[ga] Report from the Washington GNSO Meeting

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

After two days of intensive discussions in Washington
the GNSO is moving toward consensus on policies to
guide the introduction of new TLDs.  The overall
sentiment expressed by the constituencies is that new
gTLDs should be introduced.  Although one party to
this discussion (the Business Constituency) maintained
that some of their members do not want any new TLDs,
they have not adopted a constituency position that
formally opposes their introduction.

The Washington GNSO meeting has produced the following
position: 

"Taking into account the lessons learnt from the
limited into of new TLDs since 2000, the GNSO supports
the continued  introduction of new gTLDs.
Prior to introducing new TLDs, the GNSO recongizes
that the lessons learnt, the submissions made in
response to  PDP-Dec05 and further input, should be
taken into account to identify and develop consensus
on the selection criteria,  allocation methods, and
implementation processes."

Disclaimer:  Please note that this statement has not
yet been put to a vote, but the clear expectation is
that it will soon be ratified.

The agenda topics for this session included only the
first two points in the GNSO Terms of Reference,
namely should new TLDs be introduced, and what
selection criteria should be used.

With respect to selection criteria, a consensus is
emerging that such criteria, the RFPs, and the
subsequent contracts should all be "thinner".  From my
vantage point it appeared that the organization is
moving toward an extremely lightweight de minimus
approach (with constituencies such as the registrars
advocating not much more than bare-bones minimal
technical criteria).  

I am pleased to report that ICANN staff has read every
single comment put forth by the General Assembly; our
work has been appreciated and has contributed
significantly to the overall emerging consensus.  

In view of the minimal approach being contemplated
with respect to criteria, Kurt Pritz has signalled
that ICANN Staff is positioned to handle a good many
new TLDs per year (that is to say, they have the
resources which would allow for processing of at least
50-100 new TLDs per annum, perhaps more -- they
pointed to their processing of significant numbers of
registrar accreditation applications as an example of
their ability to gear up to meet the challenge posed
by a large number of applications).  

The issue of quantity and periodicity of new TLDs was
not broached at this session, but at least we know
that sufficient staff resources are now in place that
would allow for more than a limited introduction of
new TLDs if that becomes the will of the community.

Bruce Tonkin has provided the following overall set of
observations regarding new TLDs (not necessarily
consensus) that resulted from the Washington
brainstorming session:

-- Negligible impact on security and stability.

-- New strings and strings with more than 3 characters
that were not interoperable with End-user application
software caused reliability problems.

-- Whole system needs to absorb a new TLD across all
software before fully interoperable.

-- No institutional mechanism to inform technical,
software development community and potential users.

-- Not enough education that new TLDs have been
introduced.   Little knowledge amongst Internet users
of the new TLDs.

-- Selection and implementation process time
consuming, expensive and unpredictable

-- Registry-registrar protocol was standardised (EPP)

-- Sunrise program difficult to design

-- Limitation on the number added caused problems for
other applicants that met selection criteria

-- Independent evaluators an improvement after first
round

-- Some Selection criteria not objective, clearly
defined, and measurable enough to allow independent
evaluation to be effective

-- Contracts too constraining to allow a registry
operator to evolve their business model in response to
market needs

-- No guarantee of financial gains from operating a
new TLD

-- Long established TLDs have a powerful legacy
advantage over new TLDs.

-- The switching costs for an existing registrant of a
domain name from one TLD to another is significant.

-- The legacy TLDs are still continuing to grow
strongly in registrations and at higher rate than the
new TLDs.

-- Selection process was not a good judge of what
succeeded in the market.

-- Selection process doesn't scale.

-- Individual negotiations of registry agreements
after Board approves new TLD also time consuming.

-- Discretionary processes can be hijacked
politically.

-- Registry operator business models may be limited by
the distribution channel of all ICANN accredited
registrars.

-- Small TLD is OK if meets the needs of the community
that has put forward and doesn't exclude others that
are within that Community.

-- The new gtlds introduced so far do not yet cater
for parts of the international community that use
character sets other than the limited set from the
ASCII character range.   This has also led to a growth
in alternative root implementations and applications
work arounds (e.g browser plug-ins).

-- A policy is required for the introduction of IDNs
at the top level, and need to consider the political
and cultural environments as demand for these IDNs is
increasing.

-- Core of the Internet adapts faster than the edges
of the Internet.

-- Participation of registries, registrars and
resellers, end users required in testing, and
identifying clearly the objectives of the test,
policy implications, and measuring the outcomes of the
test.

-- Need to consider whether to set a price and if so,
how price is set in the registry agreement and how it
impacts end-users.

-- Describe reasoning/objectives behind
"proof-of-concept" rounds and whether objectives of
new TLD introductions have been met.

-- Concern about whether open TLDs have resulted in
new registrants compared to existing registrants in a
legacy TLD simply registering to protect the brand.

-- For existing registrants in a legacy TLD that
register in a new TLD, how many of these use the new
registration to create a separate website, or a
separate user of email, rather than simply use email
or URL forwarding to the existing registration in the
legacy TLD, or change their 
advertising/marketing materials to explicitly
reference the new TLD in an email or website address.

-- Registry operators have learnt more about the
market for new TLDs which may assist a new operator
when launching a new TLD.


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