[Ctn-crosscom] Some clarifications about the nature of ISO 3166

[Annebeth Lange]

Thank you, Jaap. Very useful. 


Annebeth B Lange
Head of Legal and Policy
UNINETT Norid AS



> Den 1. apr. 2015 kl. 14.44 skrev Jaap Akkerhuis <jaap at nlnetlabs.nl>:
> 
> All,
> 
> In the last call I pleaded for consistency of terms, when referring to
> ISO subjects. As I have noticed over time (and not only our group but
> all over the ICANN community) there is a tendency use informal
> terminology and definitions in various discussions. That does sometimes
> causes confusions of Babylonian proportions.
> 
> I offer here some clarifications in the form of this FAQ. I hope it
> helps to minimize the confusion in the discussion, and also in the
> development of the glossary to our current draft.
> 
> Regards,
> 
>    jaap
>    
> ----
> 
> Q: What is the ISO 3166?
> 
> A: It is an international standard developed by ISO. ISO 3166 provides
>   universally applicable coded representations of names of countries
>   (current and non-current), dependencies, and other areas of
>   particular geopolitical interest and their subdivisions. The
>   standards consists of three parts, ISO 3166-1 (Part 1: Countries
>   codes), ISO 3166-2 (Part 2: Country subdivisions code), ISO3166-3
>   (Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries). The edition
>   (version) of is identified by the year of publication. Therefore
>   the full reference to the current (third) Edition of ISO 3166 Part
>   is ISO 3166-1:2013.
> 
>   The codes only uses the ASCII letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) and
>   for ISO 3166-2, hyphens.
> 
> Q: What form of codes are defined?
> 
> A: ISO3166-1 uses two letter codes alpha-2), three letter codes
>   (alpha-3) and numerical codes, ISO 3166-2 uses codes starting with
>   and ISO 3166 alpha-2 code an hyphen and one or more letters or
>   numbers, while ISO 3166-4 uses 4 letter codes.
> 
>   The codes can have various classifications such as Assigned (by ISO
>   3166/MA or User Assigned), Unassigned, Reserved in various ways
>   (Exceptionally, transitional, and Indeterminately). See also
>   <http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/country_codes/country_codes_glossary.htm>
>   for details.
> 
>   The real authoritative source for these terms is of course the
>   Standard itself.
> 
> Q: What is the ISO list code list?
> 
> A: There just a list. However the term is used colloquially to denote
>   (most of the time) the list with the Country Code Assignments in
>   Section 9 of ISO 3166-1. People tend to use this imprecise, often
>   lumping the Reserved Codes also in the notion of "the ISO 3166
>   list". At the same token but even more confusing is the use of the
>   term "the ISO 3166-2 list" not meaning part 2 of the standard but
>   the list of the alpha-2 codes from Part one (and then it isn't
>   whether they mean all possible codes, both the Assigned and the
>   Reserved or just the Assigned).
> 
> Q: What is the purpose of all these codes anyway?
> 
> A: To paraphrase from ISO 3166-1, the codes are intended to be used in
>   any application requiring the expression of current country names
>   in coded form. The term "country names" is defined in definition
>   3.4 "name of country, dependency, or other area of particular
>   geopolitical interest". That is why often sees the term "Countries
>   and territories" is used as a reminder that it is not just about
>   countries.
> 
> Q: What has statistics to do with these codes?
> 
> A: The list of countries in Part 1 are based (but not limited to) on
>   the list in the "Standard Country or Area Code for Statistical Use"
>   of the UN.
> 
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