Bulgarian Group Challenges IDN ccTLD Policy
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/18/3416813.html Adding to the growing questions about the wisdom of giving incumbent country code registries a "fast track" to new IDN top level domains, a Bulgarian registrar has sent a letter to ICANN claiming that it should receive the new TLD rather than the current country code manager. The Bulgarian company, UNINET, has already launched a local version of '.áã' -- see http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=86755 -- and claims that it resolves in Bulgaria through many "DNS patches" supported by national Internet service providers. UNINET criticizes the policies, prices and sluggishness of the Bulgarian ccTLD administrator (Register.bg), which has registered only 7500 names after more than 12 years of operation. In contrast, Bulgarians have registered around 180,000 domains in generic TLDs such as .com, .net, .org and .info a clear indication of the inadequacy of the current ccTLD manager in meeting the needs of the local market. Whatever the merits of UNINETs desire to be first in line for a "fast track" Bulgarian IDN domain, their letter underscores how wrong it is to assume that the existing ccTLD managers deserve a special right to be the first occupants of the IDN space. UNINET points out correctly, we think that "if ICANN awards Register.bg the IDN "áã'" TLD, the market for Bulgarian script names may become a monopoly controlled by Register.bg since the market for Bulgarian names worldwide is rather small and needs only one or a few Bulgarian TLDs." The same would be true of many other national and linguistic markets. IDN top level domains should be awarded as part of a generic process in which all applicants are equal and are evaluated by the same rules. And competition policy, one of ICANN's prime directives, should play a role in deciding who gets what. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
I will ask the Bulgarian registry of .bg for comments, but so far the attempts of Uninet to do something in the field of issuing alternative domain were met with lots of criticism by the well known experts in my country. They do not provide a good service right now, but take money from people, including for domains like, for example, .info in Bulgarian. One reason why such a domain would be difficult to explain, is that it contains the same characters as in Russian, Mongolian, Macedonian, Serbian, etc. A good parallel is the .py (Paraguay), which also means "ru" in Russian. So, I would be extra careful when putting this on the table. veni At 08:17 19.12.2007 -0800, Danny Younger wrote:
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/18/3416813.html
Adding to the growing questions about the wisdom of giving incumbent country code registries a "fast track" to new IDN top level domains, a Bulgarian registrar has sent a letter to ICANN claiming that it should receive the new TLD rather than the current country code manager. The Bulgarian company, UNINET, has already launched a local version of '.АЦ' -- see http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=86755 -- and claims that it resolves in Bulgaria through many "DNS patches" supported by national Internet service providers.
UNINET criticizes the policies, prices and sluggishness of the Bulgarian ccTLD administrator (Register.bg), which has registered only 7500 names after more than 12 years of operation. In contrast, Bulgarians have registered around 180,000 domains in generic TLDs such as .com, .net, .org and .info ╜ a clear indication of the inadequacy of the current ccTLD manager in meeting the needs of the local market.
Whatever the merits of UNINET▓s desire to be first in line for a "fast track" Bulgarian IDN domain, their letter underscores how wrong it is to assume that the existing ccTLD managers deserve a special right to be the first occupants of the IDN space.
UNINET points out ╜ correctly, we think ╜ that "if ICANN awards Register.bg the IDN "АЦ'" TLD, the market for Bulgarian script names may become a monopoly controlled by Register.bg since the market for Bulgarian names worldwide is rather small and needs only one or a few Bulgarian TLDs." The same would be true of many other national and linguistic markets.
IDN top level domains should be awarded as part of a generic process in which all applicants are equal and are evaluated by the same rules. And competition policy, one of ICANN's prime directives, should play a role in deciding who gets what.
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Here's comment from the .bg ccTLD: Veni, My comment on this is short: Anyone who has come to a new market, can claim anything. You know this better than many. The reality is, that although policies of Register.BG may not be perfect, they are the result of our now 17 years of operation as an TLD registry. Even if some of the restrictions in place are not popular, they in fact reflect the reality in Bulgaria and the constraints by existing laws and common practices. The same is valid for any other registry in any other country (not counting the commercial registries). Register.BG has always considered the stability and good standing to be more important that commercializing the BG TLD and this has as direct implication the reduced number of domains registered in BG. The quoted numbers are however wrong, with BG registrations underestimaed and non-BG registrations exagerated. Register.BG has always followed the developments of the TLD services, as well as introduced new revolutionary services over the years. Today, TLD registries do not design policy and invent services on their own, but rather cooperate both within their constituency, as well as with great many external policy making bodies. It is our understanding, that "the incumbent country code registry" has the best possible knowledge of what is proper to do in order to provide stable naming of subjects in Internet. Which is the primary reason for existence of the registry, not the desire to make more money fast. This is why, in part Register.BG advocates the fast track implementation of IDN TLDs. Register.BG is well prepared to implement Bulgarian IDN TLD, both technically and in with proper policy to encourage mass deployment. Daniel At 08:17 19.12.2007 -0800, Danny Younger wrote:
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/18/3416813.html
Adding to the growing questions about the wisdom of
P.S. from Veni. Putting this note on the internetgovernnace.org web site alone is an interesting thing.
Veni, The question seems to be this: "What fast-track approach will best serve the user interest?" Will a fast-track IDN process that provides an IDN to a ccTLD registry operator (with perhaps a less-than-stellar performance track record) be preferable over a different fast-track approach that might call for abiding by the principle of competition? Yes... I'm reminded that at one point ICANN actually did have principles... Anyway, you doubtless will recall one of the recommendations of the earlier Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Committee: "The committee concludes that no distinctions should be drawn between ASCII and non-ASCII new TLDs the process that is used for new ASCII TLDs (as refined over time and with experience) should equally apply to new non-ASCII TLDs (once the technical standard is completed and deployable at the TLD level). The key elements of that process are: open call for proposals, defined criteria for selection, independent review by technical and financial experts, and full transparency of all proposals. The committee sees no reason why these elements could not apply equally to non-ASCII TLD proposals, with some added criteria for selection, perhaps focusing on the proposed registry's plans to meet the needs of (and make policy for) the language communities to be served by a given TLD string in a given script." http://www.icann.org/committees/idn/non-ascii-tld-paper.htm Do we actually need a geographic-unit-based fast-track approach at all? I can't see why this would be preferable to an open call for IDN TLDs through a standardized new TLD process (that has pretty much already been formulated by way of the GNSO efforts in this area). --- Veni Markovski <veni@veni.com> wrote:
Here's comment from the .bg ccTLD:
Veni,
My comment on this is short: Anyone who has come to a new market, can claim anything. You know this better than many.
The reality is, that although policies of Register.BG may not be perfect, they are the result of our now 17 years of operation as an TLD registry. Even if some of the restrictions in place are not popular, they in fact reflect the reality in Bulgaria and the constraints by existing laws and common practices. The same is valid for any other registry in any other country (not counting the commercial registries). Register.BG has always considered the stability and good standing to be more important that commercializing the BG TLD and this has as direct implication the reduced number of domains registered in BG. The quoted numbers are however wrong, with BG registrations underestimaed and non-BG registrations exagerated.
Register.BG has always followed the developments of the TLD services, as well as introduced new revolutionary services over the years. Today, TLD registries do not design policy and invent services on their own, but rather cooperate both within their constituency, as well as with great many external policy making bodies. It is our understanding, that "the incumbent country code registry" has the best possible knowledge of what is proper to do in order to provide stable naming of subjects in Internet. Which is the primary reason for existence of the registry, not the desire to make more money fast. This is why, in part Register.BG advocates the fast track implementation of IDN TLDs. Register.BG is well prepared to implement Bulgarian IDN TLD, both technically and in with proper policy to encourage mass deployment.
Daniel
At 08:17 19.12.2007 -0800, Danny Younger wrote:
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/18/3416813.html
Adding to the growing questions about the wisdom of
P.S. from Veni. Putting this note on the internetgovernnace.org web site alone is an interesting thing.
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Danny, the question was different, and I hope you will excuse me for not entering into yet another fruitless discussion with you. You already have an opinion there, and I am not in the mood or in the position, or in the wisdom to try to change it. The answer to the original question is given by the .bg ccTLD, and therefore, if you think you have a point there, feel free to address it, and to email him. His contacts are on the IANA page. best, Veni At 09:50 20.12.2007 -0800, Danny Younger wrote:
Veni,
The question seems to be this:
Thessaloniki 24/12/2007 Season's Greetings Our sincere wishes for a happy, peaceful and creative 2008 On behalf of the board of KEPKA, Nikolaos Tsemperlidis Evangelia Kekeleki President KEPKA Gen. Secretary KEPKA KEPKA - Consumers Protection Centre, 32 Vas. Irakliou Str. - GR 54624 - Thessaloniki, Phone: +302310233333 - Fax: +302310242211, email: consumers@kepka.org - http://www.kepka.org. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Veni Markovski" <veni@veni.com> To: "Danny Younger" <dannyyounger@yahoo.com>; "Veni Markovski" <veni@veni.com>; "'At-Large Worldwide'" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 12:21 AM Subject: Spam Low: Re: [At-Large] Bulgarian Group Challenges IDN ccTLD Policy
Danny, the question was different, and I hope you will excuse me for not entering into yet another fruitless discussion with you. You already have an opinion there, and I am not in the mood or in the position, or in the wisdom to try to change it.
The answer to the original question is given by the .bg ccTLD, and therefore, if you think you have a point there, feel free to address it, and to email him. His contacts are on the IANA page.
best, Veni
At 09:50 20.12.2007 -0800, Danny Younger wrote:
Veni,
The question seems to be this:
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participants (3)
-
Danny Younger -
KEPKA - Consumers Protection Center -
Veni Markovski