RE: Draft New Draft

["Antony Van Couvering" <avc@interport.net>]

Joop,

Ah, well, I think you are opening another can of worms -- the flip side of
the sovereignty problem, if you will.  There are some privately-run TLDs
which have been accused of being little more closed groups of ISPs, run with
government connivance.  In Denmark, for instance, there has been a
long-running flap over the administration of .DK - my sister, who happens to
speak Danish, was reading me some articles over the phone just two days ago.
If you'd like, I can ask her for the URLs, but I couldn't translate them for
you.

It may be that in TLDs where anti-trust concerns are likely to be brought to
bear, it could be quite convenient for governments to keep their role as
unofficial as possible, lest they be thought to condone such behavior.  I
don't know that much about the inner workings of the DENIC, but I've heard
more than one person describe it as a cartel.  Apparently (and someone
please correct me if I'm wrong) the DENIC functions in some ways like
Nominet, in that it provides domain names at a discount for members for
resale at a higher price to the public.  But it is different from Nominet in
that membership is only available to ISPs who have a permanent connection to
the "backbone."

Antony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joop Teernstra [mailto:terastra@terabytz.co.nz]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 1999 11:55 PM
> To: Kilnam Chon; domain-policy@open-rsc.org; Antony Van Couvering
> Cc: discuss@dnso.org
> Subject: Re: Draft New Draft
>
>
> At 09:22 11/02/99 +0900, Kilnam Chon wrote:
> >some of the cases in Asia-Pacific to enrich the discussion.
> >
> [John B.]
> >> There are VERY few ccTLDs which are run with NO contact with their
> >> governments (Mexico maybe?).
> >
> >New Zealands is the notable case.
> >
>
> Thank you for enriching the discussion, professor. It's all the priming I
> need.
>
> Domainz is run as a business that has to turn a profit (for whom is not
> clear, as the members of ISOCNZ are forbidden by law to profit from their
> creation) of which the tax department takes 33%.  ISOCNZ is it's sole
> shareholder.
>
> 1.The council that runs ISOCNZ is dominated by its Chairman and a
> number of
> government employees in a private capacity.
> 2. The NZ  Govt. Commerce Department approved of the operations
> of Domainz,
> when a challenge was brought under the Commerce Act.
>
> This is what Roger Hicks (a former councillor) said last year:
> (see dejaNews)
> ****************
> |> > What is the situation with the .nz TLD?
> |> > Has ISOCNZ ever received the official blessing of the NZ
> government to
> |> > manage the country code Domain space?
> |>
> (another member)
> |> No it hasn't.  There is no legislation or regulation in place covering
> |> the management of the DNS in NZ.  There may well be a number
> of rteasons
> |> for this but I imagine one is that it has never occurred to them to do
> |> so, and also that they have not percieved 'market failure' -
> which these
> |> days is about the only reason this particular Government brings in
> |> regulation.
>
> In the early days of ISOCNZ being involved with the policies for the .nz
> domain I had some informal discussions with relevant concerning the
> interests and role of the NZ Government and was clearly given the message
> that it was an industry issue.
>
> Regards
> R.
> **************************************
>
> Mind you, New Zealand is exceptional in its official fervor to keep
> Government (officially) out of interfering in the market, all the while
> maintaining old-style producer boards for agricultural commodities.
>
> ISOCNZ has around 90 members, of which about a dozen are local companies.
> (yes, also MSFT)
> In theory, the membership is open, but in reality the membership has been
> static for the last 2 years. In spite of promises to expand the
> membership,
> in reality no efforts have been made to involve other stakeholders.
> Critics are silenced. The council's deliberations are not public.
>
> A proposal from a newly elected councillor to expand the membership to DN
> holders has been given the silent treatment. Subsequently this councillor
> himself has felt the heavy hand of Domainz and had to sever his business
> relationship as a registrar with Domainz.
>
> >> > 15. .nz    26,928 - Domainz - Private not-for-profit established by
> ISOC New
> >> > Zealand
>
> ISOCNZ is not an ISOC chapter.
>
> NZ is probably not the worst case, but I wonder in how many ccTLD
> situations where the government is (officially) not involved, the scenario
> is similar.
>
> --Joop--
> http://www.democracy.org.nz/model.html
>