[Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Conference call: city names

Katrin Ohlmer | DOTZON GmbH ohlmer at dotzon.com
Wed May 2 05:52:56 UTC 2018


Hi Jorge, hi Liz,

as the applicant for .berlin in the previous round, we received a letter of non-objection from the local government. This worked well. So I would like to understand which issue came up associated with the letter of support or non-objection we have to solve/improve.

Maybe some examples from the previous round would help!

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Katrin


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Von: Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5-bounces at icann.org] Im Auftrag von Liz Williams
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 2. Mai 2018 07:45
An: Jorge.Cancio at bakom.admin.ch
Cc: leonard obonyo via Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 at icann.org>
Betreff: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Conference call: city names

Jorge

I am not making assertions — in this environment it is OK to have unformed ideas otherwise we don’t innovate.

I am trying to tease out the implications of our policy discussions.  Using your view that national governments make “objections on the basis of law”, could you further explain how “non-objections” work in that case and whether tacit approval or non-objection is a sufficient basis for an applicant for a geographic TLD to make business plans around the application for a TLD?

I am looking for ways of improving the policy which can then improve the process and which, as a result, enables the smooth evaluation of applications using objective testable criteria.

Liz
….
Dr Liz Williams | International Affairs
.au Domain Administration Ltd
M: +61 436 020 595 | +44 7824 877757
E: liz.williams at auda.org.au<mailto:liz.williams at auda.org.au> www.auda.org.au<http://www.auda.org.au>

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On 2 May 2018, at 3:30 pm, Jorge.Cancio at bakom.admin.ch<mailto:Jorge.Cancio at bakom.admin.ch> wrote:

Dear Greg and all,

I feel that when somebody makes assertions (as Liz did and you are doing) you have to back them with data, especially if it regards an instrument that was the result of a very lengthy process in the 2012 AGB.

The data I am aware of (which I have referred to repeatedly) was included in the materials prepared for a webinar held in April 2017 on the subject of Geonames (staff may point to it). From that material it seems that the non-objection worked well for most applications that went through that system... Something that many applicants have confirmed also repeatedly...

best

Jorge

ps: as to legal grounds, to name an example, cities in Switzerland have the right under the civil code to protect their names...



________________________________

Von: Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com<mailto:gregshatanipc at gmail.com>>
Datum: 2. Mai 2018 um 06:42:37 MESZ
An: David Cake <dave at davecake.net<mailto:dave at davecake.net>>
Cc: leonard obonyo via Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 at icann.org<mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 at icann.org>>
Betreff: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Conference call: city names


I find myself generally in agreement with Liz Williams.  There are more nuances to unpack than I have time for, but a "first right" based on a geographic name is troublesome on several levels. But one fundamental question jumps out -- what right is this first right based on?  Is there a legal basis for this?  (Jorge tells us that his government would make a decision "based on law", so it would be useful to know what law we're talking about.)  Requiring a "letter of support or non-objection" is also troublesome and not just for the reasons Liz mentions.  (I hope we do not have to pore through each of the letters of support/non-objection from the first round to highlight the problems they cause, but if we are going to, this should be a job for the WG as a whole, not an assignment for Liz.)  I recognize that, as Jorge say, it "works well for governments."  Well, of course it does!  It completely favors governments, and was imposed by governments (i.e., the GAC).  The problem is that it doesn't work well for anyone else, and it is not well-grounded in the rule of law (unless we are thinking of something akin to the droit de seigneur, or perhaps the Divine Right of Kings).

I don't know if I'll be able to be on any part of the call starting shortly, since it is running from 1-2:30 am my time, and I don't do well on 4 hours of sleep....  If am not, please accept my apologies.

Greg




On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 11:48 PM, David Cake <dave at davecake.net<mailto:dave at davecake.net><mailto:dave at davecake.net>> wrote:
Perth is not even unique within Australia, there is a small town in Tasmania. But the point about ambiguity remaining even if we restrict it to concepts like ‘capital’ is a very good one.

David (resident of the Western Australian Perth)

On 30 Apr 2018, at 1:18 pm, Liz Williams <liz.williams at auda.org.au<mailto:liz.williams at auda.org.au><mailto:liz.williams at auda.org.au>> wrote:

Hello everyone

I wanted to start a new thread of conversation about city names ahead of our upcoming conference call.   We are being encouraged by our co-chairs to think about city names as TLDs. The first point is, perhaps, to recognise the “success” of some previous city TLDs including Berlin, Paris, NYC and so on.  Those applications went through very specific requirements for evaluation and, now, hopefully serve the requirements of local communities.  We should hope that, in any new round, the experiences of those cities will ease the way for future applications because we have learnt something about how and why applicants apply for place names (and I use the word place deliberately) as top level domain labels.

For our next round of policy recommendations I wanted to use an example which I think highlights the difficulties we face if we are prescriptive and limited in our analysis.

Most of us know that Perth is the capital city of Western Australia.  It is not the capital city of Australia as Canberra has that honour.  Relying on a “is the word a capital city” question is fraught with difficulty.   It is difficult because Perth, Scotland, has at a bare minimum had city status since the 12th century, far longer than Perth, Australia which also has an indigenous place name, its colonial name and a migrant demographic where the largest majority of Perth residents come from England.  Things are complicated by the existence of Perth in Canada which, in its own right, has some features of a capital and, at the very least, some important historic linkages.

And then we turn to the generic words which Jon Nevett highlighted in a previous post (Bath, Save, New) which are also place names.

That leads us to what can we usefully and objectively recommend as treatment of other names which are also linked to places and how those could be treated as top level domains.  As a starting point, my recommendation would be that we don’t have any special treatment for place names as TLDs and that applicants for those names would be evaluated against other business and technical criteria just like another application.  However, we might want to think about better ways of handling an objection.  Those objections, from whatever quarter, need to be treated in exactly the same way.  I don’t recommend “letters of support or non-objection”.  They are too subjective, fraught with movable political nuance and, in some cases, deeply sensitive geo-political facts (using Jerusalem as the example).

I look forward to hearing the views of others.

Liz
….
Dr Liz Williams | International Affairs
.au Domain Administration Ltd
M: +61 436 020 595 | +44 7824 877757
E: liz.williams at auda.org.au<mailto:liz.williams at auda.org.au><mailto:liz.williams at auda.org.au> www.auda.org.au<http://www.auda.org.au><http://www.auda.org.au/>

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