So from all this discussion, I gathered that ICANN do not have anything to say about ccTLD abuse. Is this true? -ed On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 11:53 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
It is at times like this that I am reminded of the prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:
"God give us grace, to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
Even if you're an atheist, that quotation would appear to apply here.
There are many, myself included, who believe that ICANN has engaged in significant feature creep from what what was supposed to be mainly a technical co-ordinating body. One could easily argue that the ccTLD world has good reason to want itself outside the bounds of at least some of ICANN's various power plays. It has an interest in ICANN policy related to registrars, but not in oversight over matters that are arguably of national sovereignty. I personally have zero taste in fighting governments' claim of ownership of their respsective ccTLDs.
That some ccTLDs have been acting as generics is nothing new -- or should I say nothing *.nu*? That, along with .tv, .fm, .to and quite a few others, have been doing this for quite a while, with the blessing of those countries' governments. Unlike with gTLDs, their number is relatively stable -- while new ones are added from time to time thanks to geopolitical shift, the process for dealing with ccTLDs for no-longer-existing countries is confused and apparently jurisdiction-free (witness the state of* .su*).
So if there are new efforts to monetize ccTLDs by selling them to non-nationals (*.me* appears merely the latest attempt), our efforts within ICANN to affect this are minimal if they are done with government approval. Certainly ICANN has no political or moral authority to go against the express wish of a government for assignment of its TLD operator, so long as they have the technical issues right. (I would not consider location of the registry outside of the ccTLD country, on its own, to constitute abuse.)
Now... Garth came in to NARALO as a fighter of domain abuse, and it is reasonable that we want to investigate domain abuse in ccTLDs just as within the generics. (Certainly most of the general public is not aware of the distinctions beyond the obvious ones of identity, and arguably much of the abuse within ccTLDs happens at the registrant and registrar level.) If we cannot directly influence policy on ccTLDs through ICANN, we can certainly produce educational and other materials that would help indicate to potential registrants how various ccTLD policies affect them. And if some ccTLDs either encourage or tolerate bad actors more than others, we may have a role to play here.
It is surprising to me how many new voices are heard from on this issue, voices that have said barely anything else on other NARALO issues that are arguably more important. Having said that, perhaps there is something constructive that may come of this. Would the people involved in this discussion be interested in producing some kind of research on ccTLD abuse?It is clear that At-Large's mandate covers all aspects of ICANN operation, which differentiates us from, say, NCUC's role in GNSO. So if we have something to say about something that ICANN should do, or that ICANN should not do in this regard, let's do it. If not, let's move on to the things in which we *do* have a role to play.
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