CENTR Statement to the ICANN Board

[Fay Howard <fay@ripe.net>]

CENTR Statement to the ICANN Board 
15 December 1998

Introduction

CENTR is in a position to speak for European ccTLD Registries and has 
continued to make known its requirements of the organisation to replace IANA.

Following  the CENTR meeting in Vienna, 27 November 1998, we now wish to 
comment on the situation following the appointment  of an initial board for 
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and 
publication of Adopted Bylaws on 23 November 1998,  using our published 
requirements as points of reference.

Particular attention is draw to the principles by which ccTLD registries 
exist, as expressed in our Position Paper of 13 March 1998:

 * ccTLD registries have autonomy in their relations with IANA. 

 * Authority of ccTLD registries comes from local consensus. The role of IANA  
is to recognise the decision made by the process of local consensus.


ICANN and Initial Board

We welcome the appointment of the ICANN Initial Board and support their 
endeavours to  establish  a structure for ICANN which meets the requirements 
of the Internet community in an open and transparent manner. We believe that 
the appointment has significantly moved the process on by providing it with 
focus of responsibility.

CENTR wishes to confirm its continued desire to cooperate with the ICANN board 
and provide input into the process of establishing the new organisation. We 
recognise that this process has potential to meet our requirement for a 
separate legal entity with whom we can seek assurances concernig ccTLD 
autonomy and continuance.

CENTR  expressed its support for the 5th Iteration of the Bylaws proposed by 
Jon Postel.
Whilst we understand that the Board may have found it necessary to make 
modifications to that draft before its assumption of office, we are anxious to 
see early stabilisation in the text of this document  in order to have a clear 
framework for the transition process.  Notwithstanding this, we have strong 
reservations about the new provision (in VI.2.f) which apparently excludes the 
participation of Board members nominated by one of the supporting 
organisations from decisions relating to proposals received from the same 
supporting organisation.  We do not understand the reasoning behind this 
provision, and would welcome clarification.

We wish to see a formalization of the relationship between ICANN and ccTLDs in 
respect of DNS services and believe it appropriate that fees in respect of 
such activities should be paid directly from the TLDs to ICANN and not via the 
DNSO.

Domain Name Support Organisation

CENTR welcomes the current initiative to work towards a proposal to create the 
DNSO. We continue to support the initiative though it has not yet reached 
conclusions with which we can be satisfied.



All CENTR statements relating to the establishment of an organization to 
replace IANA can be found on our Web pages:  <http://www.ripe.net/centr/press/i
ndex.html>