[governance] privatising ccTLDs

[Fouad Bajwa]

True McTim

and now I get where you are coming from. Yes we should definitely have
a concrete workshop on these issues and I think if start working on
this we will able to achieve some good amount of participation as well
generate lots of interest.

Are you willing to take lead on this?


On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 10:13 PM, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
> All,.
>
> We know all of this, but my question was, do WE have anything to say about it?
>
> Does the IGC want to make a statement or at least have a workshop on
> this?  Seems to me that this is much more of a real IG issuemuch  than
> the proposed IGC wkshops.
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> McTim
> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
> route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>

-- 
Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa
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