this is not the nature of businesses left to their own device. The nature of a business left unchecked in an environment of anti-competitiveness enabled by a government is to destroy all other competition, leaving them the only game in town (a monopoly).
Well you can't blame ICANN for wanting their cake and eating it too, so where to we place such blame for the existence of an anti-competitive environment? um... That was a rhetorical question, just so you know.
So whatever happened to ARNI? Well they've been in existence all this time and their TLDs, some of which date back as far as 1995 are available to register SLDs under at any time.
The Current registration service provider for ARNI's gTLDs is AGN Domain Name Services (ADNS), while it's President and longtime TLDA Member Leah Gallegos is primarily busy nowadays as the proprietor of a coffee house and beanery in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Historically speaking, from despair and destitution emerges fortitude, and prevalence, so let us not ever dare forget the contribution that Sam Houston and Davey Crockett made for us, so long ago, okay?
