RIPE 30

RIPE 30 TLD-WG Minutes

Place: Stockholm, Sweden
Date: 18 May 1998
Chair: Marcel Schneider
Scribe: Vittore Casarosa

Adopted as the minutes of the RIPE 30 TLD-WG session at RIPE 32

1. Administrivia

Marcel Schneider chaired the meeting as Niall O'Reilly was not able to attend.

Vittore Casarosa was the appointed scribe

2. Matters arising from RIPE 29

There were no minutes available from RIPE-29 so this item was skipped.

3. Review of workplan

IANA and stability of the root

RIPE CENTR took the lead in preparing an "official" answer to the Green Paper (available at http://www.ripe.net/centr/docs/response-green.html); RIPE CENTR is also taking the lead in coordinating a response to Jon Postel's proposal.

TLD coordination project

this item is being discussed in RIPE CENTR.

Documentation and alignment of practices

this item is being discussed in RIPE CENTR.

gTLDs

increasing the number of gTLDs does not seem to solve the main problem, i.e. Trade Mark disputes; the relationship between gTLDs and ccTLDs is being further discussed in RIPE CENTR.

Cooperation with Governments

this item is being discussed in RIPE CENTR.

Charging (within each ccTLD)

this item is being discussed in RIPE CENTR.

Competition (among ccTLDs)

this item is being discussed in RIPE CENTR.

Arbitration

the policy for arbitration is being set by each ccTLD; this item is being further discussed in RIPE CENTR.

Emerging Registries

the best way to provide support to emerging registries is to put them in contact with other established registries; RIPE, RIPE NCC and RIPE CENTR cannot provide advice or consultancy, but can only provide information; a good source for information gathering can be the Workshops organized by RIPE CENTR.

Legal

this item is mostly related to Arbitration, and could be of interest also to RIPE NCC; this item is being further discussed in RIPE CENTR.

4. Presentation on RIPE CENTR

Fay Howard presented the establishing of RIPE CENTR, a "club" of ccTLD administrators of countries in the area of interest of RIPE; complete information on RIPE CENTR and current activities can be found at http://www.ripe.net/centr/index.html.

5. WHOIS proposal

Marcel Schneider presented a proposal to protect the "distribution" of data contained in the WHOIS data base. In essence, the bulk use of WHOIS data (owned by the end user who provided the information), should be allowed only under contract (possibly involving money) between the potential "bulk user" (e.g. to create mailing lists)and the Registry. There was a considerable debate on the subject, the two major points being: 1) it would be unfair to "sell" data belonging to the end user, without his or her involvement; 2) it would be difficult to discriminate between "bulk/commercial" access to the DB and legitimate occasional use. No final position on the proposal was reached during the meeting.

6. Any Other Business

A question was raised whether the trend for naming rules under ccTLD domains was going to be more liberal or more restrictive. After some debate and some examples provided by UK, Switzerland, Italy and Greece and others, it appeared that the general perception was for the naming policy to become more liberal. This item is going to be further discussed in RIPE CENTR.

7. Review of work plan

At the end of the meeting the work plan was reviewed again to see if any changes should be done. With the establishment of RIPE CENTR, the major point debated was which items should be dealt with within RIPE CENTR and which items should be dealt with within the TLD-WG. A clear statement was made by Daniel Karrenberg that RIPE NCC is presently involved in RIPE CENTR only to get it established, but RIPE CENTR should become "self sufficient" as soon as possible. RIPE NCC does not intend to get involved in ccTLD administration. A general statement was made by Boudewijn Nederkoorn that TLD-WG shoud deal mainly with technical matters (as others working groups in RIPE do) and RIPE CENTR should deal mainly with policy and TLD administration matters. After some further debate, the conclusion was that more investigation and more firm proposals were needed, and therefore the TLD-WG working plan will be updated at the next meeting (RIPE 31).

8. Close

Having no other business, the meeting was closed.