[governance] privatising ccTLDs

Thu Apr 8 02:10:08 EDT 2010

This may be interesting to many as it can serve as case study from the
developing world:

There are many ccTLD disparities prevalent in the developing world.
For example in the case of Pakistan, the official ccTLD for .pk was
given in the time of IANA to a Pakistani based in the US who has now
come back to Pakistan. The ccTLD www.pknic.net.pk was under an IANA
allocation and wasn't shifted to the new ICANN contracting. For a
country of 170 million plus population the following are the domain
registration stats where only 29557 domains have been registered:

stats for PKNIC
2010-04-07:
domains: 29557
nameservers: 1179

There is consumer in-confidence in PKNIC, people are reluctant to take
over-priced domains from PKNIC. PKNIC only registers domains for a
period of two years for $25 a domain whereas a TLD can be acquired for
only $16 for two years. Each time the debate on decentralization of
PKNIC comes up, PKNIC has connection in the high up places and is
easily able to revoke such efforts.

When we started raising these issues, PKNIC invited and included some
of our Civil Society members to its board of advisers and the members
fell for it and felt so honoured to be included in the board that they
forgot what the actual Internet Governance problems were. They still
continue to participate in the IGC but are prone to PKNIC interests
which of course is a very big drawback.

PKNIC has occasionally broken down in its service with outages
sometimes over weeks. Our CS members have started gaining certain
interests from PKNIC which were publicly questioned by both the local
and international communities as visible publicly here:
http://public.icann.org/node/343.

PKNIC's monopoly cannot be broken through a public-private partnership
between civil society, academia, private sector and govt
multistakeholder collaboration. The result is that people are more
oriented to acquire TLD domains as per today the total TLD domains in
the country stand at approximately:

Total Domains in Pakistan : 41,380
(Source:http://www.webhosting.info/registries/country_stats/PK)

IF we look at our neighbouring country India, their ccTLD runs as a
multistakeholder partnership due to which they have more than half a
million local domains. Similarly their TLD registrations are also at
the same number:
Total Domains in India : 559,213
(Source:http://www.webhosting.info/registries/country_stats/IN)

This clearly shows that allowing ccTLD's to monopolize their positions
in the country effect the citizens of those countries in the following
ways:

1. No control over ccTLD monopolies
2. Access low-cost ccTLD
3. Have to buy more TLD instead of ccTLD
4. Less consumer choices
5. Cost of entry to Internet/Web too high
6. Lesser opportunities for local initiative growth (with respect to
building local online activities backed by local domains)
7. Threat to IDNs and GTLD operations when the same ccTLD operator can
influence govt and other groups to host their GLTDs/IDNs under the
same infrastructure.

Such monopolies have to be broken otherwise ICANN will only be
benefiting a handful.

Best Regards
Fouad Bajwa

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 4:37 AM, David Goldstein
<goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Carlos,
>
> Any registrar that registers .DE domain names can provide an address, even if for registrars outside Germany this can be a headache. Nominet has no restrictions I am aware of. AuDA has restrictions that say for com.au addresses the person or organisation must have an Australian business number from the tax office and the name must have some relationship with their work.
>
> And when there are over 13 million domains, such as .DE and over 8 million (.UK) it *IS* much harder to get your preferred domain name than say, if there are over one million (.AU and .CA).
>
>
> Regards
> David
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca>
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; David Goldstein <goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au>
> Sent: Wed, 7 April, 2010 10:58:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [governance] privatising ccTLDs
>
> David, some additional comments below.
>
> --c.a.
>
> David Goldstein wrote:
>> Carlos et al,
> [...]
>> Some have a requirement for a local contact as part of the
>> registration process, but this is often easily provided by a
>> registrar. And given that the world's number one ccTLD and probably
>> number 2 ccTLD, .DE and .UK respectively, allow people from around
>> the world to register domain names in their ccTLDs and the world
>> hasn't fallen in, then it's not too big a problem.
>
> Not sure about any restrictions in Nominet (could not find specific
> policy requirements in their Web site), but DENIC requires a legal
> German address: "It is possible for individuals or institutions (that
> have legal capacity) not located in Germany to register .de domains.
> There is, however, a condition, namely that they must appoint an
> administrative contact who is resident in Germany and who has a postal
> address at which it is possible to serve documents (i.e. not a mere P.O.
> box). The administrative contact is then also the person formally
> authorized by the domain holder to receive service of official or court
> documents (Zustellungsbevollmächtigter) within the meaning of the German
> Code of Civil Procedure (Zivilprozessordnung) and the German Code of
> Criminal Procedure (Strafprozessordnung). The reason for this measure is
> to ensure that if any party has a legal claim to pursue, it is not made
> more difficult for them by having to serve official or court documents
> in another country, which is often a long, drawn-out process."
>
> Not sure about AuDA either, but CIRA (Canada) does require proof of
> Canadian citizenship or a legal address in Canada.
>
>> The main issue I see is that by opening up the ccTLD means it is
>> harder for residents to get their own ccTLD domain.
>
> Not sure about this. I think it might even become easier, although they
> will have to compete for certain addresses with global registrants. My
> point is that this "internationalization" just to make money defeats the
> original purpose of having ccTLDs as the realm of national identities in
> the domain name system. Otherwise, let us all join GNSO :)
>
> cheers
>
> --c.a.
>
>>
>> Cheers David
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ---- From: Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca>
>> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> Sent: Wed,
>> 7 April, 2010 9:11:35 PM Subject: Re: [governance] privatising ccTLDs
>>
>>
>> Hi McTim, I can start by saying: cheap and quick way to get a gTLD...
>> :) There is a business group which convinces a community (or their
>> government, as I think Colombians have not had the opportunity to
>> properly and widely debate this) that their national identity on the
>> Internet is no longer relevant and let you take over and convert
>> their ccTLD into a commodity for the international domain market.
>>
>> In the case of Colombia, it is quite strange. It is a country with 44
>>  million people, relatively high HDI and the third largest South
>> American economy -- hard to see how this is going to generate any
>> significant amount of money to benefit Colombia -- this is far from
>> being Tuvalu. On the other hand, given the size of the economy and
>> Internet penetration in the country, it is hard to see how a
>> non-profit self-sustainable operation to keep their ccTLD in the
>> national commons would not succeed.
>>
>> But this is my view and I am not a Colombian (just a Latin American),
>>  so... But it makes me sad to know that xyz.co no longer points to a
>> Colombian Internet space.
>>
>> frt rgds
>>
>> --c.a.
>>
>> McTim wrote:
>>> http://www.cointernet.co/
>>>
>>> Do we have any thing to say on this?
>>>
>>> This type of thing would be a fruitful workshop topic IMO.
>>>
>>
>
> --
>
> Carlos A. Afonso
> CGI.br (www.cgi.br)
> Nupef (www.nupef.org.br)
> ====================================
> new/nuevo/novo e-mail: ca at cafonso.ca
> ====================================
>
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