Re: ISO 3166 namespace administration & Proposal

["Cary Karp" <ck@nrm.se>]

Quoting Perry Metzger in reply to Kevin Brown regarding, having

> the .AE domain reassigned against the will of the government
> of the United Arab Emirates, or your notion that the IANA
> could somehow successfully involve itself in an internal UAE
> legal dispute.

I have little idea what discussion may have taken place between
Perry and Kevin on these matters. There is, however, an issue
of broader importance here that I hope is not being dismissed
with Perry's latest communication.

However inappropriate it might be to suggest that the IANA
address issues of national domain management against the will of
a government, there is an equally apparent need for a mechanism
by which the IANA and the national authority can come to
agreement in case either is unhappy with the other's action.
(Ergo my query about the potential utility of a collegium of 
nTLD managers.)

On what basis does the IANA decide to delegate nTLD authority,
in the first place?  Surely, there must be some discussion of
technical requirements and reasonable willingness to adhere to
at least some basic rules of TLD management (WHOIS registry,
DNS servers, etc). If the IANA simply hands over an nTLD to the
first agency submitting a request on a governmental letterhead
it ought not to be surprised if difficulty results from
subsequent national action. Is there really no provision for
on-going review?  Asking what I hope is not an entirely idiotic
question, how are the international "routing treaties"
established?

The likelihood of an individual nTLD following the
recommendations made in the IAHC Proposal would probably
increase if the nTLD had a clear perception of the impending
acceptance of those recommendations by other nTLDs. Again,
without expecting an official answer, I remain curious as to
whether or not the IAHC has considered this aspect of the
matter.

Putting a bottom line on this, apologizing in case I have
misread the IAHC Proposal, I propose that the CORE be
structured with a facet for the nTLD registrars, that this be
specified in the CORE-MoU, that the nTLD registrars be provided
with a clearly defined channel for meaningfully contributing to
the iTLD and gTLD establishment processes, and that the gTLD
CORE members be obligated to utilize this channel prior to
taking any action that could be of consequence for nTLD
operation.


Cary Karp               Department of Information Technology
mailto:ck@nrm.se        Swedish Museum of Natural History
http://ck.nrm.se/       Svante Arrheniusv. 3
Phone: +46 8 666 4055   Box 50007 
Fax:   +46 8 666 4235   104 05 Stockholm, Sweden