Hi, thank you for suggesting these. One challenge still remains in many countries of the MEAC region, there is no domain name industry and the efforts to stimulate an industry has been low. This also affects the future new gtld round because this indicator indicates a lack of interest in this area of domain name market development across these countries. Whenever we discuss this with ICANN, they say the guidelines are there etc. This however remains the challenge that the same fees and guidelines cannot be implemented in countries that are on the low on the development index. There needs to be an extraordinary effort to stimulate and develop the domain industries in these markets. Simply holding DNS forums and giving a talk here and there doesn't stimulate the industry. The private sector involvement, allocation of investments and development of institutions is fundamental to this. Simply holding events without a concentrated involvement of the private sector in awareness and capacity building to actually mobilizing interest into investing and operating registrars etc remains a challenge in many countries. I know someone will still brush this suggestion off but will also soon realize that this had to be done when the community was established. Anyways, a topic that needs a lot of consideration and input by the MEAC community is:
Session: 1. "Catalysing the Domain Name Industry in countries where the private sector has exhibited the least amount of interest".
The session will explore the challenges and remedies to creation or catalyzing of the Domain Name Industry in countries of the MEAC region that have displayed the least amount of interest. We will hear out the various actors from both the ICANN community, registries and registrars as well as members from the government, private sector, civil society and technical community. The outcome may be a strategy on how to resolve this and catalyze growth of the Domain Name Industry in these countries.
I have had discussions in the Internet community and this remains a concern for government operated registries, ccTLDs, privately owned gtlds etc. I am still amused that why hasn't this topic has not received the interest it requires from the community:
Session: 2. "Building trust and attesting for reduction in malicious intent in the Domain Name System"
a. Can all the content of websites and their domain name owners be trusted unequivocally?
b. Are the owners of these domain names really who they say they are in their corresponding whois domain owner records?
c. Can their website content be trusted as to what it claims or links to?
d. Who will attest this in the DNS system?
e. Is the DNSSEC enough to ensure this?
f. What is the concept of Trust and the attestation of WHOIS data and user registration data?
g. Who will implement this, what should be the model, is the registry responsible for building its own trust and attestation system for its customers?
h. What models can be proposed for trust and attesting domain names to be owned by someone that do not have malicious intent.
I might make my way to this meeting and possibly can help conduct these discussions, workshops or sessions.
Best
Fouad Bajwa