Dr. Prof. Hong XueDirector of Institute for Internet

Policy & LawBeijing Normal University

Conflicts of Governance on IDNs

Uncertainties, Questions and China

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• ICANN: GOVERNANCE BY DEFAULT?– Statement on http://www.icann.org/en/about/• ICANN was formed in 1998. • It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable.

• It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.

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ASCII-script TLDs .com,.net,.org.

….

NON-ASCII TLDS

Different from the ASCII-script TLDs over which ICANN acquired the global authority by default, many countries have had full-fledged laws or regulations on the correspondent native-script TLDs.

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Shall ICANN honor these existing proclamations by the sovereign governments?

IDNs will be testing whether the global domain name system could be able to reconcile or clash

with the territorial governance; whether ICANN’s so-called multi-stakeholder regime could be able

to handle with the sovereign states.

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China’s Domain Name System

• ASCII TLDs – “.CN”

• Chinese-character TLDs– “. 中国” (China)

– “. 公司” (Company)

– “. 网络” (Network)

– “. 政务” (Governmental Affairs)

– “. 公益” (Public Interest)

Proclamation on China’s Domain Name System (2002, 2006 & 2008)

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CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

• Should ICANN care about the territorial governance when evaluating and delegating Chinese-character gTLDs?– The other sovereign states may follow.

• Should China care about ICANN on native-script TLDs?– Is the Proclamation sort of preliminary EoIs?

• Could the issue be resolved diplomatically?– Saving the DNS from segmentation – Engaging China in the international Internet

community

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Thanks! Welcome

to Beijing!