CMAP Meeting - 2 May 2001
Blake Dawson Waldron
Level 41, Grosvenor Place
225 George
Street, Sydney
Present: Larry Bloch, Alan Chalmers, Tony Hill, David Howarth, David Lieberman, Jo Lim, George Michaelson, Bruce Tonkin, Galen Townson, Andrew van der Stock
Teleconference: Rob Anderson, Matthew Hall, Geoff Huston, Ian Johnston, John Lindsay, Peter McGrath, Tania Wickman
Apologies: Philip Argy, Evan Arthur, Sonja Bernhardt, Eugene Clark, Roberto Colanzi, Matt Healy, Amanda James, Bill O’Chee, Jonathon Potter, Andrew Robertson, Pauline van Winsen, Karina Warnest,
Actions:
- JL to draft minutes from the meeting.
- JL and Co-Chairs to redraft Stage 3 report and circulate to the Panel via the closed list.
Decisions:
Revised Stage 3 report
1.The Secretariat will revise the
report, including the technical and consumer papers, and circulate via the
closed list for further discussion and revisionby the Panel.
2.The aim is to release the report for a second round of public consultation by Friday 11 May.
Next meeting
3.The next Panel meeting will be on Friday 15
June 2001, 10am – 4pm, at auDA (Level7, 50 Queen St, Melbourne).
Discussion:
1 Confirmation of 28 March minutes
Panel members confirmed the
minutes from the meeting on 28 March 2001, previously circulated via the
closed list, subject to any comments to be provided to the secretariat by 4
May.
2 Discussion of revised Stage 3 report
Technical Requirements paper
The Panel discussed the work of the
IETF ‘provreg’ working group towards a new registry-registrar interface
protocol. It was noted that a final draft of the new protocol should be
ready by September 2001. Given that it is still work-in-progress and is
subject to further changes before it becomes an official IETF standard,
Panel members considered it premature to mandate adoption of the provreg
protocol for the Australian DNS. Panel members also noted that not all
function calls contained in the protocol might be applicable or relevant to
the Australian DNS, and therefore it should be up to auDA and the registry
operator(s) to decide which ones to use.
Panel members considered whether the technical requirements would constitute a barrier to entry for registrars. It was noted that the DNS is critical national infrastructure, and it should not be compromised by setting technical standards too low. A low or loose standard may also have service level implications (although to a large extent, service levels will be market-driven). At the same time, there is a need to ensure that basic tasks are not over-complicated.
The Panel agreed that it is important to state the principle that the Australian DNS should be consistent with international best practice, using an open platform to facilitate a level playing field for registrars. Panel members noted that it is not just technical factors that affect the ability of registrars to enter the market; for example, the complexity of domain name policy will also affect competition in the registrar market.
The Panel agreed that it is not necessary to specify a technical interface between registrars and resellers. However, the industry code of practice will need to define behaviour for the transfer of domain names between registrars, so that any registrar can take any domain name from any other registrar on instruction from a reseller or registrant. The Panel agreed that the protection of the registrant is paramount.
Consumer Safeguards paper
The Panel noted the paper from Alan
Chalmers, ACA, regarding the applicability of existing telecommunications
consumer protection measures to the domain name industry. There are
potentially three sets of consumer safeguards that might apply to registrars
(telecommunications legislation, ACIF industry codes and IIA industry
codes). This has implications for registrar competition (eg. registrars
that are also carriage service providers are subject to telecommunications
legislation, while other registrars are not) and could lead to consumer
confusion.
Panel members agreed that the domain name industry should develop its own code of practice, which could incorporate the relevant provisions of the telecommunications legislation, ACIF and IIA codes. However, given the time involved in developing an industry code (eg. the ACIF process can take up to 2 years), it was agreed that a minimum set of consumer safeguards should be imposed via the registrar contract with auDA. The Panel considered that the matters addressed in the ICANN registrars’ draft code of practice a good start,although would require strengthening.
The Panel agreed that consumer representatives should be involved in drafting the industry code of practice.
Revised report, Section 4.7
The Panel discussed the proposed
funding model for auDA. It was agreed that the model must be scalable, to
accommodate fluctuations in the volume of domain names and the number of
industry participants. Funding amounts should not be specified, in order to
provide auDA with flexibility to manage its own budget. The Panel noted the
danger in under-resourcing the regulatory body.
Panel members agreed on the general principle that auDA must expose its costs and undertake regular, transparent budget reviews. These could be quarterly, or could be triggered by specific events, for example, when the volume of .au domain names reaches 500,000.
With regard to the registry tender, Panel members agreed that the wholesale price of domain names (ie. from registry to registrar) would be set by auDA via the tender process. As a monopoly operator, the successful registry tenderer would be subject to price control.
3. Second public consultation process and timing
The aim is to
release the revised report, including the technical and consumer papers, for
a second round of public consultation by Friday 11 May.