Public Comments on the "Consultation Paper on the Review on Administration and Assignment of Internet Domain Names and Internet Protocol Addresses in Hong Kong"

Dear Sir,
 

Consultation Paper on the Review on Administration & Assignment of Internet Domain Names & Internet Protocol Addresses in HK
 

We congratulate the proposal prepared by the Task Force on the captioned subject. Among others, we support the idea of setting up an independent and non-profit organization to handle the Internet domain names registration and related issues. Upon reading the consultative paper, we have the following observations:
 

• In the transition period, it makes sense to have the target organization to handle the administrative tasks of domain registration. On a long term basis, the Task Force might want to consider to "outsource" the administrative tasks to external parties and have the organization to focus in policy-making only. The benefits with this arrangement are two folds. First, the target organization can maintain its impartiality by separating policy making from execution. Second, efficient services to the public can be offered without having the target organization to invest into this area. Engagement of "Networksolutions" by the US Government is a good case in point.
• The proposal makes reference to practices elsewhere. This should be encouraged in the future organization. SAR should adopt the "best practices" within the Internet community as far as possible without creating its own version.
• It might be a good idea to include representatives from the legal community on the Board of Directors. Legal issue over the Internet is always complicated. A legal representative on the Board could offer the right advice at the right time.
• The Task Force may also want to consider having a user representative on the Board, e.g. from a large e-commerce company. With such an inclusion, the view of user community can be considered at an early stage of the policy making process.

To conclude, we fully support the proposal made in the consultative paper and we wish you a very successful implementation of the proposal.
 

Yours faithfully,

K. W. Chan
Head of Information Technology Services