After attending the training for over 2 months, finally, the Academy has come to an end with the last training VII on 27 February 2020. This meeting is different from the 6 previous sessions and the content of the last training is about ICANN Policies. As we have discussed and got brief information of ICANN in the very first session, ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. We need to type a specific address such as Domain name and IP address into your computer to reach another destination on the Internet.
The very first presentation was presented by Edmon Chung (CEO at DotAsia organization) on ICANN introduction such as histories, how does Internet work, Domain names, such as ccTLD and new gTLD, and so on. He specified that Domain name plays an important role as a specifier that points to the website. He also explained what is ccTLD, i.e. the country-code Top-Level Domain name like “.KH-Cambodia”, “.HK-Hong Kong”, and what is new gTLD, i.e. generic Top-level Domain, like “.com”, “.asia” that contain more than 2 characters.
After the informative introduction, there were 3 breakout groups to discuss and raise some examples of gTLD. We were allowed to share our own new gTLD and then we would get the comments later on.
Sabrina Lim, GSE Program Manager for Asia Pacific of ICANN, is one of the guest speakers who had a comment on the dropped examples such as .nepal or .singapore. She agreed that everyone is eligible to request the domain name they want, but the government in that country will be worried and oppose this domain name because it needs consensus. she added: “The gTLD is written in alphabet letter only and the example of .ipv4 or ipv6 are not accepted”.
After the discussion in the breakout group, Edmon presented on the Objection process of gTLD application in the ICANN multi-stakeholder model.
Different groups of stakeholders will have different perspectives such as:
• GNSO: Registries & Registrars
– Registries: incumbents and new gTLDs may have different motivations
– Registrars: cost and demand from customers
• GNSO (Non-Contracted Parties): Businesses, ISPs & Intellectual Property Rights Concerns
– Businesses: the opportunity for featuring brand in new gTLD, costs for protecting trademarks in new gTLDs
– ISPs: costs of reconfiguring systems (e.g. validity checks, spam, etc.)
• ccNSO & GAC: ccTLDs and Governments
– ccTLDs and national governments concerned with IDN ccTLDs only
– Governments: sovereignty right to block certain TLDs
– ccTLDs: potential competition/confusion from new gTLDs
• ALAC : Internet Users
– Navigate the Internet in their own native language seamlessly (compared with English)
– Consumers choice and trust of the DNS system and of IDN
• SSAC, RSSAC & TLG: Technical community
– Administrative burden
– Technical security & Stability (collision with private namespaces)
All stakeholders have the right to object to the domain names that are related to the brand name or sensitive name. There were some conflicts of Domain names request, for example, some stakeholders found “.xxx” is an objected domain name because some countries prohibit the porn website, so they object to this domain name.
There was a second round of breakout discussion groups within GAC, ALAC, and GNSO, which the discussion mainly focused on the domain name and the comment on which domain names should be accepted or rejected.
After getting a deeper understanding of the gTLD process, there were ICANN policy issues like as right for objection, privacy collection and how ICANN will make responsibilities of registries, registrars, abusive or emotional DNS.
All in all, that was the comprehensive discussion for Netmission Ambassadors and we are aware of ICANN policies by knowing that policy-making is made without boundaries and we also gain the condense knowledge of other issues such as Domain System, how the Internet works, how to request for acceptable domain names for own organization. Moreover, we know how ICANN members and multi-stakeholders decide on the policy.
About the Writer
Puthineath Lay (NetMission Ambassador of class 2019/20, Cambodia)
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, National of Posts, Telecoms, and ICT