I have cc'ed The Executive Director of ICTA.
(Disclosure: I a member of the board of ICT Advisory Council).
On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 1:56 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I attended a meeting of the Multistakeholder Forum at 10:00 a.m today. I am
> sending my personal notes of that meeting.
>
> The meeting was chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of
> Technology, Communication and Innovation. I gave a presentation of the work
> of the .mu Select Committee. There was a discussion about what legal form
> the not-for-profit entity should have. Mr A. Radhakissoon commented that it
> could be an association or a society, or a company. I commented that a
> company would look the same as the current .mu entity. There were comments
> about examples of associations, e.g. the Mauritius Turf Club. After
> discussion, there was agreement about having an association. Mr A.
> Radhakissoon and two other members of the forum were chosen to work on the
> by-laws of the association.
Thank you for posting the notes of the minutes.
I respect the members of the Mauritius Turf Club, but I do not see the
similarities with horse betting/running and running a ccTLD.
A number of existing ccTLDs run as non-profit and I don't see the
non-profit as an issue. Why an association, when it was discussed and
agreed on the mailing list that a non-profit is the most suitable
structure ? There seems to be a indication that the Local Internet
Community's advice is not taken into consideration.
>
> There were a question about whether the technical proposal would work. I
> commented that the .mu Select Committee evaluated the technical aspect to
> see whether it would work and it is up to the not-for-profit entity to see
> how to implement the technical part. This was followed by a question about
> whether there was the technical expertise in Mauritius to implement a .mu
> registry. Mr T. Dabeesing proposed hiring Mr Chris Disspain as he is from
> auDA (Australia) and he is an ICANN board member. I commented that it was
> up to the not-for-profit entity to decide about whether it needs a
> consultant. I asked for my objection to be put in the minutes. The Chair
> suggested that the ICTA hires and pays for the consultant. I did not raise
> any objection about that as it would be a decision of the ICTA.
I respect Mr Dabeesing and staff at ICTA for their work, but I
respectfully disagree. I recall that
1) in 2007, an expert was hired to work on the .mu issue. He wasn't
able to make any significant progress. ICTA made a statement about it:
(
https://www.icta.mu/documents/Speech_Dwarka_dot.mu.pdf). We have
tried the idea of a foreign expert before, and It has failed.
2) Hiring an ICANN board member IS a clear example of conflict of Interest.
3) It goes against the consensus reached by the Local Internet Community.
>
> The Chair mentioned that there has been some discussions with the current
> .mu entity and the amount of fifteen million rupees was proposed as arrears
> for gov.mu and eighteen million ruppees to buy gov.mu. Mr J. Lim asked
> whether it was even possible to buy gov.mu. Mr G. Ramalingum commented that
> it would be cheaper to buy a generic Top-Level Domain.
Buying a generic TLD does not solve the issue with .mu. .mu is a
Country Code Top-level Domain. There is a difference between a generic
TLD and a ccTLD. Therefore we don't believe that this is the right way
forward.
>
> The Chair mentioned that the Ministry will be changing the section of ICT
> Act where the Internet Management Committee is mentioned. I asked for not
> having anything in the act about .mu domain names as it was better not to
> cover that through that act or through (government) regulations. The Chair
> commented that there will provision in the next budget to finance a
> not-for-profit entity.
>
> I commented that there isn't any alternative if something went wrong with
> .mu and suggested implementing the technical aspect as a safeguard. It was
> mentioned that ICANN would help to get access to the .mu zone. I preferred
> not to make a formal comment about this matter.
>
ICANN encourages countries to manage their own ccTLD. We have local
expertise to do that. Again, this is against what the Local Internet
Community wants. We strongly believe that this is not the right way
forward, and we view this as a strong indication that our concerns are
not taken into consideration.
Received on Wed Apr 22 2015 - 10:45:38 PST