Chair's Report

The past twelve months have been extremely busy for ISOCNZ with many members of the Council attending various discussions and meetings as well as putting in a huge amount of work in developing various policies and the code of practice for the ISPs. Administration of the Society's business has also been extremely onerous and a number of steps have been taken to ease the burden on Councillors and to ensure that we become more professional in our dealings with the Membership and the public at large.

Public Relations

The following is a brief summary of the various meetings held throughout the year:

• A meeting was held between some ISPs and the International Association of Credit Card Investigators (IACCI); they approached us; and want to meet keep a dialogue open for the future; they were to publish the minutes of that meeting.
• ISOCNZ was represented at various conferences by the Chairperson, Liz Probert (ie being on the programme as ISOCNZ not as CLEAR, or Pakuranga College) these included IIR's internet conference the NZLIA Conference and a Media Conference, as well as some others
• Several Councillors presented to the GOVIS series of Internet seminars.
• The Chairperson presented at a Computers and the Law seminar on domain names, also appeared on ATV (Auckland TV) being interviewed about censorship and newsgroups; Jim Higgins has been on radio several times as the ISOCNZ representative.
• ISOCNZ made a submission to the Select Committee on Trevor Roger's Bill, presented in person by the Chairperson in conjunction with Frank March representing the Tuia Society.
• The Chairperson attended the ISOC Chapters meeting in Montreal representing ISOCNZ (courtesy of CLEAR, ie no cost to ISOCNZ), and represented ISOCNZ at the Asia Pacific Policy and Legal group meeting
• A presentation was also made by the Chairperson at a Victoria University Policy Studies Forum.

DNS Management

In July this year, responsibility for management of the DNS passed from Waikato University to ISOCNZ. The overall cost of managing the DNS had escalated to the stage where, quite rightly the university was questioning its role in funding this activity.

In line with some other countries ISOCNZ was forced to impose a charge on holders of domain names in order to fund the administration costs. Due to the shortness of time it was agreed with Waikato that they would continue to carry out the physical work on Domain allocation while ISOCNZ would formulate and manage the Policy. It is intended that the physical component of DNS management will become contestable and this will take place by the middle of next year.

The subject of registration of 'trade' names came to the fore during the year. ISOCNZ took extensive legal advice before implementing a policy of freely registering any name available to anyone who wanted it - using the precedent of the Registrar of Companies - and this was proved to be a wise move when we avoided being cited during one legal dispute.

The above situation however, still proved costly for ISOCNZ as we had to engage legal council to keep us out of court and has highlighted the need for some form of protection for Councillors. It was for this reason that our legal advisors recommended that we set up a limited liability company to run the DNS management. Hopefully this process will be completed before Christmas

The tasks of policy allocation and managing the billing turned out to be too large for a volunteer organisation. At the beginning of November ISOCNZ let a short-term contract for the day to day management of these areas and Patrick O'Brien was appointed to the position of DNS Manager.

A significant backlog of problems had piled up by this stage and Patrick has spent his first few weeks fighting fires and putting together a business plan for DNS management in the future. Clearly the appointment was long overdue, but I am confident that Patrick will have the situation under control within the immediate future.

Internet Service Providers

ISOCNZ is committed to improving its relationships with the ISPs and has been actively working with them on the development of a code of practice.

During the recent Voyager/Xtra dispute acting Chairperson, Jim Higgins spent two very hectic days mediating between the two organisations and was able to achieve a small measure of success. The dispute did, however highlight the need for a code of practice in this area. and the need for continued vigilance on the part of ISOCNZ to protect the fabric of the Internet.

Public Relations

It is not an overstatement to say that our public relations - at least as far as the DNS management issue is concerned has been little short of abysmal. Our inability to clearly explain our role and the fact that we are not a commercial profit-making organisation led to a series of rather public misunderstandings with several organisations which seemed to think that we were in competition with them. We are taking steps to address this issue and a comprehensive PR plan should be in place within the next few weeks.

Society Administration

The physical task of maintaining the Society's records and the organisation of meetings became too much for us and we gratefully accepted an offer of assistance from the NZ Computer Society, and their Chief Executive Bev Pratt who has, with her staff, been helping with membership and the organisation of the Forum and AGM.

General

Clearly the continued rapid expansion of the Internet and the increasing commercialisation is going to place higher demands upon ISOCNZ over the next twelve months. Councillors this year have worked extremely hard, and I thank them for their support - in the face, on a number of occasions, of threats and extreme personal abuse. In particular the Treasurer Colin Jackson and Secretary Donald Neal have laboured long and hard - definitely beyond the call of duty.

We can expect more hard work over the next twelve months, however the work is rewarding and we are doing something very worthwhile.

Roger Hicks
Chairperson

© 1997 The Internet Society of New Zealand