Correction of remarks made by Afilias in their proposal

[Sabine Dolderer/Denic <dolderer@xxxxxxxx>]

At DENIC, we stand with conviction behind the complete, carefully-crafted, 
strong and unique value proposition we have put forward
with our proposal. We fully believe our proposal stands tall on its own merits, 
and it was with this confidence that we therefore
did not find it necessary to use the proposal as an opportunity to attack our 
rival bidders.

However, a couple of our competitors did use their proposals to call into 
question some of our capabilities and experience ? and in
many cases, the claims they made were simply inaccurate and incorrect. In order 
to set the record straight, we felt it was necessary
to correct these misperceptions and inaccuracies and submit them on the public 
record.

Below are our reactions to erroneous and unfounded claims made by Afilias in 
their proposal. In our responses, we aim to set the
record straight with regards to DENIC?s extensive market experience, broad 
international experience, history of support for ICANN,
successful launch of IDNs, implementation of new policies, comprehensive 
customer support, and more. We address each of Afilias?
remarks in the order in which they appeared in their proposal.

Regards,

Sabine Dolderer CEO, DENIC


Lack of market experience and agility

* Lack of market expertise to challenge VeriSign?s dominant position (Afilias 
1-2)
* Lack of agility to challenge VeriSign?s dominant position (Afilias 1-2)

DENIC has managed the .de operations for more than eleven years. During this 
time, .de has become the most popular ccTLD and the
second largest TLD in the world. This success was reached by establishing 
cooperative relations with the .de registrars and by
providing an environment in which a market can develop. Serving more than 220 
members in 12 countries and managing more than 8
million domains cannot be done without market expertise. The members of our 
Executive and Supervisory Board are well-known
representatives of the Internet industry, all of whom bring their significant 
experience to DENIC. In DENIC, the .net registrars
will find a reputable and reliable partner for their business with a strong 
focus on support, stability and security. Committed to
serve the Internet community, DENIC was, is and will be able to react quickly 
to any emerging challenges.


Local Business

* Over 90% of DENIC's business is local, giving DENIC experience that is too 
limited to qualify it to run a global brand and
operation such as .NET (Afilias 1-2)

DENIC?s business as operator of a ccTLD is ?local? by nature, but serves a 
truly international community. DENIC?s members are based
in 12 countries, the domain holders in more than 140 countries, and more 
importantly, DENIC?s infrastructure is in place and working
all over the world. We believe that the .net business has been focused too much 
on the North American market only, missing the
potential for .net located in other markets, especially South America, Asia and 
Europe. DENIC brings the European perspective into
the .net business, making it a real global business.


Not supporting ICANN/ ccNSO

* Has a long standing record of non-support for ICANN and its policies (Afilias 
2-7) * On 1 August 2002, .DE and three other ccTLD
operators announced they had worked closely with VeriSign "in reaching a common 
view of a lightweight ICANN." (Afilias 2-7) * More
recently, DENIC refused to help develop ICANN's ccNSO into an important part of 
the new ICANN. (Afilias 2-7)

As a ccTLD registry, DENIC has not been subject to ICANN policies. 
Nevertheless, DENIC has continuously supported ICANN?s work in a
very constructive and cooperative fashion (for more information regarding this 
topic, see also DENIC?s application part 2-1, section
a: ?Participation in ICANN policy-making process?).

Recently, DENIC was particularly active in the shaping of the ccNSO and 
striving to achieve further improvements of the ccNSO
set-up. Because DENIC wants the ccNSO to become a success, DENIC has been and 
will continue to work hard in support of this effort
and is helping to make changes to the ccNSO related parts of the ICANN bylaws 
in order to make it possible for as many ccTLDs as
possible to join the ccNSO. This is, without a doubt, the best way to make the 
ccNSO an important part of ICANN and, in doing so,
also strengthens ICANN itself.

Apart from this, DENIC supports ICANN?s objectives in numerous other ways. For 
example, DENIC hosts secondary name servers for other
TLDs, on their or DENIC?s hardware, in its location Frankfurt offices for free. 
By doing this, DENIC is increasing stability and
performance of the Internet, also one of ICANN?s objectives.


ICANN funding

* DENIC had earlier criticized ICANN's efforts to obtain a share of funding 
from ccTLDs and challenged the idea of paying fees to
ICANN on the basis of the number of registrations "since the service that ICANN 
supplies for the individual registries is by no
means dependent on the number of domains and is basically identical for all 
registries." Such a registration-based fee structure is
a specific requirement of this RFP. (Afilias 2-7)

DENIC has been a major contributor of voluntary donations to ICANN since its 
founding in 1998. No other ccTLD-registry has, without
any legal obligation, given more money than DENIC. As the registry of .net, 
DENIC will of course pay the registration-based fee
ICANN defined in part 2-4: ?Revenue and Pricing Model; Financial Strength and 
Stability? of the DENIC bid. Additionally, DENIC
pledges to set up a fund for the promotion of the technical development of the 
Internet which will be overseen by an International
Advisory Council. DENIC plans to annually allocate 500,000 Euros ($675,000 US) 
starting in 2006 to support research projects and
working initiatives on the technical advancement of the Internet.


German data protection laws

* DENIC's position on data protection laws in relation to IANA raises questions 
about DENIC's ability to implement current and
future ICANN policies, particularly regarding WHOIS. (Afilias 2-7)

DENIC is a German-based cooperative and is therefore subject to European and 
German privacy law. To implement current ICANN
policies, particularly regarding whois, DENIC has described solutions 
consistent with this legal framework in its application
(especially within the appendices). Regarding future ICANN policies, DENIC, as 
any other organization, has to consider the existing
laws of its home country. In the past, European and German privacy laws have 
proven to be a solid base for all kinds of companies
successfully operating worldwide and will continue to be in the future.


Implementing ICANN policies

* No experience in implementing ICANN policies. (Afilias 1-2)
* DENIC's record of cooperation with ICANN casts doubts on its ability to 
improve the implementation of GNSO policies, a key
criterion in the RFP. (Afilias 1-2)

The question is not whether an applicant is experienced in implementing ICANN 
policies, but in implementing policies in general.
Obviously, DENIC has gained such policy implementing experience with respect to 
policies that concern the TLD .de. Based on this
experience, DENIC, as the registry for .net, will:

* Appoint a .net policy compliance officer
* Implement a process to ensure compliance of existing and new DENIC processes 
with ICANN?s existing policies
* Implement a process to ensure compliance of existing DENIC processes with new 
and future ICANN policies

For more details on DENIC?s activities to ensure compliance with all ICANN 
policies regarding .net see part 2-1: ?ICANN Policy
Compliance? of DENIC?s application.


Conformity regarding IDN

* DENIC refuses to register their IDN language-table at the IANA IDN 
language-table registry. (Afilias 2-7)
* Deploys solutions that diverge from ICANN IDN guidelines. (Afilias 2-7)

The ICANN Guidelines for the Implementation of IDNs v1.0 do not differ from the 
solution deployed by DENIC.

DENIC started the registration of IDN according to the IETF's IDN standards. No 
extraneous solutions like 8-bit DNS transport were
pursued. Thereby, DENlC followed an inclusion based approach and started IDN 
registration for the Latin blocks of the Unicode tables
only.

DENIC found that the registration and administration rules for .de would not 
benefit from a character variants table, but instead
would create confusion in the German speaking community. Thus, the need for 
language tags under .de was deemed questionable. All IDN
registration and administration rules are documented and publicly available.

Furthermore, DENIC worked collaboratively with all interested parties to 
develop the registration policy and in doing so considered
global as well as regional groups. DENIC, without a doubt, strictly follows the 
"Guidelines for the Implementation of
Internationalized Domain Names" as of 20th June 2003 for .net registration, 
without any disruption in the operation of the current
existing IDNs.


No transition experience

* Lack of transition experience. (Afilias 1-2)

It is true that DENIC has not yet transitioned a TLD of the size of .net, but 
has anyone? DENIC has closely followed TLD transitions
and migrations in the recent past and is able and willing to learn from others' 
experiences - positive and negative. When DENIC took
over the TLD from a university project, the .de registry was of a size 
comparable to many of the TLDs that Afilias lists in their
track record. Finally, DENIC?s procedural competence in handling migrations, 
"flag dates" and transitions has been clearly
demonstrated. Combined with DENIC's proven expertise in relevant registry 
technology, there is no doubt DENIC can handle the .net
transition, as proposed in the transition plan of its application.


No EPP based system

* Has no experience with an EPP-based domain registration system. (Afilias 1-2)

It is also true that DENIC, at the moment, is not using an EPP-based domain 
registration system with .de. But because of DENIC's
ongoing cooperation with IETF, DENIC's staff is very familiar with EPP. 
Starting this month, DENIC is offering registrars two
systems to perform any activities regarding domain registrations. One of these 
systems is the real-time registration system RRI.
Therefore the backend registration system that DENIC uses right now is already 
capable of handling real-time registrations.


Launch of IDN

* DENIC's system faltered upon its launch of IDNs in 2004. (Afilias 1-2)

On March 1, 2004, DENIC introduced IDNs under .de. During this introduction, 
DENIC processed about 600,000 orders within the first
two days. This was the largest introduction of IDNs ever accomplished for a TLD.

The start was planned for 10:00 am (CET) and was postponed to 03:00 pm (CET) 
because of technical issues (other TLDs, like .org,
however had delays of several months for the introduction of IDNs). For DENIC, 
a postponement of two hours would have been
sufficient. However, in close cooperation with the registrars it was agreed 
that the restart would be postponed by five hours to
give every registrar enough time to accomplish all necessary reconfigurations. 
Thus, DENIC achieved the largest introduction of IDNs
without any errors and with 100% equivalent access for all registrars.


Registrar Support

* DENIC has not provided 24/7 support service yet. (Afilias 1-2)

In the past, DENIC has consistently provided quality support for several 
different groups of users. This support has always met the
specific needs and interests of each user, and all future support will do so as 
well.

For registrants of .de domains, a specially-trained support team provides 
assistance. During business hours from 8am to 6pm, this
help desk answers queries from domain holders and Internet users directly via 
phone. When required, as during the introduction phase
of IDN, support times have been extended. Additionally, the help desk can be 
contacted via e-mail, fax or letter.

For its members, the .de registrars, DENIC provides a 24/7 phone service for 
urgent cases staffed by technically competent
personnel. Additionally, urgent e-mails are answered 24 hours a day.

On its public websites as well as on its registrar websites, DENIC covers an 
extensive range of topics of interest to internet
users, registrants and registrars, including FAQs covering more than just the 
most frequent questions and problems. This provides a
knowledge base available to users 24/7.

For .net, DENIC will extend its support efforts to cover the needs of the 
worldwide registrar community. With Tucows, DENIC has
found a competent partner with long-standing experience in the field of 
registry services and support. Tucows will build up a
special team to deliver .net support services, especially for the North 
American and Asian markets. The teams in Canada and Germany
will both have access to the DENIC ticketing-system, thereby handling the 
tickets together to ensure the quickest possible response
and solution ? ensuring 24/7/365 support with a skillful and competent staff. 
Unlike other applicants, DENIC has clearly defined
response times. Registrars will be able to open tickets via phone, fax, e-mail 
or web interface and may track the ticket online.