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As
noted in our APTLD72 Communique and Statement dated 18 September
2017, we expressed our awareness of continuing efforts to register
designated countries and territories as gTLDs. As noted in the
Communique from APTLD72, the APTLD expressly stated its support for
the continuation of the status-quo regarding country and territory
designators as top-level domains, i.e.:
<ul>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"> all 2-letter
ASCII codes, whether or not in the ISO 3166 alpha-2 list, are
reserved for ccTLDs,</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">all 3-letter
ASCII codes in the ISO 3166 alpha-3 list are reserved and
cannot be applied for, and</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">any string in
the Reserved Country and Territory Names lists referred to in
the ICANN document <a
href="https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names/#reserved">https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names/#reserved</a>
would not be delegated as a gTLD.</p>
</li>
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<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"><br>
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<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">LK
Domain Registry re-affirms this position taken at APTLD72.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%"><br>
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<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">The
LK Domain Registry categorically rejects this proposal for the
following reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">As noted in the
APTLD72 Communique, all 2-letter ASCII codes, whether or not
in the ISO 3166 alpha-2 list, have historically been reserved
for ccTLDs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">As the widely
circulated “White Paper on the GNSO proposal regarding
two-character top-level domains” argues, it is entirely
possible that the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency may, at some
point in the future, begin to assign 2-character alpha-numeric
strings as Country and Territory code points.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">Depending upon
the type face employed, introduction of 2-character strings
containing a digit may well cause visual confusion for the
internet-user, thus leading to security issues within the DNS.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%">In addition, we
would like to stress that creating 2-letter ASCII TLDs
(regardless of inclusion of numeric characters or not) would
crack a solidly established notion among Internet users that
“all ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all
two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs (<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain</a>
).</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Gihan Dias</p>
<p>CEO</p>
<p>LK Domain Registry<br>
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