A collective contribution

[Daniel Kaplan <dkaplan@terra-nova.fr>]

The following is a collective contribution. I will later provide more in-depth, but personal, comments on the Dec. 19 draft.

Daniel (who moderated the workgroup).

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During the first French ISOC Encounters (Autrans, Jan. 9-11), a working group of about 20 persons gathered to comment IAHC¹s December 19 draft.

The working group reached the following 5 consensus points:

1- The origin of the problems IAHC is trying to solve is to be found in the unsatisfactory administration of the .com (and to a lesser degree, .net and .org) gTLDs.

2- The naming space (not including "leaf" domains belonging to registrants and which designate IP addresses), is a collective resource.

   A corollary is that at the root, the management of the naming space should not
   become a for-profit activity. This does not preclude the fact that, depending on
   national sensibilities, the management of registrars may be a for-profit
   activity.

3- The creation of each new gTLDs should be "for cause" and depend on the approval of its "charter" by a collective entity representing the Internet community. This "charter" should cover 2 aspects:

   * towards registrars, "proper administration" provisions (transparency,
     non-discrimination, sharing...). This may require some
     completing of relevant RFCs;
   * towards registrants, a set of criteria which will indicate wether a
     specific domain name may, or not, be registered within a
     specific gTLD. In order to avoid inducing multiple registrations which
     would only recreate the problems we are trying to solve,
     those criteria should (i) not be too generic, and (ii) derive as much as
     possible from internationally recognized "real-world" criteria.

   However, the working group does not believe that IAHC, nor any other group,
   can provide an exhaustive and definitive way to pre-structure the naming space.
   Trying to map the Internet's naming space with the real-world "naming spaces"
   is neither possible, nor desirable.

4- In order to limit name conflicts and speculation, and to allow the resolution of conflicts, new registrars should all be located in one of the (132 to date) countries which have signed the Paris Union Convention on the protection of industrial property.

5- The recommendations IAHC formulated on the organisation of "national" (ISO 3166) TLDs should explicitely be directed towards the .us domain in priority.

   As for other national domains, these proposals should be considered as an
   interesting input and an incentive to provide a rational and efficient structure
   for these domains, while taking into account each country's cultural, legal and
   linguistic specificities.


Daniel

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Daniel Kaplan         dkaplan@terra-nova.fr
Consultant - Media & Commerce Electroniques
           - Electronic  Media  &  Commerce
61 rue Monge   -   75005 Paris   -   France
Tel/Fax +33 (0)1 4217 0754 GSM 06 0981 0377
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