Forwarding on behalf of Richard Hill. On 5/13/15, 3:24 AM, "Richard Hill" <rhill@hill-a.ch> wrote:

Grace: please forward to CWG-Stewardship, since I cannot post to that list directly. ========================================================================== == ========

Dear David,

Thank you for the thoughtful comments and please see my embedded comments below.

Best, Richard

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-----Original Message----- From: David Conrad [mailto:david.conrad@icann.org] Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 23:47 To: Richard Hill Cc: cwg-stewardship@icann.org Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] FW: Further input to CWG-Stewardship on .int

[Sorry for the slow response -- bit buried right now]

Richard,

My understanding is that while ICANN was indeed involved in the workshop that preceded the E.int work within the ITU, ICANN was not actually involved in the E.int work that led to E.910 itself (I know I wasn't). Is this incorrect?

I seem to recall that an ICANN staff member participated in at least one of the meeting of the editor's group, but I may be wrong about that. ICANN staff did for sure send comments on early drafts and those comments were incorporated in the final version.

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Also, since I wasn't involved in the E.int work, I'm unaware of how much input or involvement the international treaty organizations currently registered in .INT (other than the ITU obviously) had in the formulation of the requirements documented in E.910.

Both the workshop and the editor's group were open and several organizations provided input. Prior to the formal ITU approval process, the draft was circulated to all UN agencies. The draft was formally approved by the highest UN executive body that is competent to consider the matters, namely the chief executive officers of the various UN agencies.

The ITU approval process that was used is the so-called Traditional Approval Process, in which Member States are notified of the intended approval and have 8-9 months in which to express objections. The recommendation is approved only if there are no objections. That was the case for E.910.

So it was formally approved both by the heads of the UN agencies, and by the UN Member States (who are all members of ITU).

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My reading of E.910 suggests a level of top-down presumption that, notwithstanding the historical documents you reference, does not necessary correspond to the bottom-up methodologies now used in the definition of TLD registry policies.

Depends what you mean by bottom-up. The process strove to get inputs from all the entities that are, or thought they should be, eligible for a domain name under ".int".

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For example, of the 180+ current treaty based organizations registered in .INT, how many were actually substantively involved in the development of E.910?

See above.

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Given how the management of the namespace has evolved in the nearly a decade since E.910 was published by the ITU, and in particular, how TLD registry policies are now generally developed via multi-stakeholder processes in a bottom-up fashion, I'm still unsure whether it makes a whole lot of sense to make a change without engaging the directly impacted parties.

In my view, the directly impacted parties were engaged back in 2004. Whether E.910 still corresponds to what they want is of course an open question, but my hunch is that it does, because the main purposes of E.910 were to clarify the following:

1) Organizations can obtain domain names corresponding to their acronym in the 6 official UN languages, with the caveat that Arabic, Chinese, and Russian would only be available when technically possible (IDN).

2) The registry for ".int" could charge for its services.

3) A new mechanism (different from the current one) was agreed to resolve the "corner cases", that is, cases when an organization thinks it qualifies for a name under ".int", but it is no obvious whether it does or does not.

Some specific cases of (3) were one of the drivers of the initiative to develop E.910.

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Further, while it is true that .INT is an IANA function and, as such, will be impacted by the transition of the stewardship of that function from NTIA, I've not gotten the impression that there is a whole lot of pressure to change from the current status quo in terms of day-to-day operations. Do you see things differently?

Yes, I think that it is strange that some international organizations don't have domain names that correspond to their French and Spanish acronyms.

Obviously there are other ways to resolve that than to refer to E.910, but, as outlined above, the intent of E.910 was to clarify a number of issues that had arisen in the past. I suspect that those issues are still relevant.

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Regards, -drc

-----Original Message----- From: Grace Abuhamad <grace.abuhamad@icann.org> Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2015 at 7:36 AM To: CWG Mailing List <cwg-stewardship@icann.org> Cc: Richard Hill <rhill@hill-a.ch> Subject: [CWG-Stewardship] FW: Further input to CWG-Stewardship on .int

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Forwarding this message on behalf of Richard Hill.

On 5/4/15, 5:47 AM, "Richard Hill" <rhill@hill-a.ch> wrote:

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Please forward this to CWG-Stewardship.

I note David Conrad's comment regarding E.910 at:

http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-stewardship/2015-April/002863.html

David says:

"Well, it might have been the aspiration of folks who attended the E.int (later E.910) ITU meetings in Geneva (which did not include ICANN staff to my knowledge < I was general manager of IANA at that time so I probably would've known)."

Actually the workshop that kicked off the work was co-hosted by ITU-T and ICANN, see:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/int/icann.html

It was co-chaired by the President and CEO of ICANN and a senior official from WIPO, see:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/int/index.html

As I recall, a member of the ICANN staff participated. ICANN provided an input to the workshop.

Further discussions were held in an editor's group that was open to all, and whose outputs were publicly available. See for example:

http://www.itu.int/md/T01-SG02-040518-TD-WP1-0167/en

As I recall, a member of the ICANN staff participated in at least some of those meetings.

"That was a long time ago and many things have changed. I personally don't think it should have any bearing on how .INT is dealt with post-transition."

I doubt that the requirements of "organizations established by international treaties" have changed since 2005, so I don't understand why the requirements formulated by those organizations, and set forth in E.910, should not have any bearing in how .INT is dealt with.

Anybody who is interested in the history of .int might wish to have a look at the documents at:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/int/documents/index.html

and at:

http://www.itu.int/md/T01-SG02-040518-TD-WP1-0168/en

Best, Richard