Comments on UA of TLDs Roadmap

[Sunny Liu <sunny.liu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We are Netmission.Asia, one of the At-Large Structure in ALAC. We would like to 
submit our comments on the titled topic for your kind consideration. 
NetMission.Asia statement on the topic “Universal Acceptance of TLDs Draft 
Roadmap” As an At-Large Structure, Netmission.Asia would like to comment on the 
topic Universal Acceptance of TLDs Draft Roadmap. We agreed that ICANN’s 
primary goal is to create a sense of urgency, that is, to perform a 
coordinating role by motivating stakeholders to take proper independent 
actions. With regards to the stakeholders to be engaged, we expect a heavier 
role on governments and businesses in the Roadmap. Aside from the coordinating 
work, ICANN can brainstorm ways to incentivize related parties who are 
accountable to make real the changes in the system or software. Software 
developers of browsers and email service providers are examples of the said 
parties. Lastly, we propose that the timelines for achieving the goals should 
be presented more in detail in the Roadmap. ICANN should recognize the fact 
that the “sense of urgency” mainly comes from the user side and advocates are 
mainly promoting IDN from users’ perspectives, while, governments and 
industries, have relatively lower incentive in progressing with the universal 
Acceptance of IDNs. However, governmental participation holds a prominent 
position in the multi-stakeholders model in terms of promoting and implementing 
internet policies and stakeholders engagement at a local level with the use of 
legislations within its own territory. In the existing ICANN structure, GAC can 
play a more active role in introducing the acceptance issues to its members and 
brainstorm possible rectification steps on an inter-governmental level. If 
needs be, working groups with representatives from ICANN, different governments 
and industry professionals coming from different geographical location who are 
responsible for the regional IDNs development can be set up in a bid to foster 
discussion between government bodies. Secondly, businesses and software 
developers claim to have excessive cost incurred for the technological and 
system upgrades to accommodate new TLDs. For example, intranet or internet 
email system programmers need to initiate more frequent updates as more new 
TLDs come into our lives. Registries and registrars, which are bound by ICANN’s 
contracts, can take the first step in fixing the unconformity within their 
systems, as suggested by the JIG report. For parties those are more distant 
from ICANN, incentive programmes can be set up to facilitate tangible 
development of existing systems for the software developers. We believe one of 
the important incentives is the number of IDN users affected by this acceptance 
issues, so the use the public pressure to urge related parties to take actions 
maybe a way out. Lastly, ICANN should further define its Roadmap and establish 
clearer guidelines on the timeframe of universal acceptance of TLD development. 
Since we envision that end-users would like to witness incremental changes in a 
near future, ICANN can prioritize its initiatives and divide the work into a 
few stages. In this sense, it helps to track the progress and completion of 
each phase and it will help alleviate resource constraints that may arise as 
different activities overlap. Best Regards,Sunny Liu(on behalf of 
Netmission.Asia)