ccTLD-ICANN Meeting Geneva, 19 February 2001

(Serie of 3 ccTLD-ICANN meetings: Honolulu 1 Feb 2001, Geneva 19 Feb 2001, Melbourne 10 Mar 2001)

ccTLD – History in the Making

Elisabeth Porteneuve AFNIC (NIC-FR) ccTLD Names Council Member

Country code Top Level Domain-names – ccTLD - history in the making

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The path from a technical research network to political issues:

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technical network developments, Bitnet/EARN, SPAN, HEPNET, uucp, NSFNET, TCP/IP

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commercial US Congress decision in 1992 giving the National Science Foundation the statutory authority to allow commercial activity on the NSFNET, which subsequently led to the NSF agreement with the Network Solutions, Inc. and the annual fees for domain names registration and maintenance.

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political ISO3166 codes

Quiet path between 1985 to 1994, slippery road in 1996-97

YYYY Nb ccTLDs created Total 1985 3 3 1986 7 10 1987 9 19 1988 9 28 1989 8 36 1990 11 47 1991 22 69 1992 17 86 1993 23 109 1994 22 131 1995 29 160 1996 31 191 1997 47 238 1998 2 240 • The deployment of international Internet connectivity in 1990’s is still recorded on Larry Landweber site, starting from September 1991 map ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/connectivity_table/version_2 , ending with version_16 June 1997 • Jon Postel publishes RFC1591

Rush for gold

• Between 1995-1997 US collect 15 USD tax per domain name worldwide for the Intellectual Infrastructure Fund • NSI suceess and monopoly and its impact – Pressure on IANA to open new gTLD, IAHC and subsequent – Pressure on IANA to delegate ccTLD • Jungle of decisions

White Paper and the beginning of responsibility

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Strongly oriented towards gTLD problems

– NSI monopoly – Domain name dispute resolution policy

ccTLD are mentionned twice

– “More than 200 national, or country-code, TLDs (ccTLDs) are administered by their corresponding governments or by private entities with the appropriate national government's acquiescence. A small set of gTLDs do not carry any national identifier, but denote the intended function of that portion of the domain space.” – “Of course, national governments now have, and will continue to have, authority to manage or establish policy for their own ccTLDs.”

Privatization of old ccTLD Registries, Far West in some ccTLD

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Privatization of old ccTLD Registries

– Many structures attached to Universities or research labs set up legal entities, mostly not for profit Registries, profit Registrars (Nominet .uk in 1996, AFNIC .fr and Denic .de in 1997 , …)

Some commercial ccTLD, competing with .com/.org/.net on the international market, use a Country-code umbrella as excuse

– adapting part of ICANN established obligations (UDRP), but escaping from an open competition, registrars agreements, escrow of database and mandatory whois information. – delocalised and incorporated outside of the corresponding ISO 3166-1 countries or territories • questioned by the appropriate national government's whilst claiming to the world the defense of the local population

Unrealistic USG and ICANN assuption on contracts with ccTLD

• The extension of USG agreement with ICANN expect the contract with ccTLD within less than one year – 242 countries and territories in 242 days ?

• Reality facts: – 25% of IANA records are incorrect (source IANA, after one year of hard work in 1999) – 98 ccTLD donated contributions to ICANN in fiscal year 1999-2000 – At most 95 voted over e-mail on various ccTLD matters – At most 50-60 sent delegates to physical ICANN meetings – There is still a lot of work to understand what the contract or Memorandum of Understanding is about

Old IANA was NOT a sacred wonderful world

• The old IANA was Jon Postel one man show – Doing whatever he felt appropriate (and certainly as honestly as he could and as long as pressure was not too strong). – But no transparency, no place to discuss or challenge some dictatorial decisions • Language advantage was-it of decisive importance ?

– (a contrario -- if there were no advantage of IANA decisions in 1996-1997 to native English speakers, the ratio of questionable delegations to native English speakers and to non-native English speakers would be similar).

• Jon Postel was sometime abused – Four known IANA’s mistakes happen with .je, .gg, .im and .ac taken from ISO3166 reserved list. Subsequently the ISO Maintenance Agency suppressed the publication of ISO reserved codes on its web site.

ICANN responsibility is welcomed

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ICANN is a framework (set up in the White Paper issued in June 1998) allowing for:

– better international communication, open and transparent process – an open, transparent and well recorded ccTLD-relate information – a mandatory geographic diversity in ICANN process – and hopefully language diversity •

The translation of important rules, documents or request for proposals into several languages

to allow for

space.

, is the only way to have the Internet knowledge shared, well understood. It is a preamble

an open worldwide competition of the private sector related to Internet management, preventing the “digital divide” or the “re-colonization” in the Internet

Difficult road for ccTLD to get organized within ICANN process

• The DNSO Formation Concepts were achieved with an apparent strong ccTLD support, in Madonna-like style in Singapore, March 1999 • Followed by a painful ccTLD set up in Berlin, May 1999, intra ccTLD fights and non-respect for geographic diversity in the NC election in 1999 • The DNSO structure created with enormous impact from ccTLD does not give them any chance for ICANN Board seat, when facing the strong coalition of gTLD, Registrars, IP, Business and ISP interests, September 1999 (repeated in September 2000)

Discouraged ccTLD on the way forward (1)

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Two lessons

: – the ccTLD leadership shall be collectively build up and shared between individuals from various geographic regions to achieve the group strength (which will simultaneously fulfill ICANN Bylaws criteria) – The ccTLD shall devise an other way of participation in ICANN process allowing them to be correctly represented

Discouraged ccTLD on the way forward (2)

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Since 2000 the ccTLD succeeded

– to set up an international Interim Secretariat, to gather some funds, to find sposors, to organize meetings, to bring back to life their web site and mailing lists with archives – to draft Articles of Association (awaiting for final adoption) – to work on Best Practices, study funding model, rise enthusiasm for documents translation into various languages, and rise an overall participation – to elect new ccTLD delegates to the Names Council – to elect new AdCom – to work out a new project for ccTLD (cf. Peter de Blanc presentation), with a very important outreach plans – to work on ccwhois project – puting in place a custodianship of IANA TLD database, abandonned from the Internic (ccwhois.org presentation underway for Melbourne)

Unrealistic financial expectations from ICANN

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In 1999 the ICANN Presidential TFF decided to request ccTLD for

– 35% of ICANN Budget, approximately 1.5 million USD per annum - unrealistic, as evidenced by the actual total contributions of ccTLD to budget to date (900 thousand USD).

In 2000 this amount was reconducted, whilst ccTLD were constantly refusing such amount

– no service was ever provided to the ccTLD – ccTLD are divided among themselves how to share these dues

Financial expectations from ICANN for 2001-02

• Equilibrate contributions to ICANN between IP addresses and Domain Names • Equilibrate contributions to ICANN between Domain Names groups – For 2 years 90% of ICANN funds has come only from three DNSO Constituencies: Registrars, gTLD, ccTLD, whilst the remaining four do not fund ICANN at all: Business, ISPCP, IPC and NCDNH. • the ccTLD Constituency, while requested for 1.5 million USD per annum has no chance to have an ICANN Board elected – Furthermore the ccTLD does not consider fair to share US lawyers burden related to inavoidables disputes concerning new gTLDs or registrars (but does understand perfectly than ICANN as a private company has to defend itself, therefore colossal cost of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue).

The outstanding issues for ccTLD group

1.

2.

3.

4.

Each ccTLD manager is facing more and more obligations, which are an unwanted complicated responsibility, a "string attached" to the initial "technical package" of registration of domain names. Is it reasonable to expect to escape such obligations as data protection, whois information, data escrow, domain disputes ?

Estimate the distribution of fair dues to ICANN among ccTLD members, based on some tangible information related to domain names economical activity. Is it reasonable to hide any statistical information on domain names activity? Shall the financial scheme for ccTLD be related to the domain names ?

To devise an wwTLD organization, either as a ccSO or as an advisory committee to ICANN Outreach and awareness. Visit and bring to the group each and every ccTLD Registry. Custodianship of IANA database, preserve all records from the past for the future – ccwhois.org project

The “root servers” mystery and hidden power islands, ccTLD are concerned

• • • name org city type url a InterNIC Herndon, VA, US com http://www.internic.org

b ISI Marina del Rey, CA, US edu http://www.isi.edu

c PSInet Herndon, VA, US com http://www.psi.net

d UMD College Park, MD, US edu http://www.umd.edu

e NASA Mt View, CA, US usg http://www.nasa.gov

f ISC Palo Alto, CA, US com http://www.isc.org

g DISA Vienna, VA, US usg http://nic.mil

h ARL Aberdeen, MD, US usg http://www.arl.mil

i NORDUnet Stockholm, SE int http://www.nordu.net

j (TBD) (colo w/A) 0 http://www.iana.org

k RIPE London, UK int http://www.ripe.net

l (TBD) (colo w/B) 0 http://www.iana.org

m WIDE Tokyo, JP int http://www.wide.ad.jp

Who are operators ? What is the impact on ccTLD ?

Where j and l servers are going to be placed ? Who decide ?

When the root server running IPv6 natively ?

ccTLD and ICANN

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What if we do not succeed ?