Wampum

When does the claim by privileged elites for an additional franchise to operate a namespace in the DNS root prevail over the claim of unprivileged non-elites?

This is a question that shouldn't have arisen, as the legislative body (and in the ICANN reform context we're now talking about the Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO) as a "legislative body", at least within ICANN), in the results of it's working group on the subject, determined that where a community applied for a string, that if there was one or more communities applying for the same string, the breath and depth of "community support" for each competing application would be objectively determined.

Somehow that comparative evaluation criteria where [warning: example use of "Cherokee"] "two factions claiming to be the Cherokee Community" (for large values of "Cherokee") both apply for .cherokee, who cannot accommodate compromise, say Ross Swimmer's community of vigorously uncolored "Cherokees" -- bleached water subsequently carried by Wilma Mankiller and Chad Smith, vs the United Colors of Beneton community of "Cherokees", has become this:

Comparative Evaluation Criteria : Assessing "added value" of a TLD

• Categorizes a broad and lasting field of human, institutional, or social endeavor or activity
• Represents an endeavor or activity that has importance across multiple geographic regions
• Has lasting value
• Enhances diversity of the namespace
• Enriches broad global communities
• Meets needs that cannot reasonably be met in existing TLDs
• Enhances competition in registration services

So now we know that whatever the relative merits are of Chad's angry mob versus everyone else who's comfortable with accommodation around color and culture within a Cherokee Nation that isn't a racial farce, that if Verisign or NeuStar or Afilias or Google or ... claim they will (someday) realize the superior benefits made possible by their superior civilization capitalization and technology, that .cherokee (or whatever else should be expropriated, for the greater good, etc.) is their's to enjoy.

Oddly enough, I wasn't the only one to point out to "staff" that they'd gone off reservation.