Shaping a TLD – Policy and more

Caroline Greer’s latest article on the dotMobi blog caught my attention, as I was thinking about registry policies and development quite a bit over the last few days, especially in light of recent news concerning the IE namespace.

Dotmobi, in common with a lot of other registries, has an advisory group that is able to influence its development and policies. This may sound a bit sinister, but if you examine it more closely you’ll find that the opposite is the case.

While dotmobi is very obviously aimed at the mobile web, other TLDs and ccTLDs are of benefit and interest to stakeholders from different backgrounds.
Nominet, for example, has a policy advisory board and actively gets involved with the steering list (a mailing list for members to discuss policy matters).
Unfortunately the IE ccTLD does not have any formal policy advisory group. In order for policy to develop and change it has to rely on its board, which does not appear to be in anyway representative of stakeholders.
In the case of dotmobi, for example, the advisory group has four levels of membership which vary in cost from 295 euro to a staggering 15 thousand euro!
Of course if the mobile web is of importance to your business it’s probably a small price to play, though you won’t see me lining up to join at that price!

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

2 comments

  1. Michele,

    Nominet’s Policy Advisory Board has tackled some very interesting topics and has been a great source of information for a young Registry like dotMobi.

    I should clarify that dotMobi also has a Policy Advisory Board [PAB] which is different to the .Mobi Advisory Group [MAG]. The PAB is a ten person group made up of representatives from the internet / ICANN world as well as individuals from consumer interest groups. Five of PAB’s members come from MAG and so by participating in MAG, you have a chance to become elected to the PAB.

    MAG’s work feeds into PAB and vice versa and dotMobi posts any PAB statements on its web-site – http://mtld.mobi/policies/pab

    Caroline Greer, dotMobi.

  2. Caroline

    Thanks for the clarification. I was’t aware that you had both, as the terminology isn’t exactly standardised across the industry.

    Regards

    Michele

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