AW: [governance] RE: GeoTLD

[Kleinwächter, Wolfgang]

I enjoy very much the debate on GEO-TLDs and I hope that a lot of ICANN folks are following the exchange of arguments. It is enlightening. If I remember correctly one argument in the debate was that a new GEO-TLD would constitute a "monopoly" and that a city name is a public good which should not fall in the hands of a "private monopoly". I am fully in favour of the concept of the "public ressource" and I am totally against private monopolies. But with regard to the case of ".berlin" this argument is totally misleading. 
 
There was a debate in the local Berlin parliament on the issue in the end of November 2007. The Lord Mayor of Berlin argued that the city council of Berlin will not support ".berlin" because they have to protect their monopoly under "berlin.de". The city council has registered "berlin.de" but has outsorced the management of "berlin.de" in form of a private-public partnership to a private company, a publishing house "Berliner Verlag" which is owned by a British Hedgefonds. The mayor´s argument in the debate was that the Berlin city council would risk a breach of the contract with the Berliner Verlag (which guarantees the "monopoly" to the private publisher)  when they would support ".berlin". As a result, the city council could risk to pay a punishment fee of several hundreds of thousands of Euros. The Lord Mayor did not refer to the Berlin Internet community or the Internet users. His main fear was that if the city council does not protect the monopoly position of a private company for "berlin.de" the Berlin Senate risks to loose money. In my view this is bizarre. 
 
We had several Internet workshops in Berlin in 2007 where the .berlin project was discussed among the community, including German ICANN directors and council members, Denic and the local Internet economy and NGOs and civil society. There was even an evening discussions in the Parliamentary Assembly of the German Bundestag where we had several members of the parliament and also a member of the European Parliament which showed an interest in the exchange of arguments. But no representative of the Berlin Senate came to this meetings. There was just ignorance of all the local discussion. In an Hearing in the Berlin Senate, which was organized by the opposition party, nearly all invited experts argued in favour. But the governing coalition said no. The only thing they did - as far as I know - was to initiate a working group in the "Deutsche Städte- und Gemeindetag" (the German assocation of city councils). The working group is working on a report which - as far as I have heard - will take a negative approach to GEO-TLDs. 
 
When I prepared the Rio IGF-workshop on new GEO-TLDs, I discussed the issue with the Städte- und Gemeindetag. I invited them to present their arguments at the IGF-Workshop. The answer was that they do not have travel funds to go to Brazil. I proposed them to put their arguments on paper and I guaranteed them to bring the arguments to the Rio panel. They promised to consider this proposal but nothing happened. I asked three days before the Rio workshop for a short piece of paper with the main counter arguments (in Rio I had about 10 GEO-TLD projects in the panel). But they did not reply to the e-Mail. A representative of the German Internet economy association "eco" participated in the Rio discussion and supported the idea of GEO-TLDs. We had voices from the Internet users and from other affected and concerned constituencies. The German GAC member was sitting in the room, but he was silent. And the local government - which claims to have the only authority to make relevant decisions - was absent. Ignorance? Arrogance? Provincialism?  A good case to compare two different governnace models: top down, centralistic and deal making behind closed doors vs. bottom up, decentraliced and open and transparent. Who will win? Let´s wait and see and remember the history and arguments of this debate if me move towards decisions.
 
Wolfgang
 
 
 
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