.maori Report to Council 19/07/02

Status: Report submitted for the Council Meeting of 19 July 2002

11 June 2002

The Council
InternetNZ

maori.nz second level domain

At your meeting on 7 June 2002, you approved in principle the establishment of maori.nz as a second level domain. You also called for submissions regarding the implementation of this to be sent to the Domain Name Commissioner by 5 July 2002.

This date has now passed. In this letter, I have noted the submissions I received on this matter and I have made recommendations relating to the maori.nz implementation. My recommendations are based both on those submissions and on the general policy principles relating to the .nz domain as set by InternetNZ.

Summary of submissions received

Five submissions were received, copies of which can be seen on the InternetNZ site. All submissions agreed with the establishment of maori.nz as a second level domain. Of these, only two addressed particular implementation matters. The others raised issues that should have been part of the initial submission process as to whether maori.nz should be moderated. No formal request for moderation was made in the application and so I have not considered these any further.

The two submissions that addressed the implementation of maori.nz each took a different approach. One supported the "first come first served" approach. The other, from the New Zealand Maori Internet Society (NZMIS), requested a short period of time for the NZMIS to purchase selected maori.nz names and supported an initial "lottery style" opening.

The rationale provided by the NZMIS for the pre-purchase period was to protect the mana and sensitivity of names. There was no rationale provided for the "lottery style" implementation.

I accept the comments around the sensitivity of some domain names. With respect though, the decision was made not to moderate maori.nz. No rationale has been made to me that, in my opinion, justifies distinguishing maori.nz from the implementation of other unmoderated second level domains. Therefore, I consider that the implementation of maori.nz should be on the same basis as that for other domain names, namely "a first come first served" approach. Should this not be acceptable to Council, then more work will be done at that time on other options.

Timing of implementation

Assuming the decision is made by Council to implement maori.nz on a "first come first served" basis, then the only issue to consider is the timeframe for such an implementation.

With the SRS due to come into effect in October, I would recommend that maori.nz be implemented prior to that date. A date of 16 September is proposed as the implementation date. This date has been confirmed as acceptable to Domainz.

The only issue to consider is how much notice is given of the implementation prior to registrations being accepted. One submission commented on this and recommended that 60 days notice be given to allow awareness for potential registrants as well as for .nz providers. The other possibility is that the notice period is kept short so that there is not potentially a large influx of registrations when it first goes live.

If the decision is made to implement maori.nz on a "first come first served" basis, then I would recommend that as much notice is given as possible so that all parties can be prepared. I do not expect that registrations would be at such a level that Domainz would not be able to handle them. If Domainz identifies any issues, then this could be used to establish the implementation date rather than be a reason to shorten any notice period.

Recommendations

I recommend the InternetNZ Council:

1. Note the content of this report and the submissions received by the DNC in respect of the maori.nz implementation YES / NO

2. Formally confirm the establishment of a maori.nz second level domain and that notification of that formal approval can be communicated immediately YES / NO

3. Agree that no pre-purchase period be made available YES / NO

4. Agree that the initial registration of maori.nz names be on a "first come first served" basis only (i.e. no lottery) YES / NO

5. Agree that the implementation of maori.nz should take place on 16 September 2002 YES / NO

6. Agree that notification of the implementation date can be communicated immediately so that as much notice is given as possible YES / NO

Debbie Monahan
Domain Name Commissioner

© 2002 The Internet Society of New Zealand
Last updated 15 July 2002