[gtld-council] Regarding scope for recommendation 20

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Robin,

> 
> Where in ICANN's mandate is it authorized to regulate in 
> areas that are 
> not tied to technical or legal requirements?

Yes - this is a good question.  I note that transfers policy is not a
legal requirement or technical requirement either, but it was considered
desirable for consumer choice and consumer protection to create a
transfers policy.

In the recent staff issues report on domain name tasting at:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/issues/domain-tasting/gnso-domain-tasting-repo
rt-14jun07.pdf

The staff justified describing the topic of domain name tasting as in
scope on the basis that:

(1) "Domain tasting activities involve the allocation and assignment of
domain names."

And

(2) "ICANN is also responsible for policy development reasonably and
appropriately related to these technical functions"

So I would assume that recommendation 20 would be in-scope for
consideration on the same basis - but we could seek confirmation from
the General Counsel.


There is also a precedent in the procedures for allocating a ccTLD from
the ISO-3166-1 list.
From: http://www.icann.org/icp/icp-1.htm 

"The desires of the government of a country with regard to delegation of
a ccTLD are taken very seriously. The IANA will make them a major
consideration in any TLD delegation/transfer discussions. Significantly
interested parties in the domain should agree that the proposed TLD
manager is the appropriate party."

The IANA procedures in turn was derived from RFC1591
(http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt) dated March 1994, which
states:

"Significantly interested parties in the domain should agree that
the designated manager is the appropriate party.

The IANA tries to have any contending parties reach agreement
among themselves, and generally takes no action to change things
unless all the contending parties agree; only in cases where the
designated manager has substantially mis-behaved would the IANA step in.

However, it is also appropriate for interested parties to have
some voice in selecting the designated manager."



The new gTLD committee could decide to use similar language.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin