Geographical and other names of public interest as new TLDs? – WS 02 2010
29 April 2010 | 14:30-16:15
Programme overview 2010
Key issues that could be discussed: Admission of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) and the public interest. Who has the right to register and use which domain name? Which domains should be left to allocation via the market? What responsibilities for public authorities? Should there be different regimes for different categories of new TLDs?
People
Key Participants
- Amadeu Abri i Abril, CORE Internet Council of Registrars
- Iratxe Esnaola Arribillaga, dotEUS Association
- Jordi Iparraguirre, Director/CEO at Fundació puntCAT
- Dirk Krischenowski, dotBerlin, Germany
- Susan Reynolds, Asociación Punto Gal
- Hubert Schöttner, Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, Germany
- Thomas Schneider, Swiss Federal Office of Communication (OFCOM) International Information Society
- Nick Wood, Com Laude
Moderator
- Thomas Schneider, Swiss Federal Office of Communication
Rapporteur
- Wolfgang Kleinwächter, University of Aarhus, Chair of the Council of Europe Internet Expert Group
Remote participation moderator
[tbd]
Key messages
The Domain Name Space is a global common resource, in which new gTLDs present various opportunities that must be developed in the global public interest perspective.
The “one size fits all” approach is one major reason for the delays in the new gTLD program because no single regime can be expected to reasonably cover TLDs as diverse as geographic TLDs, brand TLDs, linguistic community TLDs and keyword TLDs.
Short meaningful keyword TLDs also raise public interest issues. Different types of legal contracts are therefore necessary. It is preferable to respect local laws (rather than Californian law only) that TLDs purport to serve. Specific application procedures for terms of public interest as TLDs should be explored. To this end, ICANN should explore creating a public interest team of qualified experts.
Messages (extended)
There was general agreement on the following:
- New TLDs present various opportunities and should be introduced as soon as possible once a viable process has been developed.
- The Domain Name Space is a global common resource: the final regime(s) for new gTLDs must therefore be developed in a Global Public Interest perspective in accordance with ICANN’s Articles of Incorporation and the Affirmation of Commitment (AoC).
- Serving the Public Interest does not mean that TLDs have to be run as non-profit. Commercially run TLDs can also contribute to the public interest.
- The “one size fits all” approach is one of the major reasons for the delay regarding the new gTLD program. This is because no single regime can be expected to reasonably cover TLDs as diverse as geographic TLDs, grand TLDs, linguistic community TLDs and keyword TLDs.
- Different types of legal contracts are therefore necessary, but these potential regimes need to be kept simple and of a limited number to reduce incentives for gaming.
- Possible elements of regime differentiation could be, inter alia, the special conditions under which registries could use non ICANN-accredited registrars, especially local ones, and be bound by contracts under the local law related to the community they purport to serve rather than by California law only.
- There is not only a public interest dimension to Geo-, City- and cultural-linguistic TLDs. Short meaningful keyword TLDs also raise public interest issues , in particular as regards sectors where there is potential consumer harm or fraud such as TLDs linked to health, food, banking, financial aid/NGOs, etc.
There were several proposals made:
- Regimes for new TLDs should build on the experience with already existing TLDs that could serve as a model for similar TLDs (e.g. .Cat could serve as a model for further cultural-linguistic TLDs).
- Specific application procedures for terms of public interest should be explored.
- ICANN should explore creating a Public Interest Team of qualified experts from all over the world that would assist ICANN in taking into account the global public interest.
- ICANN could explore establishing a supporting organisation for Public Interest Registries and Registrars.
- Registry-operators contracts should reflect the local laws of the community concerned.
- A EuroDIG working group will be set up to follow-up this workshop in order to prepare input into the ICANN meeting to be held in Brussels in June 2010.
Transcript
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: I think we will start without remote participation. Welcome to this workshop, No. 2, on Geographical and Other Names of Public Interests as new TLDs which is a very hotly debated issue as most of you probably know as you participate in these discussions.
We have something like 100 minutes time to discuss the issue. We have five speakers who will have short presentations of five minutes. And we agreed those, who are organizing this session we agreed on five key questions that we would like to discuss. I will name them quickly to remind you. No. 1 is what are the public policy issues of new TLDs in general. No. 2 is what are the challenges to regulators and to public authorities that are involved. And No. 3 is what are the business models of existing and/or plans, projects. And No. 4 is what should be the appropriate legal framework for new TLDs or for different types of new TLDs. And the last one is the question is differentiation of contracts needed for different types of TLDs.
This is also a very hotly debated question around ICANN and other. The Rapporteur is also missing, Wolfgang because I wanted to introduce him. So I will quickly go and get him. He is still discussing with somebody I assume. Just outside. I will quickly go and get him.
(Laughter).
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: All right. So we have all the important people. She is the remote participation. I don’t know, where is the place for the remote participation?
Okay. What is the official end of this session? What is the schedule? About 1615. So we can get on to 1613, something like that. Then we have to leave then.
Okay. So now all the key people are here that we need. Wolfgang as I said will be the Rapporteur. Will try to summarize the discussion and turn it in to something like messages that then can be put on the website and forwarded to whoever is interested and whoever might take note of these messages. So I will not spend more time now on talking myself. I will give the floor to our speakers and we will start with.
>> Hi I am Jean. I am the director. I am the director in the – and now we are going to start kind of a funding programme for people that are going to – positions that just need a few money because we don’t have a lot to make the project a reality and reinvesting in a lot of society and our community and make those projects available and useful for the whole community.
Besides that as I was saying but besides growing we are interested in the value that we provide to the community. So we don’t care if – if you allow me to say, that we don’t care a lot about domains. We care about the value that and we use to measure that is what we call the density information which is the number of communities that are able to index in the domains and we divide that in to the demain. This is giving a ratio, an average of the number of documents under each one of our domain names there and that really is the TLD, provided the top 10 around the world. It means that people who are using the domain it is not for speculation. It is really to have corporate. It may be a corporate thing, but it is really used and we are really proud of it because that really implies on the script. The other point that we are proud of it we try to provide a kind of service and I am trying to answer the business model one, that somehow we want to provide the service that we want to receive if we are the customers. So something we really care quite a lot about is security and not just computer security, but a legal framework which is secure and people really feels sure and safe about okay, I am the owner of the domain. I am the registrar of the domain. I am not going to lose that unless I’m just not following the rules. Right?
So the rules are clear. The process is clear. We are not presenting any kind of issue. In fact, not going to give you a little bit. We have four DPs which is nothing. We are just now ready to implement the NSA. It is working on all the different systems we have. We are just waiting for the green light because we are a GTMD. We have to modify the contract. Just a lot of paperwork and it is done but we are ready. So I hope in that one to two weeks we are going to be able to see the first cut working. And just to finalize there, another point we are really proud of it is that as you remember maybe last December McAfee mentioned that it was the second safest domain in the world. That’s good. But we were to keep on that track and to work on it. Because we really feel that that is what the customer is expecting from us. People deserve something like that and we have a lot of people that it is the first on the domain and we are including people who are helping to break the digital device and doing so is worth it. I am not going to go anymore because we do not have time. Thank you.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. I think this concept is an interesting one. Maybe we will go back to that one later. The next one I would like to give the floor to is Dirk Krischenowski. Did I pronounce it right? Who is involved in very many activities around TLDs. I never really understand everything. Dirk, please start.
>> DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Thank you. Yes. And by this we are one of the new top level domain want-to-bes. We want to become like top cat. From the very beginning it was not very easy to get forward with dotBerlin. We had to – at the beginning the Berlin government and the German government at that time five years from – in the past working heavily against and try to prevent to go forward with the dotBerlin project. This has fortunately changed a lot in the time thanks to new people in the government. Thanks to new spirit. But also because the governments, we don’t go away. We are still there even if they are trying to prevent us. And they saw a lot of other cities are doing the same and Berlin was not a stupid idea of some Berliners. And they also saw and this brings us to a public sector name we developed the dotBerlin space in a sustainable way. Public policy and public terms and everything in this respect.
Today dotBerlin is more or less a global role model for many new city Top-Level Domains because we tried from the very beginning to install. We have a stakeholder approach to the city top level domain and we work from the very beginning, although it was very hard with the public bodies and major organizations from politics, economics and so on in the Berlin community. We had shown that you can have – you can have funding for such an idea and make maybe lots of money out of it later, that’s very important, because top level domain names have to have a business model and thereby own money. We exported the idea of dotBerlin to other cities around the world. And in respect to the public policy and public interest we think that the gTLDs was subject to some support of the local government and the national government and should have the choice to choose between operating like a dot cut with a contract with ICANN and gTLC, a generic top level contract or they may choose another local legislation contract like the ccTLD much like the CCDOD framework. I want to address two other questions from Thomas. The public policy, I see first of all, new top level domainers are real infrastructure for the cities, for regions and because they are – maybe used like telephone lines and other things like water or power by really everybody in the public or at least by many thousands, 10,000 or a million people because I see it in advertising and all over the place. So that’s infrastructure.
And public policy issues are also a topic of local legislations. If you have countries where top level domain legislation is more liberate like Germany or the U.S. or UK. You have other countries where everything is top level domain of the nation, of the country. Public or private bodies can’t do anything. In respect to these public policy issues I think you can see it is a little bit of an analogy to what Google said city top level domainers should not harm the public. That’s very important for all these issues. Okay. And another point I have many of you know that a discussion about categories is under way at ICANN, how to categorize all the new top level domain names. Might be ones from profit organizations, not-for-profit, for cities, for databases, brands and so on. And we have many, many categories. Also the frame for gaming and speculation. I tried to make up a case here. For example, dotNYC or even dotBCN or dotMRW in Germany which are initiatives out there. They could apply, if you have too many categories they can apply at ICANN as a community top level domain. They can apply as an open top level domain.
That means that the city of New York issued last year asked interested parties to make a proposal for a dot com like TLD. Everything in the world, there was no community, no restriction, anything behind it. But NYC can decide to have it as brand top level name like Telefonica as you see here or NYC made decide it is a very close one and we want to use this only for the government if there is a category for such top level domain names. So it is a question if we want this. That’s my statement.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you, Dirk. You raise some interesting questions. We will come back on them. Um, Susan is the next speaker. Please introduce yourself.
>> SUSAN REYNOLDS: My name is Susan Reynolds and I know it doesn’t sound very Galician and I am going to talk on behalf of the Asociacion PuntoGal about the dot com project. It is good to have Joe here because he can explain how the dot gal will more or less follow the dot com model. So the idea is not new. During the late 1990s a group of Internet users thought we could have a domain for their own, for their language, a space which could identify them. But they didn’t know how to do this. And the dot cat was approved in September of 2005 and that’s when we realized that such things as cultural linguistic TLDs was possible. The next year they got together and they created the Asociacion PuntoGal. They did it back in 2006 because we thought that ICANN was going to open the process very soon. Four years later, nearly four years later we are still waiting but we are patient. Yep. As I said there were 12 of them. I want to give you a few examples. We have a Galician royal academy. We have social associations. Telecommunication engineers and AGAnet which is a group of Galician companies that work with the IT world and the Internet. Just to name a few but it doesn’t mean that the others are not important, but I am not going to explain all of them.
What we are, the Asociacion PuntoGal, it is a non-profit and it is mainly volunteer based. There is the support and they dedicate most of their free time to follow the ICANN process which is not something easy to do because they publish so many draft applicant guidebooks. Still waiting for the final one and we are preparing the application. So we are ready for when ICANN opens the process. And we are promoting this application and this project within the Galician community and not English only but all across the Galician linguistic community. All work is lots of Galician immigrants and especially in South America and all across Europe. Why do we need dot gal? We want to create a cultural linguistic community because we already exist. We have Web pages from Galician companies, blogs, Facebook. Galician is a very used language on Twitter. We want to exist. We want to have a name, a label and have visibility because we think it would be an excellent tool to promote our language on line.
The Internet is mainly English but we want to show that it is possible to use other languages and also our culture. We think that many, many Internet users who don’t have domains we might think oh, well, I think this domain would be good to identify my Web page. So it brings me users on line. And I think that’s – and Joe can tell us that many people who didn’t have a domain before they did register for the first time a domain which was dot cut and as I said the Galician is as being an immigrant community. So we think it is a good idea to link the over 4 million Galicians which live all across the world under our domain.
It is not a geographic domain. It is for the Galician linguistic and cultural community and also good for companies who want to address the Galician market. It is a thing of public interest. People phoning us and sending e-mails asking I want to register dot gal and I say I am sorry, you have to wait. But people want this domain. There is lots of emphasis and they waited for this and widely supported by most – the most important entities related to the language and culture and society. Also have support from businesses related to IT and the Internet and also the media and we have institutional support.
What I mean by this is that we have talked to representatives of the political parties, the Galician parliament, we do support this. There is no objection to this project. We started with 12 and we have grown out to more than 100. I think it is 105. I just hear – here just to show you a few locals. We have the University of Santiago. The Galician council which is a public institution representing our culture. Also the Galician public radio and television and something that’s very important is the support from Galician centers and we have a few. It is around 20 or 25. Just put the logos of two of them. One of them in Lisbon and the other is the central in Argentina and others in Belgium and France and in states and that’s important because they want to – they think it is a good idea to have a domain for their culture.
The management and control of that, I can’t talk a lot about this because we are still preparing the application. But I can tell you that our idea is to follow the dot cut model. Non-profit organization. Independent and self-sufficient. So the profit we make from the – from registering will be used to cover costs, and if there is extra profit we will develop projects to improve the use of the Internet within the Galician community and the projects for the information society. So that’s why this is more than a TLD.
We think it is an excellent tool for linguistic policy to promote the use of language, and quantity is important but quality is even more important. It is also good to increase the content on the Internet in Galician or related to Galician culture. We are not the only ones. There is a father, mother. It is a very good model because they have shown that they work very well and successful. Brittany CYN for Welch and dotEls, and I think there is someone from the Scot but I don’t think he is here yet.
We roll that together and there is a formal working group in order to represent our interest with ICANN. What we want is a service to represent our communities on line and to gain prestige and visibility on the Internet and all across the world. We have very clear adjectives. So we have very restricted policies. We are not really this kind of commercial TLD. We would define ourselves a bit more like a social top level domain. We don’t want to speculate with domains. We are not here to create problems with trademarks. We think the Internet will also gain with this kind of TLD because it will help to increase the Internet culture and diversity and linguistic diversity with minor languages which is something very important. So for now thanks for your attention.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you, Susan. That was also very interesting. I will give the floor directly to Hubert from the German government. Hubert, please.
>> HUBERT SCHOTTNER: Thank you very much. My name is Hubert Schottner and I work with the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and at least during the last three, four years Germany, German government work on the introduction of new top level domains. Mentioned before in the beginning there were some discussions internally in our government but I think because this creation of new top level domains would allow the creation of new innovative services and also foster the services between we are thinking it is necessary to have a step. Furthermore, especially two top level domains we create new forms for identification of communities in the Internet. Also our parliament initiative to introduce new TLDs and highlight in particular new changes for cities and regions to find appropriate persons on the Internet. However, like other dot com members we believe that before new TLDs are finally introduced it is essential to clarify a number of issues. I don’t think it is time to go in to depth and to discuss all of these issues. For those who are interested in a more detailed approach, you can find on our home page and next to the Nairobi community and there are – there is many issues that got raised, described in a quite good way and I think it is an important paper.
Nevertheless, I would like to highlight some of the open questions so that you have an idea what is the general issues we are discussing. One very important issue is a question of scaleability of the root zone. I think this is a – something of this problem is very essential because to ensure that introduction of new TLDs doesn’t do any harm to the stability of the current domain name system. And also to the functioning of the Internet. I think this is at least a condition and everybody in the ICANN community has a strong interest in this issue. We also believe that it is important to predict immediate interests of trademark owners. We have an expert here in the panel who really discusses the issue in depth. I think it is most important to reflect how we can get a rapid or rapid decisions from arbitration and remediation bodies which operate in a simple and unbureaucratic way. It is not the case that the work of a trademark expert percentage to ICANN in this regard serves only to trademark holders or the delays are a process of introducing new TLDs. I think it is quite contrary. Trademark experts are showing us legal problems and legal risks. It is highly valuable input for ICANN and also it is very important results applying from new TLDs and who might be confronted with trademark issues at a later date.
However, I would also like to point out that involvement of private application and remediation bodies does not exclude decision by appropriate courts. Nobody is obliged to accept remediation decisions and it cannot be excluded that third parties take legal action at local, national courts. Regarding so-called geographic names which is the focus for today’s discussion, we would also propose some amendments to the current ICANN guidebook, applicant guidebook. The applicant guidebook is de- – defines rules for the application process. First of all, I would like to mention that the definition of geographical names should be improved. ICANN’s current definition of geographical name consists of country names mentioned in the ISO list. It also includes positions of countries. In Germany we would have our federal states in this category and it includes city names. What we need is the use of upcoming abbreviations. And if I see dot cat or dot gal which are linguistic communities, but could also be considered as geographic communities, and then wouldn’t be considered from ICANN point of view as geographical names because it was only the abbreviation and the government wouldn’t be involved in the discussion of establishing this new TLD. Up ’til now we have plans from ICANN that governments are insofar involved as far as they have to give their – at least one objection or involvement or approval and that is something that I think is quite a useful approach. But we should include also abbreviations to this city. I am not from Spain. But I could mention that political discussion of dotMadrid would be considered as a geographical name where governments have influence and dotBCN which is Barcelona which is considered a normal TLD.
Secondly, we would ask ICANN two TLDs for litigation process which is for ccTLD. If registry infringes legislation permanently and seriously. We think that in these cases ICANN must comply with a legally binding restriction. Nevertheless we think this would be a last resort. It should not be usual practice, but in some cases we think it might be necessary to have such an instrument. Certainly we think that applicants and users of geographical TLDs may expect legal framework of the territory in which the community is located is applicable to the TLD. And we think therefore ICANN should allow for ways to inspect specifically framework in the respective communities operating in the TLD regime. Since we also help ICANN, the applicants and national, local, public authority still avoid the risk of legal challenges.
Yes, coming to a conclusion we think all the problems discussed can be solved. Yes. Discussion process might be and I am not – I think that we are on the way to do that is to find – define different categories for TLDs because some of the issues I mentioned may be important only to certain categories, not to all categories and therefore might be solutions which can be very easily achieved if you have various categories. But this is the same way that I think should discuss further. Also within a day, in such a meeting where we are here, the prospective of the users and people applying for this TLD. For me it was an interesting, yes, thing to learn about the difference between geographical top level domains and linguistic top level domains and maybe from a governmental point of view they are quite similar. If the government has to be involved and if their public policy is just, may be quite similar and maybe it is a regulation for both communities and TLDs maybe may follow a similar regime, but that is also something else we should discuss further and we are open for discussion. Thank you.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you, Hubert. I would like to give the floor to Nick Wood. Thank you.
>> NICK WOOD: Ladies and gentlemen, I got a couple of quotes here. I should have brought a small prize for those who recognize. Who can recognize the phrase “The best for the most?” It doesn’t surprise me. It was a particularly poor prime minister who said he was trying to achieve the best for the most. And he led us in to World War II. The next quote is “Few, but roses” and that was a quote from Sappho, the poetee from the sixth century B.C. What I am going to try to talk about is the balance between those two approaches and I want you to understand my perspective. I run an ICANN registrar where we work only with intellectual property owners and I was a member of ICANN’s IOT and I drafted the summarized booklet and I am also the coordinator of a not-for-profit.
So that kind of gives me some perspective on this. And in addition as a registrar we got numbers of our clients, some far, we have four of them who are confirmed to have contracted with us to be – to supply them with services for a new TLD. So I’m sitting right across the middle on a number of fences. Quite an uncomfortable place to be sometimes. So we talked about the best for the most. It seems that ICANN’s policies are consensus driven and we know that and they have led to a liberal application process and may be appropriate for what most of the applicants are going through. And I have categorized the type of applicant they are. It is quite useful we might want to refer to these later on. There is the key word speculators. Now the kind of legal training in me says think about this quite carefully. They are seeking a global monopoly in a term. They uniquely will own a term that spreads across various different professions, industries. I think there is natural born applicants. I expect that we will see eBay and Facebook and Twitter. And when they do we suddenly see 164 million Facebook users starting to put in their browser Facebook with no dot and when they go to eBay they don’t use a dot. You are suddenly going to see the new TLDs gather momentum and the largest are going to have to be in dot and that’s why a global owner like Canon announced they are going to apply. Compete with another party with a legitimate right with that term but with a class of good service and they feel they have to apply.
You can think of Polo and Ralph Lauren and Polo, the small suite. It will be very interesting to see if none of them apply, if all three of them apply and what happens. We are going to see airlines with loyalty programmes and companies coming in and see corporations who are plagued by Internet infringement. Wanting to have their own registry in a jurisdiction that they like. Maybe beyond the reach of the U.S. courts or the UK courts or the German courts but certainly beyond the reach of infringers who will be locked out and they hope that the customers will recognize the brand and the browser to be the authentic place for a handbag or something. Those are categories and perhaps the liberal process will suit most of those. But I am not sure it suits everybody. And I think special consideration needs to be given to a small number of public terms. There is the geopolitical or geographical terms, whatever, they are a special case. Trademark owners are deeply concerned about. Public interest terms to do with health and welfare and food stuffs. Financial, grant giving, international aid, educational related, child related. A lot of trademark owners are highly sensitive about people who could come in and set themselves up as the owner of a registry which purports to be the body that distributes financial aid, for example.
And I think some of these terms have been forgotten. I think the key issue is the assumption by ICANN that the communication campaign they have been running for the past few years and running in the next few years will filter through to the users. An ICANN meeting there should be 5,000 people there. We shouldn’t know each other. There are 253, 253 ccTLD registries and the Gap only has 100 members and the CCNO has 103 members I think on their website. I don’t think that’s a good representation for a set of discussions as important as this. There are many industry associations who have absolutely no idea about what is going on. Many of them are regional. They do not coordinate internationally very well. So I think certainly they are going to wake up to the fact that one is registered dot farmer or dot meds or dot health and it is going to be too late for them. The consumer representatives are very underrepresented in ICANN. And I think that the time scales ICANN is proposing and the fee structures I think they endanger public interest. I don’t think that one size fits all. I think there is a small number of types of applicants for whom a special case for consideration needs to be given.
So I got some suggestions and Thomas briefed us very well and so these are my suggestions. I spoke to a couple of the members of IRT and they said well, you can go up there and say that if you want. There was a kind of support authority speaking. So I think there should be a parallel application process. Not the same application process. But at parallel one for registries for terms of public interest. I think that most terms of public interest, this is highly controversial and I know a lot of governments are the same, but I think that anyone who is applying for one of these registries should have an exclusive letter from nonobjection, first of all, from a national government, and secondly, I think from the CC, the local CC, local registry and that’s probably controversial to many of you out there.
Think about this for a minute. Think about people who are going to be faced with two different systems for objecting to a registration. It is not about the convenience of the registry operator. It should be about the people on the ground, the stakeholders and the registry that need clarity. In time I think that can be liberalized and I say this as a small businessman in England who hates government interference but I think in the first round of this process I would welcome a little bit more government control. I think that ICANN should have a public interest team and they should have a proper budget and they should use locally qualified people. Not North Americans. That’s the kind of challenge that I am throwing out there because a lot of debate in ICANN certainly over intellectual property kind of shifted when it got out in to the community and measures that are applicable across the globe and worked according to international law and got roped in and suddenly became highly relevant to North America and not applicable to the rest of the world.
I think that the registry operator’s contract should reflect the local law. The ICANN contracts are going to be written under Californian law and remember any of you bidding for TLD I reserve the right to reject your TLD. We know you have got a trademark that’s registered in 122 different countries. We reserve the right to take your trademark registry away from you and give it to someone else. I think that ICANN should perhaps think about a standing organization for public registries. These are probably controversial. I think there is a role for ICANN partners. World Health Organization, umbrella industry associations should have a bit more of a role and I put down some of the things they should do. In terms of oversight of these registries of public interest I think they should renew the letters of nonobjection. Shouldn’t write it once and leave it because things change. I think that there should be lower application fees for these registries of public interest. And I think that you should be able to get all of your money back if you get knocked by someone because there is a lot of people coming from very small communities who could be challenged, for example, by a trademark owner. And I think actually they should get their money back and I think that ICANN should stump up and give their money back. It must be increased from 45 days to 90 days. In order to get an objection in you have to have 45 days to do it. How many people here can get something in to government in 45 days? If you are uniquely endorsed you should be able to rise above trademark owners.
SWITCH put out an interesting paper which there should be a list of widely used names. Names are difficult. When applied universally you might get a country that gives you a list of 142 names and another country that gives you 142,000. I don’t think there should be a transfer or redelegation of a public registry unless it has been approved by the government or ccTLD. So what I am saying is that ICANN needs to start trusting governments and experts. I have sat in meetings for years now and security in one room and they talk about a lot of stuff. And we all nods our heads and we say you are absolutely right and no one challenges them. And you walk in with something that affects your government, not one of you have experience with trademark laws or the government and I think that ICANN needs to think about that.
So some concerns of the IP community, my last slide you will probably be pleased to see I think that a key concern for trademark owners is for registries of public interest to be rules based. So like dot cat or dot gov there is no problem at all when they have a set of rules and they follow the rules. Now IP owners like rules. We can understand them. So rules based registry is seen as a good thing. IP owners would like there to be a nexus. So in London some kind of connection to London that can be validated. And I think that most IP owners would like that nexus to be revalidated every year. It can be a self-revalidation and someone says yes, I meet the requirement. DotLondon, we have had a lot of discussion with some of the agencies interested about making sure that it doesn’t become too diluted so you don’t see people in far away continents using a dotLondon for purposes that add no value to any consumer, any Internet user who is trying to find out some genuine information about London. We think that the idea of a registry operator reserving the right to challenge a registrant is very important and should be able to cancel their registration in the public interest. A small number of ccTLDs do that. Martin, I don’t –
>> Martin: We have done it under request. But, in fact, if you look at our agreement we do not have the right just to pull it because somebody has challenged it. It would have to go through our dispute resolution process.
>> NICK WOOD: I think that’s very interesting because as a registrar we reserve the right to actually lock or pull back someone’s domain name. Something that is causing a public problem will do it but registries can’t. I think that IP owners want to see very clear information and accept individuals to have their identities and information protected, but they want there to be a simple challenge process so they can’t get to the real owner of the domain name. Of course, they want measures to protect IP such as the ones that the IRT suggested and they want them to surpass those that have been debated in ICANN. As a member of the IRT we were told by the board begin with the comments that have been submitted on draft applicant guidebook versions 1 and 2. We weren’t told go away with a blank piece of paper and come back with something that really worked. We started with those comments and we foolishly welcome the invitation of the board to do this. So we didn’t get in terms of inference.
We wrote a report to go to the board but you know what, we never presented it to them. You know what, some of them probably never read it. So don’t just look at what’s in the – if you are going to create a registry on what’s out there because there may be other things that you can do highly relevant for your localities and save you a lot of money. There is a globally protected market and everyone said it wouldn’t work and now the Colombians are doing this in the dotCO and it is not perfect but it is working. There should be penalties for bad actor registrars and it seems to be the elephant in the room at ICANN.
We were debating the measures to protect intellectual property. Twice people who were sitting on the stage ran registrars who systematically infringed intellectual property rights and about 50 percent of the people in the room knew it and ICANN is putting them up on the stage to represent another group. Not acceptable to me.
So what do I say? I say that I think as a model of best practice for registries of public interest, then certainly for the next couple of rocky years when registrants are going to need stability I think that leadership and wisdom from governments and the country code registries are already doing this this is really important. And the more that we can have the better. And I think that’s it. And this is the slide for dotLondon. We tried to put a little bit in to dotLondon and we tried to say not-for-profit and importance of nexus and we have numbers of back-end registry operators calling in saying you are never going to make enough money doing that. Why don’t you let us partner with you and we can sell these names all over the world for you. So there we go. Thank you very much.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. I think we heard some interesting information. We have something like – if we say we can maybe go a little in to the coffee break since everything started a little later and also the other workshops will be later. Something like 40 to 50 minutes left for discussion. I think that why not go through the questions. I think some parts of that have been answered. I think I will let you make comments and questions. Do we have remote participation questions?
>> REMOTE PARTICIPANT: Yes, we have one from a participant named Alfred. Have there been reports that the trademark issue within the IDN TLD is not as critical with TLD? Do the speakers think this is the case and can we explain why. This was for the trademark.
>> I don’t think – some people might have very unwisely said that. The truth is most trademark owners are very welcome of the IDN in the community where they have representative teams and goods and products and services that they sell. In other communities where they don’t understand the language they are worried about it.
>> Maybe not everybody understands what IDN is . The traditional that we know that is the ASCII system, only the letters of the American alphabet or whatever is exactly – is used and now there is other languages, script like Chinese and others are introduced and the question was referring are there more or less trademark problems in these things and that wasn’t the answer to that question.
>> I think as well there is two particular issues which trademark owners are particularly concerned about. One is if you own a trademark registered in the existing registry or the existing language should you have the right to be grandfathered, to be taken from one registry and dropped in to another registry. So supposing we have a trademark for ICANN in ASCII. Should they have the right to have ICANN in Arabic. Trademark owners probably say they like that, but I suspect under the law they are not entitled to that. I think a second practical issue is to do simply with searching and watching for these domain names because trademark owners very often commission a search or a watch so they can see which new domain names are being registered where. And one of the reasons a lot of them have raised some objections or concerns about IDNs is simply because they can’t read them when they come out as an IDN.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. Other questions? Martin and then Batron.
>> Martin: Thanks, Thomas. I actually like to pick up on this concept of the public interest which I took very firmly from what Nick was saying he was seeing very much as the geographical community type of names. And I suppose I have got sort of two different sides of that question. Side No. 1 is for the want to be registry and the one existing registry up on the panel is that balance of my ability to define my own operational base that is focused on my community. So the who is the selection of registrars. The selection of DRO, dispute resolution operator. And then the other side which might be that for some geographical names, somebody works very much, not specifically as a public interest but as a commercial operator and gets the agreement from a government agency and then what would happen later on if the government that were responsible for that particular area subsequently had second thoughts and decided that the registry was operating not as a good but as a bad answer. Choose your side and defend it.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Before I give the floor, the notion of public interest is key to this discussion and it has been mentioned I think by Nick but also by others there is linguistic TLDs. They are TLDs to a particular community that you can locate geographically or culturally but there is other interests like dot food. You want to concentrate on the first part.
>> Martin: I would like you to concentrate on that because the organization is working very clearly and firmly within a particular legislation area. And it is therefore this relationship between those two jurisdictions that you might have.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: So who wants to answer?
>> DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: There was two parts of the question. The first one I agree with you that mentioning dotBerlin, for example, on the Germany legislation like the ccTLD would be very good because there is an existing framework and existing registrars, domain name cases have been – sort of hundreds and thousands. It would be much easier if we could work with this framework instead of the ICANN framework. The second part of the question regarding the public interest, as I said we have worked for five years now on building a very solid community with over a hundred well-known partners of the Berlin community including chambers and associations from business and city marketing and what you want. This is I think a very solid community. And as many of you know we have a competitor in Berlin and that’s a single person aiming to get Berlin from the STOD and also asking the Berlin government about this. So on the one side you have the big community with advisory boards taking care of the policies and everything like this you would like and on the other side you have competitors that offer the government just money to go in to the market and I think there should be some way community involvement like the Catalans did hundreds of associations involved in the dot cat project.
>> Maybe this is an interesting idea. What if the actual government wants to have a social not-for-profit TLD with dotBerlin and the government changes and they want to get money out of them and four years later the government changes again? These are things that could happen. So A, what is the role of the government, and B is maybe should the – other ways, additional ways to consult the community involved, not only the government. How do you see this, Hubert?
>> HUBERT SCHOTTNER: First of all, the question is who do we mean by government. We have a central government but we also think part of the – at least the responsibility for contracting with regional geoTLD would be a task for local government and we, central government would check if a local government feels if they have certain regulations necessary. And we think it is a question of subsidiary, community based negotiation and not on a central one fits all approach. Centralized one fits all approach. So for that – the question is really what is – that is something we are really not discussing. What if there is a change in the acting or other government or maybe a result of, from our point of view I think if the registry would work properly there would be no discussion. But we had this discussions what would happen if a registry wouldn’t work and conditions which were as promised before in advance and therefore we were thinking to have this delegation process. As I mentioned a last resort to get registry back but I think it really needs – it is a last resort and only if laws are infringed.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you, Hubert. Petra, comment or question?
>> Petra: Yes. Thank you. First of all, I want to say how pleased I am that the Arabic has the opportunity to set up that kind of discussion. Because everybody that was involved in ICANN discussion immediately sensed a complete difference between the way we address the problem here and the way we were addressing it in ICANN. It has been impossible in the last two or three years that I participated intensively in that discussion to even ask half the questions we are discussing today. It is a major flaw in the discussion that the public interest dimension of the opening up of the TLD process has been taken as a focal point and starting point. There is a huge public benefit of the opening up of the new TLD space. Let me very clearly say I am not criticizing the opening up. From the onset the whole programme has been considered a little bit too much as a one size fits all market organization approach rather than identifying where it is useful.
Now to the notion of public interest TLDs, I would like to make a slight change of words and address the public interest dimension of the TLDs. Let me explain what I mean. If you look at the current draft applicant guidebook it has a certain number of rules and precautions that are spread throughout the document. And when you look at those precautions, they actually take care of very specific types of strengths. Those specific types of strengths are actually words that need to be taken care of for a specific reason and that specific reason in most cases is that they belong to what in grammar we call proper nouns. They are brands and geographic names and they are historical, cultural communities. They are unique. The French, be any language or local. London, many several – or Paris. Each of them are unique.
So this category of proper nouns is actually the underlying rationale why we have the trademark protection rules, geographic names panel, the community control to involve the stakeholders. That’s one big block, the proper nouns. Whether we keep exactly the same rules or not this is the rationale why we have this protection.
Now I want to get to the other category which is the other strengths. Let’s be very clear a large number of applicants is not going to be around a dot com like thing in a thing that’s dot pccc and ll and 43 characters. What people will be interested in are short, common nouns, dictionary key words. Even not going to speculate in key words should be meaningful dictionary words. We are a large capacity in 63 characters and I am only talking Latin here. But the reality is that the space, the semantic spectrum that we are really going to want to use are much shorter, much more meaningful words. And the key question is what are the rules for allocating those very significant words that sometimes have been nurtured in centuries in the linguistic communities to a rich actor so that we are sure we will be using the best public interest. Doesn’t mean that it has to be managed in a non-profit manner. Public interest is not equal to non-profit manner. It will be completely commercial and it must be in some cases. However, there is one point today that doesn’t pay enough attention to is the involvement of the stakeholders concerned by the word in question in to the management or allocation and the key question for this point we have the problem with Berlin or whatever but I actually like the list of specific words that might be important. Like health or bank or other thing. I don’t know if the list is the right one. But it is an interesting element to see whether some of those words might require a specific caution.
So just thanks for the exciting discussion. My question to the group and for us is how can we both not slow down the process that has already taken so long and be able to incorporate those types of discussions and ideas in the process as it goes, especially as we see in the vertical integration debate that the discussion is completely restricted to the debate between registrars and registries who are trying to divide the pie.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. I think this is a very good point that you made. Who wants to answer? Several people can answer.
>> Well, there is not an answer. He just described a concept. It seems there is going to be certain applications that are going to use a kind of common resource. You have only one web and that word can be used for profit or not profit. There is a lot of community that is asking for it because they are organizing themselves or somebody has got an idea and they are going to invest on that. So there must be different approaches. How are we going to use our resource, a common resource that’s there that we want to exploit. Some of them are going to be commercial and we have to acknowledge that and others are going to be managed in another way. If we agree to that, one size does not fit all. We have experienced that in the TLD world. But besides that I mean I think there is a path forward. Maybe some people will like that. But let me put it clear, and just because I have one here, right, another series of TLDs, the point is that we have an example that’s dot cut and – dot cut that work as a regular way that I think is not posing any kind of issues in the Internet world. That’s working. That has a model. And the bottom is why not cut and paste if anybody else wants to follow the same model. Is there anyone in ICANN that is going to go against that idea or could we just say okay, let’s try. Let’s talk about how it works. Let’s understand them. But first you not have the feeling that the person is stuck. Second, you just take a model that works and then not just say it works, there may be others.
But if this one cat based is not just root of the – just not how we organize not-for-profit but for law we must invest 70 percent of our profit in social programmes, whatever we do. In addition we have – how do you say that? Our – registered here to the chamber of commerce or equivalent. Is there an issue with that? So that would be a proposal just to get started with that process of TLDs.
>> Thank you. One comment. There is the – maybe you were going to say this, there is a problem that some people in the ICANN community they are heavily against letting some types of categories of TLDs go before others. The question is what happens if you just try and see how ICANN reacts.
>> I suppose it is the first in the queue or the last in the queue.
>> Comments?
>> Petra: Just to understand, if I understand correctly, that would be – basically say that we look at the existing TLDs. We will actually recognize that there are already categories in there because that’s the truth. There are at least cc and ggs. Within the gg there are subregimes and those regime exist today. And we identify those that work correctly and seem to be generating copycats. And say okay, if you use the same model and what I mean by model is the same regime, like a certain number of rules, balance rights and constraints. These can become a track. But we can take the other ones because there are others that are sponsored TLDs that are very close to the community TLDs. Let’s take the ones that have worked well and by the way let’s look at ones that are respond to TLDs and work very correctly. Dot prob – so if this could allow actually to screen the existing TLDs to see oh, okay, if you want to be run like dot com, fine. Maybe there are some conditions but then you need to have the registry, registrar separation. But building on the past one might allow us to see the ones that have worked well and not well. One problem though is that we do not have the regime that could be transposed for dot brands or single registry in TLD and maybe that’s the one that we should focus on.
>> Was it Nick –
>> I think there are some single registrant TLD like dot gov. Single registrant, single user and dot more and some are good examples of that as well.
(Laughter).
>> Nick?
>> NICK WOOD: I’m not particularly advocating this but I think it was dotAsia who wanted to address the proper nouns and the fact that there are some words which in a registry’s prelaunch mechanism have more value and so one of the things they did, of course, was to require people to write in and say if we are given the word hotels or cars, this is what we will do with it. I think they called it their pioneer programme. Since there dot bis and a number of other registries have done it for one character. They want to see that these domain names are used with the proper business behind them and don’t go to speculators. I haven’t evaluated it but it is one approach.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. The gentleman over there wanted to ask a question.
>> Yes. Thank you. My name is Rudolph and I am the CIO for CIM. I am afraid this whole discussion on categories were making distinctions between types of TLD is arbitrary, not arbitrary in the sense useless discussion but in the sense that we draft guidebook version 1 and we are close to getting version 4 and have been two years since. There has been a lot of discussion on categories and ICANN is not moving in to that direction at all. So I think very many people find it a very necessary thing, but I don’t think it is going to be there. We have been pushing for this change that ICANN is doing with the new TLD programme since Day One. We formulated the proposal for several categories on the most important criteria to treat them differently. I think the chances of something like this getting through before applications are slim at best. And the disappointing thing is that ICANN is using the same arguments as they, DIL, is using that choice is a complicated thing. Relate to gain and, of course, will do so. Choice always lead to people making the wrong choice either purposely or by accident. I think it is a good argument for not having choices. And ICANN is using it and so far unsuccessful in breaking their chain of thought on this. I hope that Nick can give me a small clarification because it is confusing matters for me, this whole public interest thing. If I saw your list of categories of public list, my first reaction was well, that will probably fit every string I can think of. And so if you mean by public interest strings aimed at a certain community, let’s call it community interest. But if you are not limiting it to that, then I am completely lost why you think that a public interest string applying for a TLD should have the go/no go from a national TLD because there is no logic whatsoever that public interest is related to national boundaries and the TLD and I would definitely like clarification at that point.
>> NICK WOOD: Just one comment. First to your first question, we know that the concept of category has been demanded or asked for quite a long time and ICANN is telling to everybody yes, you would like to have this, but the others don’t want it and it is too complicated and I think there is this cross constituency working group that has been created after the last ICANN where all you have an interest to – there are whether you call it category or whether you hide it somewhere, less visible in the doc is not the point but there are specific provisions for different types of TLDs. I threw in my nonpaper what was called the totalitarian plan. The focus in the U.S. and the way that ICANN and different constituency people discuss is different from what we discuss here. But it is also because too many of us are absent in the discussions of ICANN. Of course, we have other things to do as well. I know. But I just invite you to join and those who want to join this mailing list, Batra can send you the links and the more people come up with constructive requests and from different constituencies. If it is only the Gacos we want categories the board would say sorry. If the ccs want it, if the trademark people want it then it will be difficult for ICANN to ignore.
>> I know people who do it in the ICANN meetings and have argued for this particular case. Maybe I am a terrible pessimist. If you are able to maintain your opinion that the name of a city or a brand would become a generic top level if you make a domain out of it. If you can do that for two years there is not much that can stop you afterwards. You can’t be further opposite from the generic than a brand or a geographical name.
>> Then maybe we get together and say it is not every constituency for itself but all together. Answers from the back.
>> Just a short one, an observation I want to share. In the beginning of the discussion process there was not a category for geographical names and I think we managed – a huge part was inference of the cart, we now at least have a group for geographical names and this is accepted by ICANN.
>> I would – there are maybe one or two specific criteria or conditions that apply for generic TLDs that refer to geographical area being a region, province or a city. But you still have to use, for instance, ICANN accredited registrars. We have 2,000 registrars in the Netherlands and we have the fourth largest ccTLD in the world and we have about six ICANN accredited registrars who are very slow. There is no point in the Hag using an ICANN accredited registrar because there is very few. It looks like a different criteria or a different category but it is not. It is the same category, gTLD with a few minor criteria applying to this particular favor, generic top level. It is not a category in my opinion.
>> A quick answer. Then we try to give the floor to other people who have questions or comments.
>> Yes. I didn’t say that we don’t like categories. We already have two kinds of new TLDs called designations in the applicant guidebook. That’s generic ones and that’s the community ones. You can choose between if you want to be a TLD, a community one or a generic one. And about this level we might see the geographic names a real category but the geographic names like New York City that asked the interested parties to run it open as a stand-free as a dot com or a community TLD and they can choose. There might not only be the geo names but the brand names. That might make sense but I don’t want to have more categories. You could have hundreds of categories about this and that would definitely bring a huge delay to the applicant guidebook for years and it opens absolutely the framework for gaming and speculations and these parties are right before the door and they are driving some part of the policies at the moment and the ideas for the guide books as well.
>> Thank you. There was Auxsana. There was a question also for Nick. Maybe you can –
>> Poor answer.
>> NICK WOOD: As long as you admit it is good, it is in three parts. The first part I am very glad I am not a politician. The second part which is a serious thing I was imagining if there was a registry that I call a term of public interest, that there should be approval if you like for it from ICANN. Should be a special process for it. But a lot depends on where that registry is based and I think that the best ccTLD registries are actually kind of the guardians of a healthier Internet of that community. If you have a registry running close to you in the Netherlands and you knew it to be a bad actor I think would be sensible for people who understood the industry, have an expert who understands policy issues say hang on, I want to be involved in.
>> I understand the idea and it is an honorable idea. But if I am a bit commercial as a registry, of course, I will go against any initiative for another TLD in my direct environment because probably going to be a competitor, especially if it is on the national market. Already that is going to be a reason why it is not going to be acceptable and the risk of anti-competitive but I understand your idea now.
>> Okay. Thank you. Actually the theme of this workshop but it seems to me that you have to set problems with all the TLDs. Of course, Ukrainian case is maybe the best example to question of domain TLD and unfortunately you can’t receive contribution from Ukrainian where administrator of the main UA has to be present. As for me I would like to consider two main problems, between government role and public interest. And the second question is between commercial and non-profit use. And if you mention community expert, maybe we really have very strong guidelines, criteria, very strong, very critically written. Thank you.
>> Could you maybe reformulate the question? What were you meaning by the first point, government versus community?
>> You mentioned about quick changes of government. For the last five years it was the main problem for Ukraine. Now, for example, you have two strong powers. I mean to say the totalitarian power. It is a problem for. I am not sure that I would like to say that the problem of domain UA will be solved now but I am not sure of that in public interest.
>> Maybe the question is there is some responsibility for the governments because of the public interest but who controls the governments or what are the rules that governments should apply. Hubert?
>> HUBERT SCHOTTNER: Yes. Sorry. As far as I see if you are talking on ccTLD it is – I think it is difficult to interfere in a ccTLD that is from another country. We have this idea of accepting responsibility of each other, ccTLD of other countries and not only responsibility for our own. And therefore I think also in the – it would be difficult to find solutions, but I think this is indeed something that the government of Ukraine should solve with the national legislation.
>> Excellent. One comment is that Ukraine and all the European countries are members of the Council of Europe. You can go to the court in Strasbourg and appeal and it takes too long, but it is nevertheless helpful to redirect the government to follow some standards that they ratify.
>> It has nothing to do with dotUA but a question is that maybe we should be trusting much more the society in general to let themselves organize itself to bring and think about new domains like dot cat happened. We sometimes have the vision that the domain thing has to come from top down. I would like to encourage it has to appear from bottom up and in certain cases, for instance, this TLDs, of course, governments have to be involved. From bottom up let them go in the same that the government is not involved in any – in many other things. We are more or less kind of economy of market, market economy, whatever you want to call it. Government is not behind any kind of enterprise. Government is not just behind everything. So why do they have to be in just each one of the domains.
>> That’s my question. Who represents the community? Is the political government or is the models –
>> Which kind of community? Are they linguistical? Multicultural?
>> What was the second part of your question?
>> Not very important, difference between commercial and not-for-profit use. I would like to say maybe countries have time to grow this activity from down to top and conditions of strong government totalitarian we have no time to do it. And maybe we need support from European structure, maybe unofficial structure but any very strong criteria to appeal to this criteria.
>> That’s not ICANN support, government support for certain idea.
>> There was people in the middle who wanted – yes.
>> Yes. Thank you. Yeah. My name is Ernoff Storm. I am the Norweigian representative. We totally agree with all the issues you brought on the table, Hubert. So thanks for that. I just wanted to comment quickly on it was very interesting to hear what Nick said about the perspective of sort of having that perspective of the protection of the consumer interest, the public interest also from nongovernmental people. Because that’s not very often we see that, at least not in the ICANN community. So thanks for that. And I think you are on to one kind of, probably a crucial thing regarding the contract for the ICANN and the registries that, of course, categories are not categories. We must probably work more towards what will go in to the contracts between the new registries to ensure especially what we from the governmental perspective are very sort of interested in the adherence and the applicability of local law. In a similar way as the ccTLDs are sort of operating under it is important to have a local role. Because a lot of these TLDs, well, the new top level domains would be community and, of course, the local laws are targeted and to protect the communities, the consumers, business users, intellectual properties, right, the local laws are there to protect those interests. So it is important to have that in place and to have that govern the new top level domains and also just for it must not – it shouldn’t sort of be regulated to death. Currently we have a framework regulation for our national ccTLD. And it is not detailed regulation but it is a framework regulation as Dirk mentioned that it might be beneficial to have a framework regulation because it creates – it is predictable for all parties. And just a precomment to Voloff’s comment to use of ICANN’s registrars. That’s a really important issue. That is sort of being able to use the national registrars, not having that term in the contracts because then, of course, it would be not sort of governed by the local regimes anyway. So thanks.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. So you would support the notion that differentiation of contracts would be something that we should go for? That’s the way I understand it.
>> It might be a way forward but it must be explored. We try to make ICANN understand that, of course, a simple thing that generic does not constitute a geographical name or brand name but we haven’t been able to get through to ICANN. So I think that might be another avenue that we can explore.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. Having a look at the time we are now in the middle of the official coffee break but that will be prolonged. So I suggest we have one more question or comment and then we ask Wolfgang to come up with the messages that we can post and we will provide for all the solutions for the next 25 years with regard to new TLDs.
>> 27.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: 27. Sorry. I messed it up. Okay. So one final question that should not have more than three subquestions in it. Petra or somebody? Two questions. But try to be quick.
>> Petra: I will. Yes. I was thinking about something you said before, Hubert, and please correct me if I am wrong, but you said that should a registry, a TLD or say dot cat, for example, be found in breach of national law it could give ground for government to ask for resignation.
>> HUBERT SCHOTTNER: Maybe it wasn’t clear enough. I am speaking of a permanent breach and a really severe breach and normally we would go to national court. In certain instruments it is useful to have these instruments as a last resort. And our legislation could be very, very complicated and it also has question of liability for our government. And this would be a very complicated legal problem. It is not that you decide every five minutes a new direction. No. No. It is a last resort but that is something that ICANN already has in its contract, this possibilities. But we ask – would ask ICANN to have this possibility also on request of the government. It is not only ICANN that would have the probability to redraw or redelegate a TLD but also others. That’s our idea.
>> Thank you, Hubert. I know that you can make short questions.
(Laughter).
>> You know I can’t. But I will do that. No, no. Just wanted to say two things. The first thing is to say you are absolutely right, pushing this notion of types, regime, differentiation through ICANN has been a complete uphill battle. The thing is that the argument this will delay is just wearing out is because the reality is is not addressing it that has delayed. The question of category has not been devoted a single minute in the real normal process and it is the absence of it that is delaying the process. And I believe that Brussels is going to be the movement of the realization of this which leads to my second point which is a proposal. I am very, very pleased with the nature of the discussion we had here. Because it is taking a problem from the right angle which is the public interest angle which is the mission of ICANN that is supposed to be reiterated by the review and was reiterated by definition of commitment. So my question is can we as an outcome of this manage to continue the discussion on line one way or another to exchange a few ideas for Brussels? Because honestly, in this hour and a half I have heard personally more intriguing ideas than I have had in the whole discussions in the last two years in ICANN. So I would really want to explore the ones that Drodi has mentioned, what Nick has raised even if I don’t agree with everything. I mean we do have things that can be useful. And so it is up for all of us to think about what’s the way forward.
>> Thank you, Petra, for these very kind words. I think everybody who clicked the workshop tool, when registering for TLD, Sandra has the e-mail address. So if you want them we can start a mailing list. The other question shouldn’t we integrate us in the ICANN mailing list which it will have more effect.
>> I wanted to address this. Actually the group that was set up after Nairobi, this cross community group on categories have had extremely useful exchanges during – about a little bit less than a month. Very, very in-depth interactions. The archives are free and available on line and I will send the list or the link. The activity on that group have been completely sucked out because of the activity on the virtual integration. In addition I think this is a characteristic of the European approach to take this as an angle and I would be very happy to share on the group here these sort of summary documents that I shared on the list before.
>> Let me ask, Sandra, is it possible to have a European workshop mailing list to continue with the discussion?
>> Sandra: We do have it already but I didn’t actually work it out here.
>> But we could use them and see whether people want to continue this discussion.
>> Sandra: Yes.
>> We will have a look at it afterwards and will inform you. If anybody did – sorry.
>> The moderator –
>> We have to find one.
(Laughter).
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: But if anybody has not registered under workshop 2 and is here please inform Sandra and she can add you to the list. Wolfgang, it is your time here.
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: I want to be very brief. It was a discussion for outsiders. It is not easy to group them new ideas around key points which could finally be further developed in the key messages from this workshop. I fully support what just has been said, that these messages would go not only to the IGF but also to the ICANN meeting in Brussels as a message from this. I see five big points here which has been discussed. One and this was the name already from the headline from the workshop, it was the public interest. The question is should the role of the community, what is community based in detail and what is A bottom up, self-organized thing. How far we could go in a definition, you know, that is a common resource of, a public resource. I think here the message is very clear that this has the first priority. I think it is – if I remember the first like communicate from Singapore refers to the Internet as a public resource. This has to be reiterated and sometimes it is forgotten. The second point is the differentiation. I think one size fits all will not work in this field but we have different proposals for different people. Divisions and commercial and noncommercial things. And second intervention was very important to say keep it simple. As soon as we go in a more complex system of differentiation, then you invite all kinds of speculation and things which here have been said. So far we have to have a certain differentiation but can be run in different ways and I think the final remark with Petra was important. It is the absence of categories that has slowed down the process. The category discussion will slow down the process. There is confusion and nobody gets – because it is too complex and just one size fits all approach, then we produce the barriers for moving forward.
The second thing was the role of government. So it has to be redefined what is indeed the final role of governments and how far they fit in. Various proposals, letters of no objection, comments to geographical TLDs and things like that. I think there is still something to do to clarify what indeed the role or the final role of governments is. And I think that Hubert’s proposal to also use the courts as a last resort is an important proposal. It has to be reconsidered in connection with the other arena about the application jurisdiction. I think this is an important point. We have our legal system, is organized, you know, on a national basis and at least for Europeans aren’t acceptable. They always have to operate under California law if they come in to a certain relationship with ICANN.
The example was also very clear. A lot of us in Europe do not have recognition from ICANN but they are there and for them the national jurisdiction is the national environment and we have to find a way to accommodate both and I think it can be done. It has already been proposal years ago with the T-bone approach. You have bilateral relationships in a multi-level environment but it takes some innovative thinking and this is an issue which comes out from this workshop. And the final thing it is unacceptable that we wait, wait. It is a clear message to ICANN that they should speed up the process. And there should be no guidebook version 5 or 6 and open the box here and now. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you very much. I hope we will get some coffees there. It was a very interesting discussion and looking forward to continuing this wherever and whenever. Also IGF things will pop up here and there. Thank you very much.