Communiqué of the
ccTLD Constituency, Melbourne 10 March 2001
The ccTLD
Constituency met in Melbourne on 9 and 10 March 2001 and noted that 54 ccTLD
managers were represented.
Progress
was made in these meetings in developing consensus positions on the key issues
facing the cc Constituency, namely:
Best
Practices
ICANN
Contract
Funding
BEST PRACTICES
Members
present agreed a final draft of the model ccTLD Best Practices.
(See
www.wwtld.org)
After
ratification by an on-line vote of the wider constituency, it is intended that
this will form the basis of practices referred to in the ICANN contract,
subject to amendment for local requirements.
CC MANAGER-ICANN CONTRACT
Since it
expressed considerable concern at the 2000 AGM in Los Angeles, the constituency
has been pleased to note the Board has provided for a greater amount of staff time on cc issues,
particularly the nature of the relationship between cc's and ICANN.
Members of
the staff met with cc managers in Hawaii and Geneva in February, and have
participated
in presentations and discussions on this topic in Melbourne.
While it is
clear that one contract is unlikely to suit all managers, a range of possible
relationships is emerging including:
(i) a "legacy" contract,
formalising the current relationship, which will be bilateral, between ICANN
and the manager, and
(ii) a new
contract which will be subject to involvement by the local government (a
trilateral arrangement).
A working
group has been established to establish the appropriate termination provisions
of such contracts.
The
constituency observes that many managers have problems having routine changes
recorded in the IANA database, such as telephone numbers and changes of server
by the same manager. As a result, the IANA database is considerably out of
date. In addition, we are uncertain
about the accuracy of the information on more than one hundred country
codes.
Further,
the constituency believes that the number of problems of delegation and
re-delegation may have been overstated.
To allow
the constituency to apply appropriate resources to these two issues, the constituency requests the Board to
instruct the staff to promptly and routinely provide, consistent with observing
applicable privacy principles, complete statistics relating to changes
requested and made in the database over time.
FUNDING.
Delegates
nominated by Europe, Asia Pacific and North America have been appointed by the
President to the President's funding task force.
Discussing
the issue of total ccTLD contribution, there was consensus that the ccTLD
Community should be responsible for developing an allocation mechanism and
substantial progress was made towards development of such a mechanism.
While some
members of the Constituency believe that until
the nature of the relationship, is resolved, commitment to any
budget or specific funding model is not
possible, there are others that wish to sign agreements before all issues are
resolved.
THE G.A.C
The
Constituency attended a public session of the Government Advisory Committee
(GAC) Meeting on 9 March 2001. We welcomed the opportunity to exchange views
with the GAC and were pleased to note the encouragement of ICANN Chairman, Vint
Cerf, to continue this dialogue.
At this
meeting, discussion took place on the options of a bilateral agreement or a
trilateral arrangement. In these
discussions it became clear that the conclusion of a bilateral agreement
between ICANN and a ccTLD manager would not necessarily preclude the transfer
to a trilateral arrangement in the future, should it be appropriate.
With this
is mind, the Constituency sees no need for ICANN to communicate first with
governments before entering into agreements with ccTLD managers and urges ICANN
to conclude these agreements as soon as possible.
MONO-LINGUALISM.
The
Constituency further discussed the problems for non-English mother tongue
speakers to fully participate in the ICANN forum and working processes. We believe that translation of key documents
posted for public comment would greatly improve the global participation in
ICANN. We further advocate the
provision of simultaneous interpretation by interpreters who are suitably
trained in Internet terminology.
We
recognise that that there is a cost factor in this but request that ICANN investigate these provisions when
setting future expenditure budgets, bearing in mind that these services benefit
all Internet constituencies and assist with a global outreach programme.
RECORDAL OF THE CHRISTMAS ISLAND CHANGE OF
MANAGER
The Constituency
learned with regret of the difficulties that the .cx registry is having in
requesting ICANN to record the change of manager. We believe that this
uncontested transfer is to a new organisation fully meeting the Best Practice
guidelines of the Constituency and has the approval of the Local Internet
Community including, the locally elected government.
The
Constituency is concerned that ICANN staff are reluctant to follow existing
policy and appear to be following recommended principles of the GAC which, to
our knowledge, are not adopted by the ICANN board. We urge the Board to
instruct the staff to make this transfer and to clarify the policies currently
being used to avoid inconsistency and the setting of precedence in advance of
global consensus on new policy.
We note the
absence of a mechanism to break deadlock between parties claiming an interest
in the management of a ccTLD. As this increases the risk that ICANN will be
sued by one, or more parties in dispute, we call on the Board to develop, in
cooperation with the constituency, a dispute resolution mechanism.