[Ctn-crosscom] what next?!

Sat Jul 2 16:50:17 UTC 2016

Dear working group,

obviously there are different interests at play. At a MINIUM we should be able to create a solution that will live up to the following litmus test:

*         If a country wants either their territory name (or a short form of it) or it’s ISO 3166 Alpha 3 code element it should be able to get it. 

o   Governments want to have control over that process; and per the current AG they do have control as these strings would require a letter of non-objection by the relevant Government authority. We might highlight that for the GAC – seems not everyone there understands the built in protections of the 2012 AG. 

o   ccTLD operators fear:

*  competition (which is understandable)

*  “confusion” of the Internet User if 

*         ccTLD’s can be interchangeable two letter and three letter codes

*         codes are similar like .fr and .fra or .de and .deu

o   A solution should be established that mitigates the risk – but also enables those ccTLD operators and Governments which STILL seek such TLD to apply for it.

As Timo said already: If we do not find a flexible solution but instead demand “100% non-restriction” the ban will not be lifted and I wonder how we would explain to certain Governments in 5 year future that they can’t go for .turkey, .greece or .spain for tourism marketing or .est for eGovernment or whatever solutions based on territory gTLD’s will be brought up by 2020! Protection is important – but to DENY a nation THEIR OWN NAME on Top Level just because we were too inflexible seems unreasonable.  Please also be reminded that TLD’s are NOT always applied for because they might “sell good” or meet a certain “demand”: There is all kind of reasons to base certain services on the top level of the DNS – and in many cases Governments or administrations within Governments HAPPILY finance the exercise to apply and maintain that TLD: even if there is ZERO revenue from operations.

Thanks,

Alexander Schubert

From: ctn-crosscom-bounces at icann.org [mailto:ctn-crosscom-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Paul Szyndler
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2016 7:42 PM
To: Timo Võhmar <timo.vohmar at internet.ee>
Cc: ctn-crosscom at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Ctn-crosscom] what next?!

Tere Timo,

Thank you for engaging in our session remotely and for your direct assessment of our Forum session.

Yes, the forum brought up a wide range of issues....that was the plan all along. 

For the most part, I agree with your frank and honest assessment of where we sit at the moment, and the clearly-divided lines between stakeholders. Bringing these lines closer together is where we need to engage the art of diplomacy.

I invite other WG members to post their views.

I expect the co-chairs will meet soon after our jet lag wears off and will contact the group with our Helsinki post-mortem. 

Regards

Paul

On 1 Jul 2016, at 6:03 PM, Timo Võhmar <timo.vohmar at internet.ee <mailto:timo.vohmar at internet.ee> > wrote:

Hi all!

ICANN is behind us and I thought I should share some feelings I have about the situation we are at with the topics this WG was convened for. Firstly I must apologize for not being in Helsinki, but I kept my eye on things over the amazing interweb.

First of all does anyone else have a feeling that this WG is becoming redundant or already is? No-one seems to expect anything from it any more. Shouldn’t we do something about it? Looking at the facts – gNSO wants the 3 letter codes without restrictions for business, GAC wants the codes protected and leave the decision about the codes as souvern right of the respective country. CcNSO sadly cannot decide. So ccwg seems to be the correct way of trying to solve this by bringing the parties around a table – why do we let gNSO yap about closing this wg and all other initiatives and letting them decide what happens to the country codes and names. Sorry gNSO members for being frank!

The codes and names are closed for everybody at the moment. If we cannot find a compromise this is how it stays. As a ccTLD representative I must say that this is much better outcome than no-restrictions-gTLD. But I do not want that, I think there are more countries and organisations out there feeling the same, gNSO does not want that. It seems there is potential here to find a middle ground.

Compromise requires steps back from the dream from all sides. ISO 3-letter codes as gTLDs without any restrictions will not happen. ISO 3-letter codes as pure ccTLDs will probably not happen either. Lets try to find something that might happen.

Another thing – having these TLD delegation rounds is stupid. So the goal should be to find a process that just works and anyone interested could apply for a TLD at any time.

My proposal. 3-letters like 2-letters and country names are marking a country. ISO list is obviously not perfect, but this is what we have, the list is respected and referenced by the UN and ICANN among others so looks like a legit (widely accepted) source for country codes. Each country must have rights to decide what happens to the signs, identifiers, markers etc that represent that country. As country codes, these should also be treated as such. If the respective government explicitly gives up their privileges for the 3 letter code that code becomes gTLD and is delegated like any other. Why would a country give up its control over a TLD? Money - lets have the same rates for having the 3 letter ccTLD as there are for new gTLD. Every country/ccTLD operator/other authorized party must sign the contract with ICANN for the delegation or give up the rights for it. As long as a government has the control over a domain it should be treated as ccTLD and be regulated by the respective country. So it is this process - https://www.iana.org/help/cctld-delegation - that needs to be improved. The take-it-or-leave-it approach.

What do you think?

Best Regards,

Timo Võhmar

Arendusjuht / Head of development

Eesti Interneti SA  / Estonian Internet Foundation

Paldiski mnt 80, 10617 Tallinn, Estonia

Tel + 372 727 1004 

www.internet.ee <http://www.internet.ee> 

_______________________________________________
Ctn-crosscom mailing list
Ctn-crosscom at icann.org <mailto:Ctn-crosscom at icann.org> 
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/ctn-crosscom

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/ctn-crosscom/attachments/20160702/2cd85e67/attachment.html>