Answers to selected questions from
ICANN Yokohama Meeting Topic: Introduction of New Top-Level Domains
Kent Crispin
Q36:
Should the formulation of policies for limited-purpose TLDs be
delegated to sponsoring
organizations? In all cases or only in some?
In general, this should be
decided on a per case basis. In all
cases, the resulting policies
should be available for public comment
and review prior to ICANN approval.
Q37:
What measures should be employed to encourage or require that a
sponsoring organization
is appropriately representative of the TLD's
intended stakeholders?
Applications
must at least be up for public review and opposition for
an adequate amount
of time -- I believe that 90 days might not be
enough. Moreover,
the public review should be aggressive -- we will
not find it easy to be
sure that appropriate parties in say India are
well informed, for example
-- and should involve notification of
public authorities through, for example,
announcements at appropriate
venues in the UN. Moreover, sponsors
or other proposers should
present documentation of *their* attempts to
publicize widely.
Q38: In cases where sponsoring organizations are appointed, what
measures
should be established to ensure that the interests of the
global Internet community
are served in the operation of the TLD?
By definition, a sponsored TLD may
be intended to serve a limited
population. This is not a bug, it
is a desirable feature of
sponsored/chartered TLDs -- by catering to a
limited audience they
are segmenting the domain name space, and operating
against the
unfortunate practive of getting the same SLD in
every TLD.
So, one could say that the best way for sponsors to serve the
global
community is to well-serve their particular community.
However, it is also essential that the sponsoring organization be
responsive to policies that do apply globally, and thus it is
important
that there be clear contractual terms that bind the sponsor
to such standard
policies.
An important point, though, is that if sponsors and registry operators
are separated, many the global policy requirements would be enforced
through
the registry operators accreditation agreement, and the
sponsor would simply
not deal with such issues.
Q39: How should global policy requirements (adherence
to a TLD's
charter, requirements of representativeness, interoperability
requirements, etc.) be enforced?
Adherence to a charter,
and requirements of representativeness, should
be enforced through a more
or less standard chain of appeal and due
process that every sponsor would
define as part of its "sponsor
accreditation agreement". An entity
that proposes to be a sponsor
should also be required to propose the mechanism
by which its own
decisions would be appealed, up to ICANN, if necessary.
Such a
proposal should treat ICANN as the court of
last resort, but be
designed to drastically minimize the possibility of
ICANN ever being
involved. Sponsor proposals should be required
to deal with this
issue in depth, and to be willing to iterate with ICANN
on the
matter. Hopefully, if there are several dozen good proposals
a
relatively standard set of mechanisms will become apparent.
Interoperability requirements are a separate matter. Registry
operator accreditation should be a separate contract from sponsor
accreditation,
and registry operators could be fairly strictly bound
to follow IETF RFCs,
good data preservation practices, and so on.
These are details that many
sponsoring organizations would have
absolutely zero interest in, but more
important, little competence.
Q49: Does the schedule allow
sufficient time for formulation of
proposals?
I think it is too aggressive.
I am more concerned, however, about the
short time allowed for development
of the call for proposals and
especially, the application
form. The application form is a serious,
complex document, and, as
I note below, I think there should be two
application forms -- one
for sponsorship or creation of a TLD/policy,
and another one for registry
operators.
Q50: Does the schedule allow sufficient time for public comment?
Absolutely not. The public comment portion is 7 days, and most of
the applications will be filed on the last day. There should be *at
least* two rounds of public comment, of at least two weeks, and
applicants
should have opportunity to revise applications in light of
public comment.
Q51: Should all proposals be posted for comment simultaneously to
maintain
equal time for public comment? Should all proposals be posted
for public comment
as they are received to allow the greatest possible
time for public analysis and
comment?
Realistically speaking, can you imagine that anyone making an
application is going to be significantly *early*? You may get a few
early birds, but in an immediate publication scenario, everyone will
wait
until close to the end to see what others will do. I think you
would
be better off to collect applications for two months, post them
for a month
of public comment, split into two rounds, with
opportunity for modification
in light of comments received.
Q52: Should the formal applications be
posted in full for public
comment? If not, which parts of the applications should
remain private?
TLD proposals (as opposed to registry operator proposals)
should be
*very* public. If someone has a business plan that
depends on secrecy
then they should be in a different business. Employee
names and
addresses, and other such privacy data, would not be required.
But
anything to do with the policy/charter/enforcement must be disclosed,
and the details of the sponsoring organization should be
disclosed.
Registry operator proposals need not meet the same standards. The
application should not be secret, by any means, but the same scrutiny
is
not required.
Q53: Should proposals choose a single proposed TLD or numerous
possibilities?
There could be multiple possibilites. If so, they should be
prioritized.
Note that registry operator proposals need not specify
a TLD at all.
Q54:
Should ICANN select the TLD labels, should they be proposed by the
applicants
for new TLD registries, or should they be chosen by a
consultative process between
the applicants and ICANN?
There should be two kinds of proposals
requested by ICANN: 1) TLD
proposals, which specify TLD labels,
policies, charters, and
sponsors; and 2) Registry operator proposals, which
specify the
company and its technical and business characteristics, and
optionally, one or more TLDs that it is interested in operating.
If a TLD
proposal contains a sponsoring agency (and I expect that
most in the initial
rollout will have sponsors), then the sponsor
needs to make a case for
its suitability as a sponsor -- stability,
representativeness, appropriate
expertise in the case of a charter,
and so on. Organizations that
might be excellent sponsors (The
International council of museums, universities,
industry consortia,
etc) might be lousy registry operators, and vice versa;
the desired
characteristics are really quite different.
An application from a proposing sponsor should also contain details
of
how it intends to carry out its sponsorship, including an appeals
process.
It should also define itself in the abstract, and define
the metrics by
which its performance should be judged.
Q55: Should there
be minimum or maximum length requirements for TLD
codes? Are restrictions appropriate
to avoid possible future conflicts
with ISO 3166-1 codes?
Two letter
codes should remain reserved for ISO 3166 codes.
Q56: Should there be restrictions
on the types of TLD labels that are
established (for example, a prohibition of
country names)?
Yes, there probably should be such restrictions,
but they cannot be
developed in a vacuum or all at once. Initial
TLD names should be
very conservatively selected, and subjected to heavy
public review.
From such substantive review some rules should quickly become
apparent; with time a set of "black letter" rules could be developed.
But
it is too much to expect that such a set of rules can be created
immediately.
Q57: What should be the criteria for selecting between potential TLD
labels?
Should non-English language TLD labels be favored?
The most
important criteria is simply public approval. TLD names
should be
publicized, and comments solicited, and evaluated on a
common sense basis
-- some people might find .shop ugly, but
.screwgod gets to an entirely
different level of offensiveness.
In the realm of open gTLDs, a good
case could be made for a
non-english bias. In the case of chartered/sponsored
TLDs, the issue
is not as clear, and needs to be modulated through consideration
of
the charter and policies involved.
Q58: How many new TLDs
of each type should be included in the initial introduct
ion?
The approval process should operate on an individual basis, not on a
batch
basis. In such a situation there will be a first one approved,
then
a second one, and so on. It is only important that all
different
types be in process.
Q59: Which types of TLDs will best serve the DNS?
The most important criteria from a DNS perspective is how
successfully
the TLD partitions the user space. A purely open
generic TLD like
.web doesn't do anything at all to partition the
user space; and many people
who have registrations in .com will
immediately get the same registration
in .web. A strongly chartered
TLD like .museum, however, has exactly
the reverse effect; museums
will have little incentive to
use .com/.net/.org.
Q61: Which types, if any, are essential
to the successful testing
period?
open gTLDs, chartered TLDs, and sponsored
TLDs.
Q72: In what ways should the application requirements for
sponsored/chartered/restricted
TLDs differ from those for open TLDs?
Assuming that registry operators are
separately accredited, purely
open gTLDs require nothing more than a name
to be approved, and for
ICANN to assign the name to an accredited registry
operator. However,
open gTLDs still must go through the same opposition/comment
process
as chartered TLDs, because someone might have a proposal for a
chartered TLD with the same name.
The most important aspect of
this is that the application fee
structure should reflect the different
level of complexity. It
shouldn't cost anywhere near as much to check
out a pure open TLD name
proposal as it would to examine a complex chartered/sponsored
TLD. A
registry operator application should require a fairly constant
amount
of work, and be charged accordingly.
Q73: Should ICANN
require a statement of policy or should a statement of
how policies will be made
be sufficient?
ICANN should require a statement of policy, even if it only
says
"purely open gTLD". It would be most distressing if the
sponsor for
the .arts TLD decided on opening day that it would be better
to cater
to pornography.
Q74: What level of openness, transparency,
and representativeness in
policymaking should ICANN require?
A
very high level of these things should be the default, with
provision for
change if necessary. For example, a TLD to support IP
telephony might
have a very restricted and technically oriented
policy process -- that
would be reasonable. But the default should
be for the
TLD to meet the same standards that ICANN must.