SV: [governance] .berlin and ALAC

Tue Dec 11 11:23:47 EST 2007

We had a great workshop on the issue of GEO-TLD during the IGF in Rio. We discussed also concerns of public administrations but in a way that such concerns should not be used to block a development but to find a consensus with the aim to promote competition, to offer more innovative services and to give consumers more choice. Here is the report which I gave the other day in the reporting back session.

Report on CIR-Workshop 
"Broadening the Domain Name Space: 
Top Level Domains for Cities, Regions and Continents? 

IGF, Rio de Janeiro, November 15, 2007

Excerpt from the "Reporting Back Session"

NITIN DESAI:   
I now have Wolfgang Kleinwächter, on the broadening of the domain name space.

WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: 
Good morning, everybody.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Wolfgang Kleinwächter, from the University of Aarhus. I was, together with five other organizations, the convenor of one of the workshops on critical Internet resources. The subject of the workshop was: "Broadening the domain name space, top-level domains for cities, regions, and continents." It was on the so-called GEO TLDs. 

The workoshop turned to become the first global summit of GEO-TLD projects in the world, both of existing in emerging projects of top-level domains which has a reference to a geographic name, to a city, a region, or some other geographical or geopolitical name. 

We started with the presentation of three existing top-level domains, dot EU, dot Asia, and dot cat, for Catalonia. And then we had the presentation of emerging projects, which included cities, regions, and continents.  The projects presented included dot NYC for New York City, dot Berlin, dot Paris, dot cym for Wales, dot GAL for Galicia, dot btn for the Bretagne, dot mercusor for a group of Latin American countries, dot lat also for Latin American countries, and dot Africa.

After the presentations we had a discussion about whether it makes sense or not to have such kind of new top-level domains in the process of the introduction of new gTLDs, which will be started by ICANN soon. We heard comments from the user community, the individual users and the business users.  And then we had a nice discussion with members from the audience.  We had around 130 people in the room.  

Summarizing the debate we can send four messages from the workshop to the global Internet community and the involved and concerned institutions and organisations::
1.       There is a growing wave of projects for new TLDs which have geographical element in it.  This is seen as a new opportunity for global cultural branding, for the stimulation of new local business and for giving the consumer more choices. 
2.       GEO-TLDs would enrich the domain name system, would introduce a new element into the DNS, stimulate competition and would give users more choice. 
3.       ICANN should speed up its procedures and to open the door for the accreditation of new gTLDs as soon as possible and to include GEO-TLDs into this process. 
4.       Public Policy interests, raised by relevant public institutions, have to be taken into account adequately but should not prevent to move forward

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

________________________________

Fra: Dirk Krischenowski | dotBERLIN [mailto:krischenowski at dotberlin.de]
Sendt: ti 11-12-2007 16:38
Til: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Emne: [governance] .berlin and ALAC

I coming back to a posting of Michael Leibrandt from Dec 2, where Michael
wrote:

"... The parliament of Berlin has voted down the .berlin proposal with a
majority decision. Does anybody think that such a local decision should be
ignored by an ICANN ALAC? ..."

The part of the statement regarding .berlin is definitely wrong; therefore
I'd like to make a counterstatement:

To say it in one sentence: The Parliament of Berlin did not (!) vote .berlin
down, it was just a recommendation of a subcommittee which voted against
supporting a motion submitted by one of the opposition parties in which the
senate is asked to support .berlin.

A little bit more in detail: In the Berlin House of Representatives (Berlin
Parliament) the Christian Democrats filed a resolution to support the
..berlin TLD. This was based on another resolution that the Christian
Democrats and the Social Democrats (ruling coalition) in the German
Bundestag (German Parliament). Contrary to the German Bundestag, in the
Parliament of Berlin the Christian Democrats are in the opposition. The
majority is by a coalition of the Social Democrats and The Left Wing Party
(the former Communist Party).

Since the resolution to support .berlin comes from the opposition, it seems
to be a natural reflex of the red-red coalition to vote against it. In the
case Michael mentioned not the parliament, but a subcommittee voted against
support of the CDU motion based on the argument that the city has an
official city portal and therefore does not need .berlin. This
recommendation will go now to the next level, the main committee. Let's wait
and see.

Dirk Krischenowski
Founder and CEO

www.dotberlin.de

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance