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McTim and all, <br>
<br>
<br>
One of the main concerns with this new gTLD programme is the high
costs and what that will mean for developing country
applicants/entrepreneurs. <br>
<br>
We commend ICANN for the Joint working group on support for needy
applicants, which has released its second milestone report, which
looks very relevant and interesting and responds to quite a number
of the concerns raised earlier by GAC on the same issue. However,
my main concern is on the timeliness, which do not seem to
correspond to the launch of new gTLD. This may essentially mean that
developing country/needy applicants will be left out of this first
round. For example, the report does contain concrete proposals for
fee waivers, etc but does not propose a concrete and sustainable
process to apply this recommendation, so if indeed the new gTLD
programme is launched on 20 June, and ICANN still does not have a
process in place for accommodating needy applicants there is a
likelihood that they will be left out. <br>
<br>
The fee amounts are rather exorbitant as we have mentioned on
earlier posts regarding the same issue, application fee alone is
USD185,000 not to mention other instances where additional costs
will be required for example, auction, objections, extended
evaluation, etc. The GAC is requesting for further waivers. <br>
<br>
<br>
This article also provides a good history of ICANN and the multi
stakeholder model. <br>
best<br>
<br>
Alice<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/24/11 9:12 AM, Alice Munyua wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4DDB4C40.1080009@apc.org" type="cite">
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charset=ISO-8859-1">
<h1><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/05/18/high-noon-in-singapore">http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/05/18/high-noon-in-singapore</a>
<br>
</b></h1>
<h1><b>High Noon in Singapore? ICANN's new gTLD program at a
crossroads</b></h1>
<div>
<div>
<div> <span> by Wolfgang Kleinwachter | 18 May 2011 | </span>
<div>
<p>To clash or not to clash: that’s the question for the
forthcoming 41st ICANN meeting in Singapore. </p>
<p>Will the booming Lion-City on the South-Asian Peninsula
see a Shakespeare drama in June 2011, a shoot out
between the ICANN Board and the Governmental Advisory
Committee (GAC) to end the nearly 15 years of discussion
on the introduction of more generic Top Level Domains
(TLDs) into the legacy root of the Internet? </p>
<p><strong>Agree? Disagree? Postpone?</strong></p>
<p>Where we are today? ICANN is committed to start the new
gTLD program on Monday, June 20, 2011. Preparations for
the Big Party at the Singapore River are already
underway. </p>
<p>However, Larry Strickling, the US Assistant Secretary
of Commerce and member of ICANNs first review team on
Accountability and Transparency has <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/05/05/strickling-speech-giganet">expressed
serious doubts</a> with regard to that timetable
during a Giganet meeting in Washington, D.C., May 5,
2011.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unless the GAC believes that ICANN has been
sufficiently responsive to their concerns, I do not
see how the Guidebook can be adopted on June 20th in
Singapore in a manner that ensures continuing global
governmental support of ICANN.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, the day before the Giganet meeting, Mei-Lan Stark,
Treasurer of the International Trademark Association
(INTA) told the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property,
Competition and the Internet of the US House of
Representatives that INTA has fundamental problems with
ICANNs new gTLD program which probably can’t be settled
before June 20, 2011. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Strickling underlined in Washington
that the US Department of Commerce sees ICANN as “an
example of a successful multi-stakeholder cooperation”
and reaffirmed his commitment to the ICANN model “as the
best way to preserve the security and stability of the
DNS.” </p>
<p>What will happen? Will we see a shoot out, a last
minute compromise, where parties agree to disagree or
another postponement? It is not easy to make any
predictions. So let’s lean back for a moment and put the
forthcoming Singapore drama into a historical context.</p>
<p><strong>History Says Something</strong></p>
<p>Fifteen years ago, when Jon Postel proposed to add 150
new gTLDs into the root, there were around 300 million
Internet users, less than 30 million domain names and
250 TLDs. Postel’s proposal was watered down in 1997 and
the mandate to broaden the domain space was given to
ICANN in 1998. </p>
<p><span>If the TLD space would have had a similar growth
rate as Internet users and registered domain names, we
would have today more than 2000 TLDs</span>Now, in the
year 2011 we have more than two billions Internet users,
more than 200 million registered domains names and 312
TLDs, including the more than 30 TLDs with non-ASCII
characters. <span>If the TLD space would have had a
similar growth rate as Internet users and registered
domain names, we would have today more than 2000 TLDs</span>.
</p>
<p>The domain name system (DNS) was invented in the early
1980s for less than one million Internet users. Jon
Postel, who was behind a lot of DNS-developments,
proposed originally six three letter generic Top Level
Domains (TLDs) for the DNS tree: three for the US
(dot-gov., dot-mil, dot-edu) and three for the world
(dot-com, dot-org, dot-net). Only later he had the idea
to give also each country a two letter TLD. </p>
<p>Trying to avoid to be pulled into a political debate
about the question what a country is or not, he used the
ISO 3166 list to delegate per handshake to friends (and
friends of his friends) the management of ccTLDs. </p>
<p>The restriction to 243 ccTLDs and only seven gTLDs
(later he added dot-int) was just a practical thing.
There was no technical need for this kind of limitation.
Nobody could expect, than some day there would be two
billions Internet users and more than 200 million
second-level Domain Names (SLDs). </p>
<p>If Postel would have created the proposed 150 gTLDs
already in 1988, nobody would have questioned his
legitimacy to do so.</p>
<p><strong>The Domain Name Battle</strong></p>
<p>The domain-name-battle started in the mid 1990s when -
after the invention of the World Wide Web – the Internet
entered the commercial space and domain names became a
valuable resource. </p>
<p>Postel's efforts to introduce 150 new gTLDs in 1996 was
blocked by the commercial interests of some new big
players in the emerging domain name market: Network
Solution Inc. (NSI), which was allowed to charge for
domain names under dot-com, dot-org and dot-net since
1993 and which had a monopoly in the gTLD space, was not
amused to see its growing business surrounded by new
attractive competitors like dot-web. And the trademark
owners feared that they will be pulled into an endless
and costly battle to save their trademarks in an ever
growing virtual space and an uphill battle to fight
cybersquatters.</p>
<p>In May 1997, Postel wanted to use the ITU, WIPO and
INTA to start with the introduction of at least seven
new gTLDs (via the so-called IHAC-gTLD-MoU), but the US
government intervened and pushed Postel into another
process which finally led to the establishment of the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) in November 1998. </p>
<p>When Postel <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.dot-nxt.com/1998/10/07/postel-testimony">testified</a>
in the US Congress on October, 7, 1998 he gave the new
ICANN full credit when he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This new organization will be unique in the world – a
non-governmental organization with significant
responsibilities for administering what is becoming an
important global resource.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A couple of weeks later he passed away. </p>
<p><strong>ICANNs mandate and decision making procedure</strong></p>
<p>One of the mandates of ICANN is to introduce new gTLDs.
The <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.icann.org/en/general/articles.htm">Articles
of Incorporation</a> from November 21, 1998, say that
ICANN shall develop “policies for determining the
circumstances under which new top-level domains are
added to the DNS root system.” </p>
<p>According to its Bylaws, ICANN is a multi-stakeholder
platform where policy development and decision making is
in the hands of the private sector. Governments have no
voting seat on the ICANN Board, they can use the
Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to make their
voices heard and they can give advice to the board on
issues related to public policies. However, the advice
has no legally binding power for the board. </p>
<p><span>Ira Magaziner in the White House, Becky Burr in
the US Department of Commerce, numerous experts and
Mr. Jon Postel himself introduced this private sector
led model</span>This special construction in ICANNs
architecture was done intentionally by ICANN’s founding
fathers and mothers. <span>Ira Magaziner in the White
House, Becky Burr in the US Department of Commerce,
numerous experts and Mr. Jon Postel himself introduced
this private sector led model</span> for an
internationalized mechanism as an experiment and an
innovation into the political landscape to preserve the
bottom-up dynamics of the Internet development, to
stimulate further economic growth and the establishment
of new jobs by avoiding the emergence of complicated,
politicized and costly governmental structures for
Internet control and oversight. </p>
<p>The establishment of the GAC-ICANN Board mechanism
remained rather unnoticed in the broader public for a
long time. However it was indeed an incredible
innovation in global politics. Normally governments take
advice from non-governmental stakeholders, they are the
final decision taker, they oversee activities of
non-governmental entities and they intervene top down,
if needed. </p>
<p>In other words when the US government proposed this
private sector leadership model with multi-stakeholder
participation and an inclusive, open, transparent and
bottom up policy development mechanism it took a risk
and it could not be sure whether other governments would
be ready to accept such a mechanism. </p>
<p>But Australia, Japan and Canada were behind the
proposal from the very beginning. And when the EU
Commissioner Martin Bangemann wrote a letter to US
Secretary of Commerce William Daley with the assurance
that the EU supports also the US initiative, the deal
was done. The <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.dot-nxt.com/sites/news.dot-nxt.com/files/GAC_01_Singapore_Communique.pdf">first
GAC Communique</a> in its very first paragraph stated
clearly: “The national governments endorse the
principles of the creation of ICANN”. </p>
<p>However, only 25 governments, multi-national
governmental organizations and treaty organizations
(including the ITU and WIPO) participated in the 1st GAC
meeting in Singapore, March 1999. </p>
<p><strong>ICANN Board-GAC critical relationship</strong></p>
<p>As long as the ICANN issues were rather technical by
nature, nothing was wrong with the advisory role of
governments. The only case, which created some tensions,
popped up in the year 2000 when governments wanted to
reserve their country names in the new dot-info gTLD. </p>
<p>The board rejected the proposal by arguing that
governments do not really understand how the DNS is
working. They should be more specific in their advice
and give a concrete list with the names they want to
reserve because there are endless variations of country
names in different languages which all could be
registered (or blocked). </p>
<p>Anyhow, this case triggered a discussion in the ICANN
reform process in 2002 about the introduction of some
more detailed procedures for the interaction between the
Board and the GAC which now includes the need of the
Board to explain why it rejects a GAC advice and the
option to have formal ‘consultations’ between the ICANN
Board and the GAC if both sides can’t agree on issues
which have a public policy dimension. </p>
<p>Nevertheless it remained unclear to a certain degree
what in legal terms ‘GAC advice’ means in an ICANN
environment. Also under the reformed bylaws, the final
decision making capacity remained in the hands of the
ICANN Board. </p>
<p><strong>Growing governmental awareness after WSIS</strong></p>
<p>A new awareness among governments about their role in
ICANN emerged after the 2nd phase of the UN World Summit
on the Information Society (WSIS) which, more or less,
recognized and strengthened the ICANN model. This
coincided with the efforts of the ICANN Board to move
forward with its new gTLD program. </p>
<p>Governments discovered soon, that new gTLDs are much
more than a purely technical resource and that
TLD-strings can have a lot of political, cultural and
social meanings. The dynamism of the process was
suddenly confronted with the dynamite of the combination
of letters in a top level domain.</p>
<p>Governments started to list the public policy issues
involved in the new gTLD program: geographical names,
religion, culture, moral and public order (the famous
MOPO). </p>
<p>The Board had, for a long time, no problem with a more
active GAC. On the contrary it welcomed GAC advice. The
so-called GAC principles on new gTLDs from 2007 were
seen by the ICANN Board as a helpful guideline. But like
always, the devil is in the detail. </p>
<p>The real interaction between the ICANN Board and the
GAC started only recently when it became clear that the
moment of truth is approaching. The problem both sides
discovered was that they did not have only different
ideas about different issues but they had also different
working methods. That was not really a surprise but it
did introduce additional barriers for forward-moving
communication. </p>
<p>Additionally the two parties discussed the proposed
versions of the DAG on different levels: among the GAC
speakers the lawyers became the most outspoken group.
They referred to the 190+ national jurisdictions and the
relevant decisions of national courts which had to be
taken into consideration when ICANN wants to introduce
new gTLDs, while on the ICANN side, the technical and
financial experts concentrated on technical criteria and
financial hurdles – unreachable for many applicants from
poorer countries or from local administrations even in
richer countries – which fueled the controversial tone
in the debate. </p>
<p>It was probably <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/03/17/clinton-speech-at-icann">Bill
Clinton's speech</a> in San Francisco in March 2011
when he described Internet Governance as “stumbling
forward” which changed the tone again and paved the way
for another efforts to build bridges. </p>
<p><strong>Risks are high on both sides</strong></p>
<p>Now the stakes and risks are high on both sides. If the
GAC would move into a position to dictate to the ICANN
Board what to do, this would mean the end of the
multi-stakeholder model and introduce a regime of state
control over the Internet with all the options for
governmental censorship and surveillance. </p>
<p>On the other hand the same result could emerge when the
Board ignores the GAC. Governments could become furious
and look for alternative mechanisms to exercise power
over the Internet, probably via the United Nations.</p>
<p>And if nothing happens, if the new gTLD project is
again postponed to ICANNs 42nd meeting in Dakar in
October 2011, the Internet community would lose its
remaining trust into ICANN and the multi-stakeholder
model. A political innovation, introduced in 1998, would
be buried in the fire of misunderstandings, frustrations
and incapability to find a solution.</p>
<p>This could trigger a search for alternative models and
pave the way towards a fragmentation of the Internet.<br>
Insofar as the endgame around the new gTLD program is
not a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. Either
both sides will win or both sides will lose. </p>
<p><strong>A “sliced approach” for the devil’s paragraphs?</strong></p>
<p>How to move forward? Here is one option that could be
called upon if discussions really get deadlocked:
salami-tactics, a “sliced approach”. </p>
<p>There is a general consensus among all parties to move
forward and introduce new gTLDs (sooner or later) and
the only remaining barriers are the red-marked
scorecards. If consensus cannot be reached quickly on
the scorecard issues, one approach could be to cut the
package into two parts and move forward at different
speeds on two levels. </p>
<p>The final version of the “Draft Applicant Guidebook”
(DAG) could be adopted “in principle” while at the same
time the five to seven remaining paragraphs, where the
devil feeds the fire, could be put temporarily into
so-called “brackets”. </p>
<p>ICANN would not move from, DAG 5.0 to DAG 6.0 but to
DAG 5.1. Based on such a basic agreement one could do
two things at once: </p>
<ol type="a">
<li>start the process with all those strings which are
not touched by the devil’s paragraphs and do not have
the potential to create any type of controversy (this
could be a group of about 50+ new gTLDs) and move
forward with this 1st basket of uncontroversial
applications in Singapore and, at the same time, </li>
<li>continue negotiations among the involved parties to
remove the brackets from the devils paragraphs as
quick as possible, hopefully until the 42nd meeting in
Dakar, October 2011 which would than open the door for
applications which would go into a 2nd basket.</li>
</ol>
<p>This would certainly need some more bilateral
consultations and compromises from both sides, but if it
does come to an impasse, it would demonstrate that ICANN
and GAC are able to act, to manage controversies and
crisis moments if the diplomatic clock moves towards
midnight. </p>
<p>It would also not create too much damage and different
treatment because the process for the first basket would
not come to a final end – the signature of registry
agreements – before the brackets have been removed from
the DAG for the 2nd basket so that needed adjustments
for the first group could be made before the signing
ceremony. </p>
<p><strong>Need for Confidence Building Measures</strong></p>
<p>Erika Mann, a new ICANN director with 15 years of
experiences in the European Parliament said in San
Francisco in the debate on the new gTLD dot-xxx that
life is not without risks. If you (and ICANN and the
GAC) try to avoid any risks, it will freeze the status
quo. </p>
<p>And indeed neither a DAG 8.0 nor a DAG 9.0 could clear
all the legal and financial details which could appear
within the next 50 years in the unknown territory of the
domain-name space. </p>
<p><span>There is a moment where you have to put aside
your doubts and where you have to jump, being aware
that after landing there is probably another issue you
have to deal with</span><span>There is a moment where
you have to put aside your doubts and where you have
to jump, being aware that after landing there is
probably another issue you have to deal with</span>. </p>
<p>Such risk-taking works only in an environment of mutual
trust. This raises obviously the question: how can trust
between the ICANN Board, the GAC and the ICANN community
can be enhanced? What could be sustainable confidence
building measures in this field? This is obviously a
good agenda item for forthcoming ICANN and GAC meetings.
</p>
<p>Multi-stakeholderism can be best describe by a circle.
In the multi-stakeholder model there is no formal
hierarchy. All partners are needed and have to make a
contribution according to their specific role. There is
an interdependence among the various stakeholders. One
can’t live without the other. And also here Jon Postel’s
philosophy “Be conservative in what you send; be liberal
in what you accept” is a good guideline for all
stakeholders. </p>
<p>If all stakeholders in the Internet Governance circles
concentrate on substance and give up procedural power
games, there is chance the crisis we are facing now will
end with a solution which will strengthen all partners.
ICANN can demonstrate that it is able to deliver; the
GAC can show that it is able to protect the public
interests and the community can experience that the
decision makers are able to move forward.</p>
<p><strong>Remember the Legend of Singapore</strong></p>
<p>The interesting side effect of the controversial
discussions of the last two years is that new
procedures, a new discussion culture, new forms of
interaction have emerged as a result of the
“tit-for-tat-battle”. </p>
<p>If this controversy leads to a positive result, the
used methodology – from joint ad hoc working groups and
informal meetings to public comment and scorecards -
could become a blueprint how conflicts in the future can
be channeled. It could become a best practice model for
how governmental and non-governmental stakeholders can
work hand-in-hand to the benefit of the global Internet
community by putting aside individual interest and
serving the public. </p>
<p>Such a model would influence also the discussion in the
IGF, the United Nations, the ITU, the OECD, the Council
of Europe, the G8 and G20 which all are dealing now with
Internet Governance issues. </p>
<p>Probably, both the ICANN Board and the GAC can get some
inspiration from the legend around the establishment of
Singapore. It was in the 14th century, when a young
prince from Sumatra, called Sang Nila Utama landed at
the shores of the peninsula. One day, when he inspected
the jungle he met a huge lion. </p>
<p>This was a critical moment for both sides: would the
lion eat the prince or would the prince kill the lion?
What happened? </p>
<p>The legend tells us that the lion looked sharp into the
eyes of the prince and the prince looked even sharper
into the eyes of the lion. And then, after a critical
and tense minute, both the lion and the prince turned
silently around and moved away. The lion disappeared in
the jungle and the prince went down to the sea,
established a city and named it Singapore, the
Lion-City. By the way, historians have found out, that
there are no lions in the Singapore jungle. It was
probably a tiger. </p>
<p>So go ahead and enjoy your Tiger Beer at the Singapore
Riverside. But please don’t ask who plays the lion and
who the prince in the forthcoming 41st ICANN drama. </p>
</div>
</div>
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