On March 31, Swedish regulatory overview office, Post and Telecom Authority (Post- och telestyrelsen, PTS), published a 54 pages report on revision of the Swedish Top-Level Domain (TLD) law for internet. The report contains proposals for revision of policy and Swedish law regulating top level domains.

This is not a surprise. The issue has been simmering for ten years, at least. However, with increasing dependency of information society, public regulators are increasingly inclined to revise public regulation in the area.

But what is the actual issue?

On a principal level, it is the process of deciding who should be the final back stop, the last resort taking full responsibility and accountability for future top level domain name services in Sweden. Should it be fully independent market actors (e.g. current TLD operator Internet Infrastructure Foundation, .SE), or should it be state and government responsibility?

During the last ten years, government in Sweden has reverted to minimal regulation in the area. A soft law solution was engineered in 2006, and since then there is a general MoU between Swedish government and current operator to resolve this in a more pragmatic way. However, the MoU was never implemented into real action. It developed into something of a dead end, actually.

But the issue also has more pragmatic bearings. It is about updating the current law for the existence of new generic top level domains, potentially pointing to geographic regions connected with the country, e.g. Scania (Skåne), Lake Mälaren, etc.

Proposed changes

Lets take the pragmatics first. In its report, the agency suggests a more explicit regulation for tying the country code top level domain operator to Swedish territory. In correspondence with second issue, PTS suggests change and expansion of the central term ‘national TLD’. According to current definition, a national TLD relates to “...a nation or a region…”. In PTS proposal, the TLD realm is expanded to “...a nation, region or other geographic designation of national interest.”

This change intends to increase Swedens governments control over the use of names relating to Swedish territory. Since Swedish government has given the ICANN model a strong support since it was initiated, this is an intrinsic adaptation to the ICANN model and bylaws.

But PTS also gives a lot attention to the principal issues. In its report, PTS proposes change in law to ensure continual operations of the current ccTLD operations. PTS also notes that the issue of final responsibility and accountability for continuous operations (‘final backstop’) of the TLD is still unresolved. PTS notes that it can not assume a last resort function in maintaining .SE TLD services in case of interrupted operations. So, who should?

The agency notices that ccTLD operations today is already a structurally important function for information society, but does in principle dodge the principal issue. The issue of government’s responsibility and accountability for ensuring continuous ccTLDs operations is pushed back to politicians. The agency instead propose yet another public enquiry for the issue. In other words; wait and see.

On a personal note, the report in itself is good craftsmanship, and is written with integrity. Pushing back policy to politicians, and postponing government decision into another enquiry is maybe the smartest thing the agency can do, at least for the time being.

On the one hand, the agency needs to balance the support for the ICANN model. On the other hand, demands for further regulation of Swedish domain name system is specifically difficult in the advent of the solution to the IANA functions transition. Swedish government should have little interest in becoming a policy rival to the multi-stakeholder-governed body.

This national issue also has close similarities with international processes; current IANA transition and ICANN accountability processes. Future responsibility and accountability for the final ‘back-stop’, the last resort operator of domains, is still intensively debated. It might be worth while to wait out the ICANN processes, before concluding in national law.

However, national v.s. global policy development in infrastructure is just one axis. Just around the corner awaits the next hurdle. Regulating Internet content via internet infrastructure is already on the agenda today for content owners, national police and other stakeholders. Within the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) we’ve seen an increasing interest by the Interpol. Intellectual Property Rights owners also have a stake in regulating misuse of domain name related services. National and international processes are aligned, and will be difficult to avoid.

The trend of trying to regulate internet content via internet infrastructure is also increasing. This debate is also present in Sweden and the PTS report. Also nationally, police, tax agency and other public agencies, demand increased control in customers’ databases for domain names, etc. Furthermore, the .SE is currently in court for not withdrawing thepiratebay.se domain name.

It is now up to the Swedish Government to adhere to PTS proposals, or not. But the principle of final backstop still needs to be reconciled.