[ga] Sw Gov Interference revisited

[Mikael Pawlo <mikael@pawlo.com>]

You might be interested in the development of administration of the
Swedish national top level domain (ccTLD) .se.

Today (2000-04-03) the Swedish government special investigator Jorgen
Holgersson released his report on the administration of .se.

First some basic facts on the current system as such:

The hodler of the ccTLD is IIS. IIS is a foundation, founded by the
Swedish chapter of ISOC. IIS owns a company called NIC-SE AB. NIC-SE is a
registrar similiar to Network Solutions. NIC-SE is the holder of the
registry of .se. All applicants must contact a local registrar, free from
NIC-SE. The local registrar will try the domain name on formal grounds: is
the domain name valid, is it free to use (unregistered) and is the
applicant the right propretior (this is tried against a document issued to
all trademark holders, corporations, organizations and foundations with
residence in Sweden). If local registrar finds the applicants domain name
okay on formal grounds, it will request registration from NIC-SE. NIC-SE
might deny registration on the same formal grounds as mentioned above. If
the applicant is denied its domain name it may appeal twice - once to a
NIC-SE body and once to NOD which is - so to speak - the supreme court of
Swedish domain names (but not a real court, more an arbitration court).
NOD might grant an application even though NIC-SE wants to refuse it. The
regulations of .se is made by NDR (disclaimer: I'm on the board of NDR).
NDR creates new regulations by interaction and discussion with the market
in a broad sense (i e users, registrars, authorities, corporations and so
on). When NDR has decided on new regulations, it proposes these
regulations to IIS. IIS has a veto on whether the regulations should be
adopted or not.

The system has been critized for not beeing open enough. Therefore, IIS
has decided to apprehend and follow the Swedish principle of openness
(offentlighetsprincipen), whereas all documents of IIS is publicly
available to everyone interested and a total transparancy is the goal.
The subsidiary NIC-SE, however, does not follow this principle. Hence,
only what NIC-SE wants to be out in the open is.

When you know about the current system, it might be interesting to hear
about the changes the Swedish government is about to make.

The main issues in the report are:

1. The .se should be opened to free registration. Today the registrations
are regulated in a way that makes it impossible to register an entity that
has no name protection under Swedish law. That is, any corporation,
trademark or organization can register a name similar to its own name
today, but in the governmental reportn o such considerations will be made.
I could for example register richardsexton.se, estherdyson.se or
cocacola.se. The only way I could do such a thing in the current system is
by first getting the name fromthe Swedish Patent Office (PRV) and they
would never grant me the cocacola name.

2. The PTS, a Swedish authority for numbers and access in
telecommunications (similar to the FCC) will assign two members to the
board of the IIS. IIS is the current holder of the .se ccTLD. IIS is a
foundation, founded by the Swedish chapter of ISOC. IIS is i part the
regulatory body of .se. PTS will also be the controlling authority of IIS.
Exactly what this means in practice is still subject to discussion.

3. A contract will be made whereas IIS and the Swedish government are the
signing parties. The contract will in detail regulate the actions of IIS.

4. A legislative process will take place and the formal transaction of
power will be final in the end of this year.

5. The regulatory functions of the current self-regulatory bodies will
cease to exist. All actions will be court action under Swedish law in
Swedish courts. There will be no investigation of applied domain names,
everything will be granted upon request and a suffering party will have to
bring a cybersquatter to court.


I'm jetlagged like never before (I arrived in Stockholm from New York this
morning), but I hope the above makes sense when it comes to the facts as
such. If not, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Best regards,

Mikael Pawlo

_________________________________________________________________________

  ICQ:35638414                                mailto:mikael@pawlo.com 
                                              http://www.pawlo.com/

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