Robin, Norbert and all:
Reading these notes, I think we need to be much clearer
with ALAC on what our policy concerns are with respect to fast-track IDN
ccTLDs.
There are two main concerns:
1) different standards for ccNSO-created IDN TLDs and
gNSO-created IDN TLDs. This creates a discriminatory policy environment which
might favor one group over the other, or could be gamed by clever
participants.
2) competition policy concerns about reinforcing national
monopoly registries by giving them one or more new IDNs in advance of new
entrants into the market.
I did not see those concerns expressed in the ALAC meeting.
Hope we can be clearer about this in the future. The first concern has pretty
big name space management implications; Avri Doria has expressed a lot of
concern about this and I am not sure what her thinking is about how things are
going. the second issue is also very important, although those concerns were
addressed somewhat by the estimate that country code IDNs might actually take
longer to be assigned than generic IDNs. (Why that would be I don't know).
Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of
Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of
Technology
------------------------------
Internet Governance
Project:
http://internetgovernance.org
Meeting notes from ALAC-NCUC joint meeting in New Delhi
(provided by Nick Aston Hart of ICANN)