In helping the TOR volunteers put some structure on the group's terms of reference, Paul took the very useful action of identifying the topics proposed as either guidelines or specific tasks. The first group became the (already circulated) draft Terms of Reference (TOR). The second group is listed below as a draft workplan (WP). TLD-WG WORKPLAN The TLD-WG workplan is an organic document that will be formally reviewed at each WG meeting, and revised or (re-) prioritised as found appropriate. The workplan is listed under various sections followed by specific activities to be undertaken within each section. TLD Coordination Project Activity - Discuss and decide upon the structure of the TLD coordination project. This project will be used to carry out actions decided upon by the WG. The following needs to be discussed: - Location of project - Size of project - Scope of project - Funding of project Standardisation - Develop recommendations for publishing policy. - Develop recommendations for national consultative framework. - Develop recommendations for common registration procedures. - Develop recommendations for availability of, and search/retrieval facilities on nTLD databases. - Develop recommendations for establishing of a common WHOIS database (common records) with an identification system. - Develop recommendations for the minimum standards required of a registry qua policy, pricing, web presentations, contracts, etc. - Develop recommendations for requiring all major documents of an nTLD to be available in English. - Publish and promote any recommendations made. Cooperation With Governments - Make contact with national and supernational governmental organisations in order to promote WG ideas to them. - Document and publish current state of the cooperation as it evolves. Pricing - Carry out and report on a comparison of participant TLD pricing - Investigate and report on whether each TLD subscribes to RIPE-152. - Carry out benchmarking of pricing for participant TLDs and answer the following questions. What differences are there and why? Look at the quality of service versus pricing. What is quality? Competition - Discuss the introduction of competition to nTLDs. DNS Infrastructure Resources - Document recommended practice for DNS infrastructure. This is to ensure functioning on a non-discriminatory basis and an avoidance of bottlenecks. Arbitration - Study suitable arbitration procedures and if applicable suitable legal jurisdictions for this. - Take account of different legal traditions: Napoleonic vs Common Law. IANA - The independence and stability of IANA is vital for the functioning of the DNS. In order to help preserve this the following tasks need to be done: - Help support the following aims of IANA: - protection from litigation - recognition by official governmental bodies - bottom-up authority to IANA - Discuss and find a way for nTLDs to directly or indirectly fund IANA. - Formalise relationships with IANA within a bottom-up framework. NSI - Discuss the role of NSI in domain names and its relationship to nTLDs. Make and document recommendations. gTLDs - Discuss development of gTLDs and how it affects nTLDs - Decide upon desired relationship with gTLDs, CORE, POC, PAB etc. Emerging Registries - Detail and provide initial support for emerging registries within the RIPE area. Legal - Study trademark and intellectual property issues - Monitor and report and legal occurrences/changes relevant to nTLDs. Other - Collect domain name statistics. - Support national character sets. - Limit number of subdomains. [End] -------- Logged at Sun Sep 21 20:32:29 MET DST 1997 ---------