Namespace Coordination

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

At the recent NTIA Public Hearing to discuss issues
associated with the continuation of the transition of
the technical coordination and management of the
Internet's domain name and addressing system to the
private sector, I heard many calls for ICANN to begin
functioning as a DNS coordinator moreso than as a DNS
manager.

Coordination activities call be handled in several
ways... They can be handled in a pure bottom-up manner
by "delegating coordination functions to or
recognizing the policy role of other responsible
entities that reflect the interests of affected
parties" -- an example of the bottom-up approach may
be found in MINC's effort to coordinate a moratorium
on the deployment of all new uncoordinated and
unauthorised IDN deployments in view of the risk of
IDN namespace collisions -- for further details see
http://www.minc.org/news.aspx?id=349&lang=en , or they
may be handled in a more top-down fashion that still
relies on the public consultation process. 

For example, there are many that have noted that the
.edu namespace is highly valued by the Internet
community but registration options are only available
for U.S. educational institutions.  As a coordinator,
ICANN could (after a consultation period) interact
with the .edu sponsoring organization and perhaps
recommend a more internationalized approach that would
enable foreign universities to participate in this
namespace (if such is the outcome of the consultative
process).

A focus on coordination will also allow ICANN to step
back from the pursuit of contractual regimes... does
anyone other than the U.S. DOC see any real need for
written contracts with the root server operators? I
don't; ISOC doesn't.

ICANN doesn't have any contracts with the operators of
the .gov, .mil or .edu registries and they're working
just fine... why then should ICANN be pursuing
contracts with the root-server operators?  A respected
coordinator would not need a set of contracts to get
the job done.

Focus on coordination.  Set up Symposiums as did the
ITU and UNESCO with their Global Symposium on
Promoting the Multilingual Internet. 
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/multilingual/programme.html

Commission research reports.  Ask the folk at Berkman
and/or the Microsoft Research Team to provide you with
a report on the scope and magnitude of cybersquatting.
 Set up a multi-day session to fully explore the
dimensions of the problem and possible policy-based
solutions.  Invite expert panelists to speak; call for
papers and presentations.  This is what a coordinator
does.

This is what would be appreciated.

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