Europen Commission Meeting with National TLD Registrars Brussels, April 9th 1997 Chair: Christopher Wilkinson, DG 13 As announced on the DNS WG list I attended this meeting on behalf of RIPE at the request of Rob who had prior commitments. The following is a subjective and selective summary of the meeting focussing on issues relevant for RIPE and the TLD administrators. It has not een checked with any of those represented and any misrepresentations are my responsibility. Purpose of the meeting as stated by the commision was to collect information about European DNS administration structures and to gather input from TLD registrars about recent developments as well as the commission's reactions to them. A numer of relevant documetns were circulated, most notably an issue paper used to raise this issue with the council of ministers (telecomms cttee) and a letter from the commission to the government of the United States. I try to make these available as soon as practical. The commission's stated interest is to follow DNS issues as they are becoming more political with the increasing importance of the Internet and to instigate the member countries to do the same. The commission is also taking steps on the intergovernmental level to raise the issue of European representation in the relevant processes. The commission states that they presently have no intention to directly interfere with the administration of the DNS in Europe nor to advise the governments of member states to do so. A total of eight TLD administrators was directly represented: BE DE FI FR IE IT LU UK. CH and NL were represented by informal proxy via RIPE. The European telecommunications operators association (ETNA ?) were also present. The commission participated with representatives from DG1, DG3, DG12, DG13 and DG15. (Eurocrats please forgive me the arabic numbers ;-). Currently the DNS is subject to deliberations of the commission, the EU council of ministerrs as well as many international treaty organisations such as ITU, WIPO and OECD. The TLD registrars were unanimous in the opinion that the DNS in Europe is functioning well. National TLDs work, they are accessible, fairly administered and registration is doen on a not-for-profit basis. Conflict resoloution also works on the national level. There was also agreement that the process to decide on the creation of additional gTLDs via the IAHC is flawed for several reasons including but not limited to the excessive speed with which it was conducted and the general preoccupation to solve unstated North American prolems. The process and its results would greatly benefit from more careful consultation with European stakeholders which would result in the necessary level of acceptance of the conclusions. There were some concerns that the structures produced by the flawed process would eventually become effective also for the administration of national TLDs. None of the represented organisation had the intention to sign the MoU resulting from the IAHC process neither were they considering to become a registrar for one of the new gTLDs. All TLD registrars present also stated explicitly that currently RIPE is considered an appropriate forum for a process of forming and formulating common positions of the TLD administrators as well as general coordination. Privately some of them expressed concern about the lack of concrete activity in this area. Christopher Wilkonson suggested that a small group be formed from those present and charged to develop a common positions in an open and transparent process. Due to lack of time no conclusion was reached about this. Further e-mail discussion on this topic was agreed on a list t.b.a.. If progress warrants it a meeting concurrent with the Dublin RIPE meeting is being considered. Wilkinson also asked for all those who have indeed made comments to IAHC to provide him with copies to be used in the commissions discussions with the US government. Wilkinson also expressed that the commission was interested to talk to the European ISPs on these issues and requested input on suitable organisations to approach. The conclusion was that while a number of national organisations exist representing ISPs, there currently is no such animal on a European level. I reported that RIPE had considered this issue and so far consciously decided not to move towards becoming a representative or lobbying body for the European ISP industry. Further short items of interest: Some of those present felt more stakeholders than just the classic ISPs should be encouraged to take an active part in TLD administration. Mentioned were consumers groups, web hosting organisations and specialised name registration companies. The latter were observed to generate an increasingly significant part of registration requests f.i. in the UK. Appropriate legal structures for national TLD administration seem to be a recurring problem and much energy is spent on finding cq. defining them. A DG13 representative felt that it was necessary and inevitable to convert the monopolistic registration structures in national TLDs into oligopolies with market forces having free play. Some of those present questioned the generalised and immediate necessity for this given the existance of accepted and fair mechanisms that currently work. Others questioned whether such structures would actually work given that there is little space for different registration services to distinguish themselves from others and consequently a danger of only a single one or a very small number surviving after a very short time. A DG15 representative noted that WIPO has a one week meeting scheduled at the end of May to collect opinions form governments and NGOs about their proposals to start registrations in TM.INT as well the use of their arbitration service to resolve DNS disputes. RIPE has received an invitation to that meeting but currently does not intend to go to an informal meeting lasting for a whole week. DE-NIC is in the final stages to reorganise themselves as a cooperative wich is much more open to participation than the current structure. NOMINET (UK TLD admin) have had good experiences when releasing restrictions on the number and kind of names that can be registrered as much as possible. While the number of registrations has increased to 4000+/month customers are much happier and tend to consider registering in gTLDs muc less frequently. The FI TLD administration is slated to move from EUnet FI to the Finnish Telecom Administration (a governmental body) in May/June. It was not clear to me by which process this was decided nor if there is consensus about this in FI. A DG13 representative reported that OECD (telecomms cttee ???) was currently considering a statement about DNS administration. Apparently they have a draft document which includes quite some detail about the current state of affairs. Unfortunately the document is not publicly available at this time and even somewhat shrouded in secrecy. Also the relevance of OECD in this context remained unclear to me. Does anyone know more? Conclusion For RIPE an important conclusion of this is that we are being looked at as a forum to form common opinions among the ISPs and TLD admins. Other European bodies are very much prepared to listen to the results. There is some concern that RIPE has not clearly stepped up this task. RIPE has to decide quickly whether it wants to take action in this area and which steps if any it will take. If we decide not to get involved we should also state so quickly in order to avoid blocking progress and being damaged by not fulfilling expectations. That's all folks. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Daniel