FW: AIP Survey - Official Update

["Antony Van Couvering" <avc@interport.net>]

FYI

-----Original Message-----
From: Mitchel Ahern [mailto:AIPSurvey@lassoo.com] 
FYI - Sent to AIP members.

Antony

*******************************************************************

Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 1999 8:57 PM
Subject: AIP Survey - Official Update


Survey Participants,

Below find Bret Faussett's report on the International Domain
Names
Meeting he attended last week to present the AIP DNSO proposal.

Mitchel

*********************

Here's the official update, please circulate.

On Thursday and Friday of last week, I attended the
"International Domain
Names Meeting" in Washington, D.C., as the representative of the
AIP. The
conference was designed to discuss the creation of the Domain
Name
Supporting Organization ("DNSO") and the five competing drafts.
The hosts
of the conference were the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX),
Council of
European National Tol Level Domain Registries (CENTRE), European
ISP
Association (EUROISPA), International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),
International Trademark Association (INTA), Internet Council of
Registrars (CORE), Network Solutions (NSI), Policy Oversight
Committee
(POC), and the World Information Technology and Services Alliance
(WITSA). Also in attendance were Esther Dyson and Mike Roberts,
from the
ICANN Board of Directors.

The presenters of draft proposals for the DNSO included the AIP,
the
INTA, the Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC), CENTRE, and a
loose
affiliation of independents known by their website, dnso.org. The
proposals fell into three categories: top-down decision-making,
bottoms-up decision-making, and hybrids. The dnso.org and INTA
proposals
are considered the "top-down drafts," with a strong Names Council
that
makes all policy recommendations. The ORSC proposal is
"bottoms-up," with
policy-making coming from the membership. Our proposal is a bit
of a
hybrid, though leaning more toward bottoms-up. In our proposal, a
group
of experts steer the research process with open support from a
large
membership base. The CENTRE proposal also was a hybrid, with a
two house
approach to governance: a "general assembly" that made decisions
and a
small "Names Council" that coordinated the decision-making
process.

Our proposal was well-received, with almost everyone expressing
support
for the concept of the "Research Committees," set forth in
Section 8 of
our draft bylaws. Most of the Europeans were very supportive of
the idea
of bringing expertise to bear on the DNS issues through these
committees.
After the proposal, I also received interest in the AIP draft
from the
ICC and the United States Council for International Business,
which both
found our proposal "commerce-friendly."

The one place where our proposal drew some criticism (though also
some
curiosity) was in the "Affiliate Organization" concept, which
made all of
the members of an "Affiliate Organization" -- such as the AIP --
a member
of the DNSO. Many at the conference (especially the registrars)
believed
that this would lead to persons with only a tangential interest
in domain
policy voting on issues that were at the core of their business.
Basically, they're worried that amidst the thousands of AIP
members, the
hundreds of registries and registrars would have a worthless,
diluted
vote. We'll need to explore ways of addressing this valid
concern.

At the meeting, we learned that ICANN very much hopes that we all
come
together in these final days. To that end, a conference call was
scheduled for Tuesday, January 26th to see if we can find any
common
ground. Both the AIP and CENTRE proposals may be places to start,
as they
both attempt to balance strong tops-down management with broad
consensus-based policy-making.

An overview of last week's conference (along with RealVideo of
Esther
Dyson's introductory remarks) can be found on the WITSA web site,
at
http://www.witsa.org/press/domain.htm.

Please let me know if you have any questions. -- Bret

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

     Bret A. Fausett
     Fausett, Gaeta & Lund, LLP
     e-mail: baf@fausett.com
     http://www.fausett.com

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



----------------- End Forwarded Message -----------------

||| Mitchel King Ahern, MAIP
||| EAW: Webmaster,  Technical Marketing, CD ROM/Interactive
Media
||| Phone: 508 234-4295 ext 118  Fax: 508 234-8251  AOL-IM:
MitchelKA
||| Net: mitchela@eaw.com  Web: www.eaw.com  List:
eawannounce@eaw.com
||| Chairman: Association of Internet Professionals:
www.association.org
||| Memory and Worcester Massachusetts:
web0.tiac.net/users/mitchela/


****************************************************************
This survey is managed by Lassoo Interactive.
Lassoo is an online marketing agency specializing in
Electronic Direct Marketing and
Surveying for the MIS/IT community.
http://www.lassoo.com  626-797-9923
****************************************************************