Written by Bea Guevarra (Edited by Jenna Fung)
The final session of NetMission Academy 2022 has focused on ICANN policies on February 24, 2022. The moderator, Bea Guevarra, briefed the ambassadors on the session’s flow, which was considerably different from prior sessions, in that it required them to split into two breakout rooms twice.
In this training session, the presentation on the topic was explained by the NetMission Buddies, Bea Guevarra and Amogh PC. The first part of the presentation was delivered by Bea Guevarra. She started off the presentation by giving a brief introduction on what ICANN is and elaborated on how ICANN works. She explains that ICANN follows the multistakeholder model, and how ICANN is made up of three parts: ICANN Community, ICANN Board, and ICANN Organization. After that, she introduced the background of ICANN policy development and the advice community, consisting of the Supporting Organizations(SOs) and Advisory Committees(ACs). While the session only focused only on three major groups, i.e. GNSO, ALAC, and GAC. She briefly explained the functions of each stakeholder group and what kind of members are involved in these three organizations. Bea then elaborates the structure of the GNSO Council and how relevant it is to the issue of DNS Abuse. Finally, she ends her part of the presentation with an image of the GNSO Development Process(PDP).
The second part of the presentation was delivered by Amogh PC. He gave an example by comparing phone numbers country codes and mailbox codes with what the Internet uses to sort everyone out which is by IP addresses. He explains that all the communication that happens on the internet via an IP Address happens because of the Domain Name System (DNS) and explains the process of turning IP Addresses into Domain Names. He then introduced a brief history of how the Internet worked before DNS came into existence. Shortly after, Amogh, shares how the Domain Naming Hierarchy and the Hierarchical Administration works. He shares that domain names can be broken down into remarkably 128 levels and the Top-level domain is the highest level of the hierarchical domain name system structure. He continues to explain the different kinds of TLDs, such as gTLDs, ccTLDs, IDN TLDs, etc. Lastly, Amogh discusses the objection and dispute resolution and the grounds for filing an objection. The presentation was then closed by an example with the dispute between the Amazon countries and Amazon Inc.
Following the presentation, the ambassadors were introduced to three guest speakers who shared their thoughts and expertise on ICANN Policies: Mary Wong, Maarten Botterman, and Satish Babu, with Sabrina Lim making a special appearance.
Mary Wong started off by setting the direction for preparing and familiarizing the attendees for ICANN73. She explains that the GNSO completed three major policy efforts in the last few years. She further explained the registry and registrars and the issues on personal information privacy were also addressed and how this will be one of the topics to be shared in ICANN73, on standardizing access and disclosure of personal data. The second topic Mary shares briefly is the review of Trademark related Rights Protection Mechanism which was developed for the 2012 New gTLD Program. She says that GNSO is going to kick off the second phase of this trademark effort in the coming months or next year. Lastly, she focuses on the topic related to the session, the new gTLD procedures, and the policy process. Many members from the ICANN community created 90 recommendations with an implementation plan on how we should adopt the next round of the new gTLD program.
Our next speaker, Maarten Botterman, states that “… the Internet does matter, thus helps the world… if the Internet works that’s a bonus and that will help us address issues and that’s why we are engaged.” Maarten mentioned it was 10 years since the start of the new gTLD program. He states that this program is still ongoing but says the next round of applications does not focus on the number of domain names but more emphasis on domain names that will serve and connect with people. He shares more information on how the ICANN board continues to facilitate domain names for serving the world as well as respecting privacy and that the ICANN board will focus from policy recommendation to implementation. On his final note, Maarten shared tips on getting more involved in ICANN. Maarten suggested by joining particular sessions the attendees are interested in as well as plenary sessions in the coming virtual ICANN session.
Lastly, the floor was passed to Satish Babu, he briefly discussed the At-Large community and states that DNS abuse is a significant problem to the end-users of the Internet. He emphasizes how more and more IDN TLDs are appearing that there are bound to be more risks and there should be better control before increasing the number of TLDs. He shares that ALAC believes that there should be a data-driven approach to DNS Abuse. As well as the possibility of new tools such as A.I. that can help manage domain restoration. He continues to address that At-Large states that “we should continue to manage and mitigate the DNS Abuse before ensuring the next round of new TLDs.”
Following up with this session, the attendees were divided into three groups with 1 respective guest speaker. The attendees had to switch on their creative hats to think of new gTLDs they would like to see be made in the future. In group number 1, Satish explained to the group that when applying for a domain name, one must first think of the many questions like: “Why am I creating this?”, “Who am I making this for?”, etc. He said that the best domain names are made when they identify a group like for a city, names of communities, name of institutions, anything that applies to a common group of people. For group 2, there was one question that sparked conversation, which was “Can we use numerical numbers for gTLD?”. Because banks use numerical numbers for bank accounts, Maarten responded that it could be skewed and mixed with the security numbers of the banks. Edmon also stated that digits and “-” are not allowed in the Top Level Domain name because they can cause IP address confusion. However, it is possible to use it in the second and third-level domains. In the discussion, Sabrina also noted that a TLD can only have a maximum of 63 characters. As for group 3, Mary shared that when creating a new gTLD it should be something one is passionate about. Time, cost, and financial investment in applying a new gTLD application are high, so a new gTLD should be something worth time and money. She also shared that an application fee is submitted to ICANN for the new gTLD application to establish a trusted piece to DNS.
Once the breakout group discussion came to a close, each group shared the many gTLDs they proposed. However, due to a lack of time, our guest speakers had to drop out of the call in order to prepare for ICANN73. They all expressed their gratitude for seeing the youth become more involved in shaping the internet’s future. They also expressed their support to see the ambassadors at ICANN73 this year.
The training session closed with each group having to only choose 1 gTLD that they would most likely propose and why they chose that specific gTLD. Group 1 selected .gamer, Group 2 chose .meta, while Group 3 chose .genz. As the session came to a close, Jenna shared with the group how they can prepare for and attend ICANN73.