letter to ComputerWorld Philippines
February 12, 2005Here’s a letter I sent to Lawerence Casiraya of Computerworld Philippines. It’s a reaction to a CICT statement - that essentially says
1) that Govt will redelegate PH (eg - take control of the PH Domain)
2) CICT Commissioner Ver Pena justifies his reasons for the Guidelines - to make the PH Domain more efficient and independent.
3) Just in case the Government is unable to redelegate - he’s creating a Technical Working Group to discuss the implementation of the Guidelines with DotPH.
(3) is an interesting admission, I might add, because I believe Mr. Pena was operating under the assumption that he could redelegate PH at will - hence the guidelines were created in relative secrecy (we weren’t invited to meet with the Advisory Board), and the guidelines have ended been pretty much one-sided .
Hopefully we’ll be seeing a thaw in these hardline positions?
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Regarding the CICT statement:
I’m glad that Mr. Pena has finally given us his justification for taking control of the Domain Registry - he says it is for an efficient and independent administration of the .PH domain. Well, we’re all for efficiency and independence! For well over a year we have been asking Secretary Pena to identify problems so that we can work together to fix them . Instead of answering, his response has been to impose these Guidelines. It is difficult to understand how Mr. Pena intends to make our operations more efficient if he can’t identify where the inefficiency is in the first place. Perhaps he would care to elaborate?
And the Guidelines actually make the administration of the PH domain completely dependent on the government. Mr. Pena insists on having the right to create new guidelines at will. This will kill the PH domain’s ability to compete against foreign domains like COM, NET and INFO. There will be no incentive to develop technology and infrastructure, or do any long-term planning, when the franchise can be arbitrarily terminated — as Secretary Pena is attempting to do right now.
We’ve invested a lot of time and energy in making the PH domain easy to register, manage and use. Our systems are world-class. Technology which we developed for the local market is currently being used with great success in New Zealand and will soon be exported to other countries as well. We were one of the first countries in the world to introduce a Shared Registry System. We have well over 200 Registrars - almost as many as ICANN has accredited. We were one of the first countries to initiate a dispute resolution system. Its hard to see how the government could improve on what we’re doing, but we are willing to work with them. The thing though is to first identify the areas that need improvement. Then can we work together on possible solutions.
>Like I was asking you, did Joel (or DotPH for that matter) issue a
>decision about the matter? From how i understand, based on the guidelines,
>you have to choose between remaining as “administrator” or becoming a
>”registry”.
There is a serious problem with the “choice” that is being forced on us. The Administrator is neither the Registry nor the Registrar. It never has been, and never will be! The “choice” is based on wrong information and is indicative of how seriously flawed the Guidelines are. For Mr. Pena to keep insisting that we make a “choice”, despite the fact that such a choice is impossible, is a dangerous sign of inflexibility.
The Guidelines also have onerous provisions that make them completely one-sided. For example, the government can impose new rules at any point in the future (Guidelines Art. XI, Sec. 6 and Art. XIII, Sec. 4). Whoever heard of an agreement where one party can change the terms at will, and the other has no choice but to accept? Also, any doubts about the interpretation of the Guidelines are immediately resolved in favor of the government (see Guidelines Art XIII, Sec. 1). It’s not what I would a fair agreement.
I think that the best way to proceed is for Mr. Pena to stop insisting that we agree to the Guidelines - seeing as how they are onerous and seriously flawed. If he can do this and just list the inefficiencies he wishes us to correct - then we can be well on our way to making the PH Domain as efficient as he envisions.
