[Comments-cct-rt-draft-report-07mar17] United Kingdom Government Representative's Comments on CCT RT Draft Report

[Mark Carvell]

Mark Carvell, the representative of the  United Kingdom Government on the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN,  expresses his deep appreciation to the members of the CCT Review team for their work in preparing the draft report and submits the following specific comments:

It is a matter of serious concern that the CCT Review Team were unable at this stage of the current new gTLD programme to obtain sufficient data relating to contractual compliance and enforcement of contractual provisions relating to public interest safeguards. The recommendations to correct this situation must be applied as soon as practicably possible with a further comprehensive periodic review of safeguards compliance to be undertaken it is suggested in 2019-20.

Similarly an initiative should be undertaken to collect and analyse WHOIS registrant data accuracy and remediation in respect off new gTLDs. This information is vitally important for assessing levels of confidence and trust in the expanded domain name system.

Recommendations 21-24 relating to abuse, illegal conduct and misuse of personal information should be taken forward with particular reference to combatting the growing volume of child abuse content on new gTLDs as reported by the Internet Watch Foundation’s Annual Report for 2016. This content is generally considered worldwide to be wholly unacceptable and is illegal in many countries. ICANN must ensure that registries act with urgency and due diligence to contribute to addressing this problem.

Recommendations 25-30 relate specifically to safeguards relating to new gTLDs which are targetting highly regulated sectors of economic and social activity. The GAC Beijing communiqué provided a list of new gTLD applications falling into this Category 1 list.  The GAC made clear at the time that this list was non-exhaustive in the expectation that the GAC’s advice would be followed up by ICANN-led action to complete the list (including IDN equivalents) in order to include all such applications. The CCT RT draft report should consider whether this expected action to complete the list was in fact carried out or whether ICANN relied erroneously on the non-exhaustive list attached to the Beijing communiqué to determine which registries should implement the necessary safeguards in their registry agreements.

In addition to highly regulated sector gTLD applications, the Beijing communiqué included a non-exhaustive list of sensitive non-regulated sector strings (including those targetting children) to which a sub-set of safeguards would be applied through their respective registry agreements. It is recommended that the final report of the CCTRT should examine the record of safeguard compliance in respect of these strings (including IDN equivalents) and if necessary make specific recommendations to ccomlement those covered in Recommendations 25-30 in respect of highly regulated sectors. 

The UK Government supports Recommendation 48 which calls for a thorough review to be undertaken of the procedures and mechanism for prioritising community-based gTLD applications consistent with the original vision of the GNSO as supported by the GAC. The experience of the current round has identified embedded disincentives, lapses of transparency, inconsistency of process and decisions and lack of due process (including lack of appeal against key decisions). The Recommendation should be taken forward in conjunction with the comprehensive set of Recommendations made in the report commissioned by the Council of Europe​  "Applications to ICANN for Community-based New Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs): Opportunities and challenges from a Human Rights Perspective” which was presented at ICANN 57 in Hyderabad. 

Mark Carvell
Head Global Internet Governance Policy
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
United Kingdom Government
19 May 2017
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