Hi, as promised, here is an addendum to our input to the new gTLD policy development process. please find the word version in the attachment. feel free to comment and contribute ideas, edit and correct the language, etc. i'd like, though, to get the substance to the GNSO final report, thanks. mawaki ******** ICANN GNSO Policy Development Process on New gTLDs February, 2007 The time has come for ICANN to take an aggressive turn toward a truly global governance, ensuring further inclusiveness, diversity, and competition through its processes as well as by their outcomes. There clearly is a benefit as well as a cost, either symbolic, material or both, to be the authority that everybody in the industry looks at and often relies on, at one level or the other. Just as it accepts the privilege (and benefit) to play such role, ICANN needs to accept to bear the related responsibility (or cost) toward the whole community, and this may have different flavors depending on the specific conditions of the different participant groups or regions, in connection with ICANN's business. We need to realize that there is a huge cost for a developing Non-English speaking country, for example, (and there are many such examples,) to bear with regard to the conditions in which ICANN has conducted its business over the past decade. ICANN may well translate its public documents in all languages in currency within the United Nations, it does not, however, process applications, negotiate or sign contacts other than in English, and furthermore in those processes, it will often rely on a legal tradition that doesn't go beyond the Anglo-American cultural and linguistic space. ICANN takes decisions that impact the possibility of entry in the Internet industry and market, that is, it take decisions that have regulatory effects. By default, Internet industry and market must be global, just as the medium itself. And the cultural and linguistic bias in which ICANN has operated so far results in a market failure by means of information asymmetry. Indeed, the fact that ICANN's tools and processes for policy-making are in a specific language results in a loss for countries that are not in any position, at start, to be familiar with those tools and processes, neither to their cultural environment. For many, this means, among other things, 8 years or so lagging behind and even locked out of the industry. Those with poor or very limited institutional and economic development, in addition, are even worse off. As a result, it is once again those having less who still get less, falling farther behind, while paying the same market price as every one if not more because of their poor organization (cost of access, international bandwidth and interconnections, etc.) Obviously, setting application criteria that are tailored (or based on) the performance of the most developed economies in the world equates to excluding the majority of the areas and people in the world. Finally, in the global Internet community, there are vibrant groups of users technically capable of running a registry and willing to serve their grassroots communities on a voluntary basis. Experience has shown that a non-profit model of registry can work just as fine as the commercial model. For all those reasons, we would like to call on ICANN to consider, in the current new gTLD policy development process, all necessary measures in order to: 1) Have its governance, policy and contractual instruments translated at least in all working languages of the United Nations; 2) Receive and process all gTLD applications drafted in at least any of the UN working languages; 3) Ensure subsequent correspondence with the applicants in the working language of their choice, that is, the language of their application; 4) Put in place a mechanism to administer a fee reduction program for gTLD applicants from developing economies or disadvantaged communities, which will be funded both by ICANN's proper funds (whether from the application process or from a specific budget item) and, possibly, by extra-budgetary sources; 5) Make the threshold for market entry easier for those from less developed economies, as well as for non-commercial and community-based applicants who demonstrate the need. For better or worse (?), the Internet is a global facility, but it isn't only so from the demand and the user end; it must be so from the operation and supply side as well. If we chose not to address the issues raised above, we will be sending a message of exclusion to the face of people who are concerned and eager to participate actively and responsibly in the expansion of this unique network. On behalf on NCUC & Supporters, etc. Drafted by Mawaki Chango February 18, 2007