While I was in LA last week John sent me details of the Communications Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2007.
While there are some potentially positive aspects in the Bill some of the Bill’s contents are, for lack of better word, simply crazy.
32.—(5) The regulations shall provide that persons who have registered ‘.ie’ domain names before the regulations came into operation are taken to have registered those names under the regulations.
That is simply wrong.
How can they possibly expect that to hold up in court?
How can they expect anyone to take the .ie ccTLD seriously if they can retroactively apply the bill to the 70k+ IE domains already registered?
They also seem to think that issues surrounding registration disputes are a matter for government:
(6) A person who contravenes subsection (2), or contravenes a regulation made under this section, is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding €5,000.
So that puts it in the realm of civil courts… lovely..
The Bill’s provisions for the management of the IE namespace do offer some hope of industry involvement, but the bulk of the text does not strike me as particularly positive.
If the government is concerned about the present and future of the IE namespace they may have been better advised to look at emulating other ccTLDs. By making explicit provisions for fines and other elements within the context of the Bill it sounds like they have no intention of allowing any freedom of governance.
This is worrying.
Leave a Reply