ncuc statement to GNSO...

[Carlos Afonso]

This time the GNSO agenda did not provide time for the constituencies'
statements, but most of the statement below was presented by Norbert and
Robin in the pertinent discussions at the open meeting.

Any suggestions on how to improve it? Our council reps should circulate
it in the GNSO list, but first let us catch the opinion of our fellow
NCUCers.

rgds

--c.a.

====

NCUC statement
28-March-06
ICANN meeting, Wellington NZ

On the Whois Service for gTLDs

NCUC supports current Formulation 1 regarding the purpose of the Whois
service: "The purpose of the gTLD Whois service is to provide
information sufficient to contact a responsible party for a particular
gTLD domain name who can resolve, or reliably pass on data to a party
who can resolve, issues related to the configuration of the records
associated with the domain name within a DNS server." This is consistent
with the narrow technical mission of ICANN, as well as ICANN's core
values, in particular values 1 to 3:

Value 1 -- security and stability of the Internet

Value 2 -- respecting creativity and flow of information by limiting
ICANN's activities to matters within ICANN's mission.

Value 3 -- delegating to and respecting the policy role of responsible
entities which reflect the interests of affected parties.

Regarding Formulation 2 (supported by the IPC, ISPC, and BC
constituencies), there is need to clarify what "other issues related to
the registration or use of a domain name" really mean, as "other issues"
and "use of a domain name" may encompass everything, thus going beyond
ICANN's mission.

NCUC's New Website

NCUC is deploying a new Web site, developed with the support of Brazil's
CGIbr technical staff. The site is based on free and open source
software, is W3C-compliant, and contains content management facilities
and collaborative tools, as well as a workflow system for managing
memberships. It is expected it will become an effective tool to enhance
the work of NCUC and bring new members. The site is already running
experimentally at http://ncuc.icann.org.br. Comments and suggestions are
very welcome.

On New TLDs

GNSO has created a Task Force to discuss possible ways in which to
restrict the allocation and assignment of new gTLDs and to decide
between competing applications for the same gTLD.  NCUC supports opening
up the creation of new gTLDs as quickly and as broadly as is practicably
possible.  NCUC supports employing lotteries (for non-commercial
purposes) and auctions (for commercial purposes) as a fair and
reasonable mechanism for deciding between competing applications.  NCUC
believes that in evaluating applications for new gTLDs, ICANN should
limit its role to a purely technical inquiry in line with ICANN's core
value of promoting competition.

On ICANN's Operational Plan

NCUC acknowledges the extension and complexity of the Operational Plan
currently drafted, and is not prepared at this point to make detailed
comments.

However, NCUC, as an ICANN constituency, would like to point out that
ICANN's operational plan includes US$200,000 as a contribution to the
upcoming Internet Governance Forum (IGF), as well as US$300,000 just for
travel expenses of ALAC members, besides staff time for both. As in the
past, it does not include any support (in-kind or otherwise) for NCUC.
As a constituency of non-commercial non-profits with significant
contributions to the development of ICANN, NCUC is drastically
underpowered to fulfill its mission. A proposal is to be made to ICANN
to include resources for NCUC  in its operational plan and budget.

====

-- 

Carlos A. Afonso
diretor de planejamento
Rits -- http://www.rits.org.br

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