Information Society Watch

The creation of ccTLD's under the control of national governments allows these governments to evolve a domain name policy which responds to the cultural sensitivities and the developmental priorities of the nation. In that sense they allow national governments the autonomy to frame an important aspect of Internet policy and thereby promote the rapid spread of internet use as well as the opportunity to articulate a new normative framework and vocabulary in which Internet policy and governance may be framed.

The .IN Internet Domain Name Policy Framework and Implementation http://www.mit.gov.in/download/inpolicy.pdf published by the Ministry of Information Technology on October 24th 2004 sets out the Indian government's approach and understanding of Internet Domain policy. The policy recognizes that the increased use of the .in name will lead to the proliferation of the Internet and seeks to establish an 'open and market friendly' approach that will 'brand .IN in a big way and achieve its rightful place in the Internet space that it deserves.' The rest of the policy statement outlines the establishment of the .IN Registry as a Not-for-Profit organization and the contractual framework which allows ISPs and other Registrars to market these domain names. While the Policy articulates with clarity the market rules, dispute resolution framework and technical parameters within which the domain name policy should operate it loses out on the opportunity to initiate internet policy that goes beyond these parameters.

The need for a domain name policy to take account of public policy concerns has become apparent in the context of the controversies surrounding the adoption of a new top level .XXX domain name for pornographic content at ICANN. The debate on whether the .XXX domain promotes free speech or discriminates against women or non-western cultures has forced domain name policy to go beyond it's conventional parameters of technical robust infrastructure, market friendly allocation and dispute resolution.

A .IN domain name policy that responds to these public policy concerns could begin by addressing two concerns:

1. Promoting the use of Indian language domain names
A key impetus to the development of Indian language computing and internet resources is the increased of Indian language domain names. China's Domain name policy aims to regulate both the .CN ccTLD and Chinese language domain names. While the control over Chinese language domain names may bring this policy in conflict with ICANN in so far as such domain names are top level domain names and other Chinese language speaking countries such as Taiwan, there is no doubt that national regulators are likely to take far more effort to promote local language computing than ICANN!

2. Creation of a .pd third level ccTLD
There have been recent proposals to create a .pd.in namespace that may be used by all websites that host exclusively public domain content. In the context of the intellectual property battles on the use of internet content the promotion of an exclusively public domain space at the ccTLD level will signal India's commitment to the wider dissemination of content on the internet.

As IGF 2008 will be hosted by India we have a significant opportunity to contribute to the evolution of Internet Law and Policy. Our commitment to adopting public policy oriented to serving the public interest by incorporating these in to domestic law and policy will allow us to take these issues to international fora and secure wider agreement.