[alac] ITU's ccTLD workshop

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I owe you a report about last Monday and Friday's "workshop on ccTLDs"
hosted by ITU in Geneva (official site:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/cctld/index.html).

For this edition, I participated in it as an individual(*), since
deadline for paper submission was Feb 23 and we were already filled up
with things to do. However, if this kind of things happen again (and
they should - a final conclusion was "let's do it again in a year",
and Dr Lynn suggested to couple the meeting with a ICANN one), we
should consider whether to participate formally. When I sent the paper
I didn't expect to participate personally, but then I noticed that
this event was going to be quite significant, so I successfully spared
the two days to be there (fortunately, Geneva is less than 3 hours by
car from Turin). It's good because otherwise there would not have been
any participation by users.

The event was a success - well organized, very interesting, with over
60 papers (you will find them on the website, just the list is
impressive) and 100-150 participants, and also good in
connection-making (I finally had a chance to shake hands with GAC and
ccTLD chairs, for example). In the end there was no official
conclusions or proceedings of the meeting, but you can find a detailed
report (though a little biased against ICANN) at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29612.html

However, the main points I would get from the meeting are:

- There is no consensus whether ICANN or ITU would be the appropriate
policy making forum for the DNS, but there is in my opinion a
prevailing sentiment that the reformed ICANN should be given a try and
that purely governmental regulation is not appropriate.

- There is a widespread consensus that the authority of any global
Internet policy body, including ICANN, should not descend from the US
Government but from an international agreement (and this is the most
pressing reason for most ITU supporters).

- There still is considerable unawareness of what ICANN is and does in
many developing countries, which tend to see ITU as a better known and
more trustworthy environment (not a few governmental reps repeatedly
quoted paragraph 58 of the WSIS draft), or to think that the GAC
should be the top decision-making body in ICANN (though GAC people
stated that they are endorsing the new structure of ICANN).

- There is a number of ccTLD operators requiring more efficiency and
impartiality in the IANA functions.

- There is a number of people loudly complaining about a number of
things ICANN has done in the past (but as Stuart Lynn said, this is
just natural).

The message I tried to convey there is that even if some of these
points (for example, the one related to ultimate control by USG) are
agreeable, due to the very characteristics and history of the Internet
there is a need for user involvement in Internet policy-making, so the
original idea of ICANN as a 3-party governance structure is still
valid. Then I pointed out that there is much synergy possible between
ccTLDs and our RALOs, and that ccTLDs should encourage their
memberships and user representatives to participate in our process.
You can read my paper here:
http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/workshop/cctld/cctld049.pdf

If you want to get some more coverage of this event, you can listen to
the audio recordings here:
http://www.itu.int/ibs/ITU-T/SG2-ccTLD/index.html


(*) even if it was impossible to register without stating an
organization, so I had to put "ICANN" on my badge... apparently not
many individuals participate directly in ITU events.
-- 
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
-------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------