[wg-c] Re: From Working Group C: Bill Semich's Position on New gTLDs

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

What follows is a message I sent to the non-commercial constituency 
list, on the subject of "chartered TLDs" (or "restricted TLDs").  It 
has relevance to the issues on this group, I think:

----- Forwarded message from Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> -----

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 11:06:00 -0700
From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
To: ncdnhc-discuss@lyris.isoc.org
Subject: Re: From Working Group C:  Bill Semich's Position on New gTLDs

On Thu, Sep 16, 1999 at 12:49:16PM +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> At 07:11 15.09.99 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> >There are two major arguments against focussing on chartered TLDs:
> >1) they don't give adequate competition to NSI; 2) charters cannot
> >be effectively enforced.  The second argument is completely
> >groundless, in my opinion, but the first has some merit.
> 
> Kent,
> 
> at the risk of reopening past debates, could you tell us a few words about 
> your ideas about how a charter for a non-open, global TLD can be enforced, 
> and by who?
> 
> I'd be happy to abandon my opinion that it can't be done.

Sorry for not replying sooner -- I was away for a short vacation, 
with restricted email access, and I wanted to write a fairly 
detailed response to your question.

For those who may not be familiar with the term, a "chartered TLD" is
a TLD with restrictive rules concerning registrations.  Those rules,
along with descriptions of how they are enforced and who enforces
them, are assumed to be written in a document called a "charter" for
the TLD -- hence the term.  Perhaps a better term would be 
"restricted TLD" so that the acronym (rTLD) won't be confused -- 
"cTLD" is too similar to "ccTLD".

Several restricted TLDs with informal charters exist: .edu
(restricted to educational institutions, enforced by NSI), .int
(restricted to international intergovernmental organizations,
enforced by IANA), .mil (restricted to US Military, enforced by
same), .gov (restricted to US government agencies, enforced by the
USG).  In addition, there are many, many second level domains in
ccTLDs that have restricted registration, generally enforced by the
ccTLD registry in question. 

Arguably, none of these except .int, and perhaps .edu, are "global",
but nonetheless, there is ample and varied experience with enforcing
restrictions on registrations.  Furthermore, restricted TLDs need not
be global -- for example, Eric Brunner has proposed a TLD ".naa" for
North American Aboriginal peoples.  I am not familiar with the
organizations involved me, but Eric tells me that there is an
existing North-America wide inter-tribal organization in a position
to administer such a TLD. 

Moreover, .int is a clear existence proof of a non-open, global TLD. 
One might argue that it is a special case, but in fact every
non-open, global TLD would be a special case.  

Another example of a potential non-opn, global TLD: Cary Karp has
proposed a ".museum" TLD, analogous to the ".edu" TLD.  The
restriction would be to "serious" museums.  The proposed approval
authority for registrations would be the "International Council of
Museums": from their web page, www.icom.org: "ICOM is a
Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) maintaining formal relations with
UNESCO.  It has a consultative status to the United Nations' Economic
and Social Council.  ICOM was created in 1946 and has around 15,000
members in 147 countries.  The membership participates in the
activities of 116 National Committees and 25 International
Committees.  Some National Committees have also organised on a
regional level to reinforce their action."

Note that ICOM is not interested in being a *registry* -- it just
serves in the role of the approving agency -- some other entity --
CORE, one of the ccTLD registries, or another new gTLD registry --
would manage the database.  [The need for a hook in the CORE Shared
Registry System that would contact an external approving organization
has already been discussed, incidentally.]

The process I have in mind for the creation of a restricted TLD is
this: those interested in the TLD (say Eric and friends, in the case
of the .naa TLD) form a WG of the DNSO to work out the details. 
People such as yourself who are sceptical would, hopefully, also
join.  It would be the job of that WG to come up with a concrete
proposal, work out the details of the restrictions and who will
enforce them, what happens if there is a failure (does the TLD 
simply become an open TLD?), and all the other issues that might 
come up in the process.  This proposal would be forwarded to the NC 
for consideration.  It might be sent back to the WG because 
something was missing (say, TM dispute resolution issues were not 
adequately addressed).  Eventually, if all the issues were addressed 
adequately, the NC would pass the charter on the the Board, the 
appropriate contracts would be inked, a registry would bid on the 
operation, perhaps, and the new TLD would be in the root.

Indeed there are many details that would need to be worked out.  But 
we have multiple existence proofs for this kind of thing.  Why do 
you think it is impossible?

Kent

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain