Dear colleagues, Bruce, At the Amsterdam meeting, end of August 2006, while we were discussing the selection criteria of the new gTLD policy, our colleague Ken Stubb threw the idea of paying particular attention to the situation of developing countries. It followed a short exchange (notably with Marilyn Cade) and it sounded like a rough consensus that there was something to say or do about this question one way or the other. I tried to keep the ball rolling but the comittee didn't seem to have much time to pay further attention to this, so I posted a few proposals on the council list, calling for further consideration. After Amsterdam, apart from a few questions asked by Chuck Gomez to which I responded, there hasn't been, to my knowledge, further discussion of this issue. However, I note that all traces have disappeared altogether from the draft final report. If there was a discussion and a decision taken by the Council during a call that I missed, please be so kind to indicate to me the date of such call and/or direct me to the records and minutes of that meeting. Assuming such discussion by the Council has never taken place, I wish to submit to your attention the attached draft (hardly two pages, in plain text below) that I have prepared in order to enable us carry out that necessary discussion. Bruce, this is the last opportunity that I have to request you, as the Chair, to accommodate this discussion in the agenda of the upcoming meeting in Marina del Rey. Whatever the reality is, I think we can all face it through honnest and articulated arguments; it would be hard not to agree that shunning cannot be established as a way of forming policy. I am traveling tomorrow Thursday and will arrive at Marina del Rey only at the end of the day. I will attend the meeting from Friday, and I look forward to seeing you all again. Best regards, Mawaki ***** A. Background and Motivation The time has come for ICANN to take an aggressive turn toward a truly global governance of the Internet, ensuring further openness, diversity, and competition through its processes as well as by their outcomes. There clearly is a benefit as well as a cost, either symbolic, material or both, to be the authority that everybody in the industry looks at, and often relies on, at one level or the other. Just as it accepts the privilege (and benefit) to play such role, ICANN needs to accept to bear the related responsibility (or cost) toward the whole community, and this may have different flavors depending on the specific conditions of the different participant groups or regions, in connection with ICANN's business. For example, we need to realize that there is a huge cost to bear for a developing Non-English speaking country (and there are many such examples,) with regard to the conditions in which ICANN has conducted its business over the past decade. ICANN may well translate its public documents in several languages, it does not, however, process applications, negotiate or sign contracts other than in English and the related legal environment. ICANN takes decisions that impact the possibility of entry in the Internet industry and market. Though the Internet industry and market are global, not every potential player has had the same access to the information about market opportunities because of those linguistic and cultural shortcomings. Economists and Policy Analysts would identify this as a market failure by means of information asymmetry. Indeed, the fact that ICANN's tools and processes for policy-making are in a specific language results in a loss for countries that are not in any position, at start, to be familiar with those tools and processes, neither to their cultural environment. For many, this means, among other things, 8 years or so lagging behind and even locked out of the industry. Those with poor or very limited institutional and economic development, in addition, are even worse off. As a result, it is once again those having less who still get less, falling farther behind, while paying the same market price as every one if not more because of their poor organization (cost of access, international bandwidth and interconnections, etc.) Obviously, setting application criteria that are tailored (or based on) the performance of the most developed economies in the world equates to excluding the majority of the areas and people. Finally, in the global Internet community, there are vibrant groups of users technically capable of running a registry and willing to serve their grassroots communities on a voluntary basis. Experience has shown that a non-profit model of registry can work just as fine as the commercial model. For better or worse, the Internet is a global facility, but it shouldn't only be so from the demand and the user side, but also and genuinely from the operation and supply side as well. If we chose not to address the issues raised above, we will be sending a message of exclusion to the face of people who are concerned and eager to participate actively and responsibly on both ends and contribute to the promising expansion of this uniquely global network. B. Proposals for action Thus, I would like to call on the GNSO Council to consider and address the following issues in its PDP, and more generally, ICANN to initiate a phased process starting with the implementation of the current new gTLD policy being developed, in order to progressively achieve the following objectives in the near term: 1. Establish a capacity-building and support mechanism aiming at facilitating effective communication on important and technical Internet governance functions in a way which no longer requires all participants in the conversation to be able to read and write English. 2. Put in place a fee reduction scheme for gTLD applicants from developing economies, and make the financial and the operational threshold for market entry easier for those from less developed economies. 3. The ICANN gTLD application process should be able to receive and process applications in major languages other than English, and the documents needed to apply should be available in the six working languages of the United Nations. Drafted by Mawaki Chango GNSO Council Member February 21, 2007