Chair's Report

Chairman's Report to the Internet Society of New Zealand

as at 1st November 1998

Introduction

The old Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times' certainly seems to have been visited upon ISOCNZ over the last twelve months. There seems to have been no time to rest between issues, especially for an organisation which has, until recently, been largely dependent upon volunteers - and busy ones at that. I have outlined the year under a series of headings below. Many of the issues are ongoing, while others pop up, are dealt with, and then we move on:

Executive Director

During the year it became increasingly evident that it was not going to be possible for volunteer councillors, frantically busy at the best of times, to put into train the programme of work that was rapidly building up. As a result Council unanimously decided to create the position of Executive Director and the Admin Committee was given the task of finding the right person for the job. They did just that, in the person of Sue Leader who has now been with us for several months and who started having an impact right from day one. All of the Councillors, especially myself, have seen a marked improvement in our workloads over the past couple of months and I personally look forward to us achieving some of the aspirations I have for the Society in the next twelve months.

Sue spent the first couple of months in a corner of the Domainz office and our thanks go to CEO Patrick O'Brien for his hospitality and forbearance. In the second week of October we secured accommodation in the E-Vision Centre on the corner of Wakefield and Blair Streets, Wellington. Within the next week should see some signage on the outside of the building and we have already moved the 1998 Face-to-Face seminar to the E-Vision Centre. We are extremely pleased to be able to move into what is rapidly becoming the 'Internet End' of town.

Council Meetings

Four Council meetings were held during 1998. While most were well attended we have had trouble keeping quorate towards the end of the day when out of town councillors start heading for the Airport. To assist with this we are looking to slightly reduce the number of Councillors which make up a quorum.

Council meetings had become very rushed and strenuous due to huge agendas, and earlier in the year I spent some time analysing the problem and came to the conclusion that we were operating as a 'giant committee'. In an attempt to counter this I restructured Council into four committees

1. The Admin Committee deals with the day-to-day business of the Society - such things as finance, relationships with NZCS etc.
2. The Education Committee is involved with a range of activities which fall generally into the area of education - such as seminars and the annual Face-to-Face conference.
3. The Technical Committee handles DNS, IP and Net protocol technical matters.
4. The Policy Committee handles relationships with ISOC, and issues of general Internet policy.

The restructure has greatly streamlined Council effectiveness. The Committee members focus on their areas of interest and expertise and formulate recommendations to be brought to the Council meeting at the end of the committee sessions. The full Council then debates the issues and votes on the Committees' recommendations. We now have better decision making and a far less frantic Council meeting. Committees now do a lot of work off line in Email as well as face to face meetings and this has had the effect of much greater throughput and higher quality output.

In all I am very happy with the way Council has worked throughout the year and would like to record my grateful thanks for the support and the hard work put in by individual Councillors.

ISOCNZ Web Site/Communications

During the year we commissioned NZCS to do a much-needed revamp of our Web site. This worked out very well and has greatly improved access to policies and other material. We are not done yet!One of our new Executive Director's tasks is to move the site to 'greater heights' including the introduction of a 'members only' section. We will also be looking hard at the lists we currently operate. We have had some extremely useful suggestions from David Farrar in this area. David has also offered to be the Editor of our newsletter and has great plans for a new E-zine to greatly improve our communication with members. I look forward to an interesting and communicative 1999.

Domainz and the DNS

ISOCNZ has continued, throughout the year, to develop and refine policies for its commercial arm, The NZ Internet Registry Ltd. (Domainz). Policies were developed for the creation of new second level domains and the moderation of some third level domains. Vigorous debate ensued, both within Council and amongst Internet users on the question of the moderation of . school and . ac. Council spent much time - on two separate occasions - on the debate which hinged upon whether there were a clear set of rules that could be defined to protect a moderator when screening names for each category. Given the changing face of the education sector and its mixture of public and private systems, it was not felt that this could be done. Finally Council decided that . school and . ac would remain unmoderated. It was decided to allocate moderation of other domains as follows:

• . mil - NZ Defence Forces
• . govt - the Chairs of Govis (Govt IS Managers Forum) and ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Managers).
• . cri - Phillip Lindsay, AgResearch, Invermay
• . iwi - By default, the Chair of ISOCNZ

We continue to look for someone to handle the . iwi moderation and are hopeful that the task might be handed to an appropriate Maori organisation in the near future.

Policies for the moderated domains are still being formulated and will be posted to the Web site as they are completed.

Domainz continues, under the inspired guidance of CEO Patrick O'Brien, to go from strength to strength. I had occasion, recently, to talk with a number of overseas registries and all are in awe of the achievements of the company over the past 18 months. We have at least once hit 100% of all names registered in a month up and running within one business day - and the rest of the months in the high 99% range.

Domainz has been able to restructure its prices, bringing a net decrease in cost to many domain holders while at the same time developing and implementing new systems to improve customer service. All together a performance a shareholder can be very pleased about.

The question of tendering out Domainz operations was dealt with by Council during the year. There is no doubt, having now had the experience of running an operational DNS registry, that there are aspects of the service which would be put at risk if they were not to remain harmonised within the same management structure. The original concept of tendering out services across the board, mooted shortly after ISOCNZ took over the management of . nz, has been found to be seriously flawed. Council has had to take a realistic and responsible approach and admit its error in thinking that DNS management could be broken up and spread over a number of disparate organisations. Nevertheless Council, as shareholder, has continued to encourage Domainz to institute management approaches which encourage competition in the area of domain name registration, and a large number of organisations are now operating effectively as registries - in a similar manner that IANA (ICANN) and NSI are in the process of instituting for . com.

ISOCNZ has also encouraged Domainzto consider price reductions to as low a level as can be commercially viable. The recent price restructuring is part of this move.

Much has been made of ISOCNZ's monopoly situation with regard to the management of . nz. This has been tested by the Commerce Commission and ISOCNZ/Domainz. There is no doubt that the management of a top level country code domain is a 'natural monopoly' - there can only be a single database of . nz names. However, as mentioned above, ISOCNZ has continued to encourage Domainz to find ways to allow commercial entry into the registration of names with considerable success. In recent discussions with Ministry of Commerce officials we were told that they have two models for the operation of 'natural monopolies'. Firstly that they are managed by the government, or, alternatively that they are managed by organisations with open membership structures such as that operated by ISOCNZ. The current Government tends to favour the latter structure.

DNS 'Piracy'

ISOCNZ continues to hold staunchly to it's 'first come first served' policy with third level DNS registration. Discussions with overseas registries have confirmed that almost 100% of these favour an identical policy.

Although predatory registrations still occur 'pirates' have become somewhat more circumspect. ISOCNZ and Domainz have become embroiled in a series of court actions over the domain name oggi. co. nz which has seen us grappling with a bizarre series of events. In spite of considerable time and effort spent explaining to Oggi's lawyers that there was no point joining us in the action, joined we were.

As a result of a Court injunction, to which we not party, the name holder instructed Domainz to transfer the name to the plaintiff. The plaintiff subsequently moved to have the action discontinued. ISOCNZ and Domainz have, however, been put to considerable cost in defence of what we consider a frivolous action in joining us in the lawsuit and we are currently vigorously pursuing costs against Oggi.

Whilst some say the case is an important one for ISOCNZ and Domainz, it is really most important for all Agents. The case alleges, amongst other things, that ISOCNZ conspired with McKenzie to register the name in the first instance, an allegation we strongly reject. Given that over 95% of names are registered via Agents, those Agents are potentially at risk if the case succeeds.

Internet Governance

Both Domainz and ISOCNZ have been deeply involved in the US Government moves to set up a new not for profit organisation to operate the Internet. There have been meetings at some five or six venues around the world, three of which have had representatives from ISOCNZ, Domainz or both. The 'New Zealand model' - basically how ISOCNZ and Domainz interact, has been formally and informally presented to these gatherings on a number of occasions and it has been interesting to see how successive iterations of the 'New IANA" model has moved much closer to the model we had proposed.

By the 4th week of October, after five iterations of a structure promoted by IANA were faced with three different proposals and arranged a conference call with the main players. (NZ was the only non-US country represented having two of the nine lines available to the conference). Ira Magaziner, who is heading up the US Government side of things agreed that the three groups would get together to combine their proposals into a single model.

As at the writing of this report a new organisation, The Internet Corporation for Assigned of Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been registered and an interim board and CEO appointed.

NZ Government

ISOCNZ is currently advising the Government, through the Ministry of Commerce, on a number of Internet issues and a structure has been set up to ensure ongoing dialogue. We have been asked to monitor developments and report back on issues such as Internet Governance, Encryption and content control. We expect to be facilitating discussions with the wider Internet Community on these issues and passing consensus back to the Ministry over the next twelve months.

Internet Service Providers

While the main contact with ISPs has been through Domainz, ISOCNZ is keen to increase the interaction we have with ISPs and, over the next year will be trying to facilitate discussion on issues of interest. The 'Legal Issues' session in this year's Face to Face Seminar is just the beginning in this series. We will be actively polling ISPs to determine in what areas we might stimulate discussion.

While unacceptable behaviour such as blocking occurs infrequently, we still see the occasional incidence and ISOCNZ has had to step between warring ISPs on at least one occasion this year. On a more disturbing note has been a trend towards the use of anti-spam sites as an anti-competitive 'weapon'. These sites incite ISPs to carry out acts which could well fall into the category of 'restraint of trade' and we are currently discussing the legality of this approach with the Commerce Commission. Legal or not, the practice goes against the open, co-operative philosophy of the Internet. ISOCNZ does not condone spamming in any shape or form but at the same time anti-spam sites could be considered to be little more than stand-over tactics, possibly more reprehensible than the spam itself.

We believe that providing an environment where ISPs can meet in a spirit of co-operation - similar to that which the Network Operators Group (NOG) has achieved, can help alleviate the sorts of problems we have seen in the past. More than any other commercial area in the world today, the Internet relies on co-operation and goodwill for its survival.

Code of Practice

As members will be aware ISOCNZ passed a code of practice across to the Internet Service Providers Association of NZ some 18 months ago for comment. At that time ISPANZ adopted the code immediately and made it binding on members. Unfortunately ISPANZ has not moved forward as much as we had expected and we have decided to revamp the code and look at other ways of having it adopted.

Currently Roger De Salis has been charged with the task of reviewing the old code, recommending both any needed changes and a strategy for implementation. The latter will not involve any sort of 'imposition' but rather providing an acceptable document which ISPs can feel they can and want to live with.

IP Addressing

Over the past six weeks or so, there has been a flurry of interest in the process of allocation of address space in New Zealand. Originally managed by Waikato University, the management seems to have been handed on to Telecom at the closedown of NZGate. ISOCNZ has commenced a process of getting the interested parties together to work through the issues of assessing the need or otherwise to achieve contiguous address blocks and how this might be accomplished if found to be a necessity. The issue is a contentious one and has created much excitement amongst ISPs. Whatever decisions are made, they must be made in an environment of co-operation and full understanding of the issues and implications involved.

Encryption

During the year ISOCNZ strongly lobbied the Government for a freeing of restrictions on the export of strong encryption. The war is by no means won and we expect that we will be continuing to do battle on this front for some time to come.

ISOC Negotiations

ISOCNZ has been, for some time, negotiating with ISOC for some sort of membership status. The sticking point has primarily been the membership structure of ISOC which would have meant that ISOCNZ would have to take a subordinate role and be unable to continue to operate with the freedom it currently has. ISOC also has rules about involvement in commercial ventures and requiring chapters to obtain permission to make public statements. One outcome of the negotiations has been to get ISOC to look harder at its Chapter rules and structure and they seem to be gradually coming around to our point of view. I feel though, that we have some way to go yet before we arrive at an acceptable agreement.

ISOCNZ Membership

One of Council's major concerns over the past twelve months has been the dwindling membership. Much debate has ensued on how this might be turned around and there are a number of theories as to why it has been hard to attract and keep new members. Apart from the fact that research shows that New Zealanders, these days, are not joiners (all of our fellow IT organisations are experiencing the same problems) we have had a focus more towards the greater Internet community, rather than our own members specifically. Not surprisingly, many members have come to the conclusion that they can experience the benefits of ISOCNZ's efforts without having to pay the membership subscription. We are developing a number of strategies to combat this situation and a series of 'members only' services will be rolled out over the next few months.

Having been involved, over the years, in a number of'membership drives' for similar organisations, I have been left in little doubt that these are pointless exercises. People will join organisations they see as dynamic, vibrant and relevant to their areas of interest. If we successfully address ourselves to these objectives - the members will come!

Jim Higgins
Chairman

© 1998 The Internet Society of New Zealand
Last updated 12 November 1998