Re: PAB [kent@songbird.com: Onward]

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

Hi Antony,

> Kent,
> Comments requested, I'm complying.
> Antony
> >     The DNSO recognizes that current registries have already existing
> >     relationships with their registrants and, in many cases, with
> >     sovereign governments.  The DNSO recognizes that there is a
> >     strong presumption of continued stable operation of these
> >     relationships.
> Kent, you talk about these relationships, but I just don't know of very
> many.  Which of the many ccTLDs that have relations with sovereign
> governments are you talking about?  If you mean that governments are aware
> of their existence, then I suppose that's a relationship, and you are
> correct.  If you mean that there is any formal or contractual relationship,
> I believe you are gravely mistaken.  Would you care to give some examples?
> Of domains with more than 15,000 names in them (the top 20), I can think of
> only two.

It might be a coincidence, but the two large ccTLDs I've had to deal with
(Spain and France) are very tightly knit with the government.

Spain (.es) is run by "Centro de Comunicaciones CSIC RedIRIS" where the CSIC is
"Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas" which depends directly on
the ministry of science and education. Rediris is a service of the CSIC, and
the "Centro de Comunicaciones" is a department of CSIC/Rediris. In other
words, you could argue that it is run by the government... Note that in many
countries, university institutions and R&D are funded by the state.
and/or depend directly on the state.
France (.fr) is currently run by the AFNIC which is a make-over for PR
reasons of how it was run up to 1/1/98 by INRIA. INRIA is also a government
controlled R&D institution. AFNIC has a board which is majority controlled
by government/AFNIC, so again it is government controlled.

After doing a bit of STFW, I found the following:
Germany (.de) is run by the Univerity of Karlsruhe, which in turn is
administered by a chancellor, appointed for eight years by the regional
minister, after being nominated by both the senate and the regional science
minister. In other words, government controlled.

United Kingdom (.uk) as we know is run by nominet, which has been looked
into by the government to make sure it's not doing anything sleazy, and the
government seems happy. No direct relation here on paper, but you could
argue that it runs in a way that the government is happy with... (otherwise
they would have done something about it, no?).

Italy (.it) is run by the IT-NIC at  Istituto per le Applicazioni Telematiche
and has strict liason with Commissione TLC del Ministero delle Poste e delle
Telecomunicazioni to make sure that they are run in accordance with
legislation. (Government controlled? dunno. Formal governmental oversight?
No doubt about it).

Switzerland (.ch) is run by CH/LI DOM-REG
"Description of CH/LI DOM-REG: an organization specifically founded for the
purpose of administering Internet second level domain names below CH and LI
national top level domains and run by SWITCH personnel."
"The SWITCH foundation was established in 1987 by the Swiss
Confederation and the eight university cantons to promote modern
methods of data transmission and to set up and run an academic and
research network in Switzerland"
Again it would seem that there is a direct link to the government...

That was just a quick lookup. I'm sure that you Anthony as US Director for
netnames can give far more extensive info about who runs what (if you can't
that would be rather lame! ;-)
If what you're sayijng is that the President/King/Prime Minister is not
involved in the day to day work of the registries then you're damn right.
However, the fact that the registries don't report directly to the emperor
doesn't mean that there isn;t a governmental relation there...
In fact, in most of the larger ccTLDs that is very much the case, that there
IS somewhat a governmental relation there (remember that many universities
and R&D are state owned). An independent organisation running a ccTLD can
still have governmental oversight though I'll grant you that it can be
sometimes difficult to follow the path of authority all the way up.
I think that it is more likely to find no governmental involvement in the
countries/areas which are newer to the internet and haven't noticed that it
exists yet... The more developed countries either have some degree of
control (look at the USG for example. Do you consider that there is USG
involvement in ".us"? If not, then why are we all talking and dancing to the
tune they're calling...) or involvement in their registries. In a few cases,
that actually means that they've looked at the thing and don't feel it needs
intervention at this time (like nominet).

Yours, John Broomfield.