[NA-Discuss] Request to have a Fast Track PDP initiated
Thomas Lowenhaupt
toml at communisphere.com
Tue Nov 30 16:35:54 UTC 2010
I too am delighted to see that Danny's back. His concerns and comments
are always thoughtful and detailed. And as I'm sure his proposal will
attract a good deal of attention, I'm going to piggy-back on it and
introduce a related issue.
My attention is on imagining how a TLD could best serve the complex
needs of a global city such as New York, with millions of residents and
hundreds of thousands of employees - we have 8,200,000 residents and
302,000 city employees. To help address a portion of this question, I
recently organized and moderated a City-TLD Governance and Best
Practices workshop at the IGF Vilnius meeting, see report
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/vilnius-workshop-report>.
In short, that report calls for defining criteria that identify a public
interest city-TLD, undertaking global outreach to identify cities
meeting those criteria, addressing cost issues - especially as they
pertain to cities of lesser wealth, assigning dedicated ICANN staff for
processing such city-TLDs, and creating a structure for city-TLD
governance within ICANN and/or elsewhere as appropriate. I've copied the
Draft Definition of a Public Interest City-TLD below and would
appreciate your thoughts.
But your thoughts on this Draft Definition is a secondary piggy-back.
*What drove me to post here is the question of the longevity of a
city-TLD* and the domain names it presents. So in the instance of New
York City, how long is its TLD expected to serve the needs of city
residents and organizations? As I don't see a reasonable substitute for
the DNS on the horizon (thoughts on Kahn's Handle System are welcomed),
we must be prudent and find ways to make the names last for generations
to come, in essence looking upon the .nyc TLD as a limited resource in
need of policies to assure its sustainability.
We've created a Sustainable City-TLDs page on our wiki
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/sustainable-city-tlds>
with a bit more on this topic, but it needs some help. I hope it's not
too far afield from Danny's question and would appreciate your thoughts.
Best,
Tom Lowenhaupt
-----------------------------------------------
Thomas Lowenhaupt, Founder & Chair
Connecting.nyc Inc.
tom at connectingnyc.org <mailto:tom at connectingnyc.org>
Jackson Hts., NYC 11372
718 639 4222
Web <http://www.connectingnyc.org/> Wiki
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/project-home> Blog
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Draft Definition of Public Interest City-TLDs
For Discussion, as of November 4, 2010
Cities are frequently ancient and always complex institutions that
provide basic food, housing, health, safety, and cultural needs for more
than half of humankind. They can best serve their residents and
organizations if they have access to the most advanced technology. Until
now cities have been prohibited from effectively using good Internet
Domain Names, requiring residents and organizations to use national or
global TLDs for local communication. The ICANN's 2008 new TLD policy
opened the door for the issuance of city-TLDs.
The development of city-TLDs as public interest resources will be
transformational, providing cities with a Critical Internet Resource,
and empowering them to develop their digital infrastructure to the
direct benefit of residents and organizations.
The utility of a list of cities seeking the development of public
interest TLDs was expressed at the recent IGF Vilnius workshop on
City-TLD Governance and Best Practices, where the ICANN's chair
suggested that a cities list would facilitate ICANN's operation. The
creation of a definition of a Public Interest City-TLD is a first step
in developing such a list, with outreach to identify interested cities a
next step.
Definition: Public Interest city-TLDs are those which serve the long
term interests of city residents and organizations. They serve those
interests when:
*
they use the name-space to facilitate geographic awareness
enabling residents and organizations to readily locate one another
to optimize the exchange of services, products, and ideas and
revivify the traditional networking role of cities;
*
they facilitate the availability of civic collaboration tools –
calendars, maps, mail lists, polling, and other organizing tools –
making them available for civic benefit on a public access basis;
*
they reserve and advocate for the use of domain names for unbiased
portals for government, civic, and development use;
*
they commit a significant portion of their resources to
eradicating digital divides by facilitating civic collaboration,
education, and training;
*
they allocate names for the civic benefit of geographic sub areas
(neighborhoods), civic activities, and public issue resolution;
*
they provide names in support of all ethnic populations;
*
they strive for name allocation practices that will maintain a
flow of good domain names for the life of the TLD;
*
they establish allocation policies that avoid pitfalls such as
hoarding and typo-squatting using pricing and nexus requirements.
Additionally, public interest city-TLDs are those that:
*
are operated in close cooperation with the extant local
institutions, to provide a secure experience suitable for
residents, civic, cultural and business organizations, and visitors;
*
exchange experiences and best practices with other cities
operating TLDs in the public interest;
*
operate within a broad "urbanismo" framework that considers their
geographic, economic, political, social, and cultural impact on
their environment;
*
commit to develop appropriate channels for inter-city sharing of
vital Internet enabled city resources in areas such as education,
health, safety, and sanitation;
*
commit to working in collaboration with relevant local and
national public authorities;
*
commit to engaging all segments of the population in the
management of their TLDs;
*
commit to the allocation of name spaces that promote sustainable
cities;
*
commit to the use of graphic design practices that facilitate
cross cultural understanding;
*
commit to support their city’s branding and external promotion
activities;
*
commit to engage all segments of the population and the technical
operators of the TLD in a collaborative governance structure.
On 11/29/2010 11:52 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Hi Danny. Welcome back to NARALO.
>
> I understand your points about the Russian registrrar reserving "premium"
> domains for themselves. I also agree that such action is against the public
> interest.
>
> I have long been bothered about domain-name speculatuion -- about how domain
> hoarders inflate the cost of domains while adding ZERO value to the process.
> But I am personally less concerned about whether the speculator is a
> contracted party or a registrant than the general negative effect of domain
> speculation.
>
> I'm certainly interested in working with you to advance this issue. But I
> have a couple of questions on this issue regarding my own confusion:
>
> 1. From the point of view of end-users, does it matter if the hoarder is
> a registry, registrar or domainer registrant? If so, why? When someone is
> (in the view of some) "shaken down" by a domain auction, does it matter to
> the buyer whether the domain speculator is a the creator of the domain, a
> reseller of it or another end-user?
>
> 2. I could personally understand the argument that registrars and
> registries have had to make investments and undertake risks to be able to
> provide domains, and as a result have added value to the Intrenet namespace.
> By contrast, an end-user registrant speculator creates no added value. Why
> should registrars and registries be held back from engaging in speculation
> if end-users are allowed to speculate?
>
> 3. Is the problem of scarcity one that can be fixed with a lot more TLDs?
> I mean, there's nothing holding a gun to anyone's head to buy domains at
> auction. If there are many more TLDs available, doesn't that reduce
> scarcity, icrease the risk to speculators and force the price down?
>
> 4. From the beginning ICANN has held, as a core principle, that domains
> are commodities first and identities second. To we want to reverse that? Is
> it too late?
>
> 5. Given that half of ICANN's policy-making body (the GNSO) is entities
> that make money by selling as mamy domains for as much money as possible,
> what is our realistic chance of advancing a policy change through that body
> that may significamtly reduce revenues?
>
>
> - Evan
>
>
> On 29 November 2010 22:09, Danny Younger<dannyyounger at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Events that have transpired in the last few days attendant to the launch of
>> .рф have made it clear to me that although we can't deal with the troubling
>> issues that may arise with TLD launches in the ccTLD world, we do have the
>> ability to act to protect the public interest within the gTLD sphere by way
>> of a policy that would govern speculation in domain names by registrars.
>>
>> By way of background, in the recent .рф ccTLD launch an ICANN accredited
>> registrar, RU-Center, decided to register domain names in its own name on a
>> priority basis and only then did it register other domain names.
>> Approximately 24,500 premium domains registered to RU-Center were then put
>> up for auction. The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) then stepped
>> in, shut down the auctions and accused a number of registrars of collusion.
>>
>> What can we learn from this? Simply put... greed in the new TLD launch
>> process can lead to abuse of the public trust, and measures need to be in
>> place to ensure that the public is protected from the ICANN-accredited
>> registrar community.
>>
>> In our gTLD world, there is at the moment no ICANN policy whatsoever
>> governing speculation in, or warehousing of, domains by registrars.
>> Registrars are able to game the system to their own ends however they see
>> fit; this has to change.
>>
>> The current RAA (section 3.7.9) states: "Registrar shall abide by any
>> ICANN adopted specifications or policies prohibiting or restricting
>> warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars".
>>
>> As there is no such policy or specification, I suggest that we initiate a
>> PDP to have such a policy created, namely a policy that would state:
>>
>> "No registrar, registrar affiliate, or reseller of registrar services shall
>> engage in warehousing of or speculation in domain names."
>>
>> While I understand that the GNSO soon will broadly be looking at proposed
>> amendments for the RAA, we all know that the GNSO process (if spread over
>> the entirety of the RAA proposed amendments) can take years to arrive at a
>> recommendation... yet with the imminent roll-out of hundreds of new gTLDs,
>> we just don't have the luxury of waiting that long.
>>
>> In my view, what is called for is a Fast Track PDP approach that would
>> focus on a single policy recommendation that could be put in place before
>> any new gTLD is launched.
>>
>> I would ask the NARALO to bring this matter to the immediate attention of
>> the ALAC.
>>
>> Thanks for your consideration of this issue.
>>
>> Danny Younger
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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