Carlos: I'm not convinced there is an "imbroglio" that needs to be "answered" through special and de novo institutional arrangements. Addition of new gTLDs has since 1995 faced the following questions. Each of these questions has been discussed intensively 1. How many? This one has pretty much been answered to everyone's satisfaction, as I hope you would agree. NRC study, Paul Hoffmann, Vixie, Mockapetris and virtually every honest technical person agrees that it is technically possible to create anywhere between 90 or so per year to a million. Right now the consensus seems to be that the safest path is to create tens of new TLDs each year without any appreciable stability risk. 2. Impact on trademark holders The old argument about defensive registrations by existing name holders. We now know a lot about that, based on experience in com, net org, and in the new gTLDs info and biz. Basically, you can't really make a go of a new TLD business just by selling defensive registrations. ICANN itself commissioned a big study of this. http://www.icann.nl/tlds/new-gtld-eval-31aug04.pdf There will be some defensive registrations, but as the number of gTLDs increases the need for that diminishes. Still, a few big multinational TM holders want to own words and would prefer that no new name spaces be created. And there are all kinds of ways to protect vested interests with "sunrise" or challenge procedures, although some of those are illegitimate. 3. Process How should they be selected? Auctions, lotteries, beauty contests, achievement of sainthood, expert committees, etc. No resolution of that yet, but ICANN is right now taking that issue up. No doubt it will come up with a clumsy compromise. It would be better for you to introduce your opinions into that proceeding that to propose a "start from scratch" process that will never obtain support from Europe, North America, ICANN, private sector and most of ICANN-involved civil society. And if by some miracle it did happen, the results would probably just reproduce the evolution of opinion within ICANN, leading to a 4 year delay for no real purpose. Dr. Milton Mueller Syracuse University School of Information Studies http://www.digital-convergence.org http://www.internetgovernance.org