Fouad
These are interesting comments about the situation in Pakistan. One important fact which you may not be aware of is that ICANN has very little authority over the ccTLDs business practices and models. With gTLDs it has almost complete contractual governance and can even take away the assignment after a period of time; but because of "national sovereignty" claims most ccTLDs have very limited contracts with ICANN. Basically the contracts are little more than a form of mutual recognition. ICANN does not impose vertical separation of registry and registrar on ccTLDs, it does not cap their rates, and it cannot remove an incompetent operator (like the .pk seems to be) unless someone in Pakistan's government asks it to. 

--MM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fouad Bajwa [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 3:02 AM
> To: Milton L Mueller
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: vertical separation of registries and registrars
> 
> Distress with ICANN ccTLD Contracts for developing world regions:
> 
> There is also another important issue that is dividing the
> stakeholders in developing world countries. For example, in the case
> of the ccTLD Manager in Pakistan for .pk is causing a lot of
> discussion and dispute amongst the local industry between stakeholders
> with claims regarding the mismanagement of the ccTLD. I have been
> recording all the activities of the ccTLD since early this year.
> 
> One root cause of this problem arises from the fact that ICANN does
> not have a clear transparency model for the management of ccTLDs,
> secondly, it has many agreements with ccTLD managers that it received
> under its take over of IANA. If you look at the ccTLD map on the ICANN
> website, you will see it only highlights the agreements it did itself
> and not those done under contract by IANA. This is leaving the
> stakeholders in a country like Pakistan distressed and confused.
> 
> Issues at hand:
> These issues have emerged over and over on the Telecom Grid of
> Pakistan and Pakistan ICT Policy Network mailing lists sometimes
> resulting in heavy flamewars between the debators and defendents. Only
> last year in June 2008, PKNIC faced its worse downtime spanned over 7
> days during which its 28000 plus domain names were on a total halt
> inflicting heavy financial and intellectual property loss to the
> domain owners and client organizations. All three key stakeholders of
> Pakistan's E-Governance Infrastructure including the Government of
> Pakistan, the Private Sectors including the Business Commerce and
> Industry as well as Civil Society were amongst the effectees. Despite
> this PKNIC walked away clean.
> 
> What to do:
> ICANN must be encouraged to revise its ccTLD management contracts,
> review its registrar and registration policies for ccTLDs and create
> space for Public Participation or atleast the stakeholders of the
> ccTLD manager's region so that these ccTLDs may be scrutinized and
> become transparent to stakeholders.
> 
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Milton L Mueller<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > An important policy issue that is bitterly dividing the industry along
> somewhat difficult to predict lines is whether registrars and registries
> should become more integrated. ICANN has sponsored two economic studies.
> One, by Charles Rivers Associates International (CRAI) proposes a very
> moderate relaxation of this requirement. Another, by an economist named
> Carleton, proposes getting rid of it altogether, and this is the position
> than seems to be favored by ICANN staff.
> >
> > Afilias and PIR have come out strongly opposed to the proposed policy.
> You can bone up on some of the issues by looking at the web site they
> prepared: http://www.registryregistrarseparation.org/blog
> >
> > Ideally we should develop a position statement on this
> >
> > Milton Mueller
> > Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
> > XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
> > ------------------------------
> > Internet Governance Project:
> > http://internetgovernance.org
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Regards.
> --------------------------
> Fouad Bajwa
> @skBajwa
> Answering all your technology questions
> http://www.askbajwa.com
> http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa