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

Mon May 7 23:03:40 UTC 2018

Thanks Yrjö!!! 

King Gustav must have been wise ruler if he didn't give the name away
twice! 

My worries from a Latin American perspective, is that the Spanish Kings
weren't consistent over time. And after almost 300 year of spreading
city names based on famous saints in what is today Latin America, they
let loose a single priest in California to spread the following names
(many already existent in our countries) but now in the hands of the US
like San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Luis, San
Juan Capistrano, San Antonio, etc.  

How do you think the people of Costa Rica would cry about their capital
city San Jose (de Costa Rica), if it would go to a software unicorn just
because we are not in the middle of Silicon Valley? Maybe cities that
don't pass the high business oriented threshold Alexander is proposing,
should find a (guaranteed, transparent and predictable) place at the
second level. 

And let us go back to (less profitable but also valuable) GeoNames at
the first level. 

---
Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez

El 2018-05-02 09:17, Yrjö Länsipuro escribió:

> Dear all, 
> 
> Cities have been founded, incorporated and given various privileges - including their names - in the course of history by kings and emperors and other assorted authorities, and in my non-lawyer´s mind, documents attesting to those acts, scribbled on parchment or whatever, are the legal basis. More important, from end-users´ point of view, is the political ownership felt by the citizens. 
> 
> For reference,  attached please find an excerpt of the founding document  of my home city Tampere/Tammerfors in 1779, signed by king Gustaf III. 
> 
> Best, 
> 
> Yrjö 
> 
> -------------------------
> 
> FROM: Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Alexander Schubert <alexander at schubert.berlin>
> SENT: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 5:16 PM
> TO: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 at icann.org
> SUBJECT: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Conference call: city names 
> 
> Dear Greg, 
> 
> You write: 
> _".....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?"_
> 
> If we talk about sizeable (or otherwise "important") cities: 
> 
> Nobody has a "first right" obviously. Why should anybody. But if a string is (should be) poised to serve as identifier for a sizeable amount of people (e.g. larger cities) - I think we do not have to search for "international law"; it should be self-evident that such an infrastructure resource like a city-gTLD is NOT assigned lightly to "some entity" - but that the representatives of the city are looped in. There is morality and a "sense of common good" OUTSIDE of established law. At least in Good Old Europe. 
> 
> But I completely agree with you if we talk about "minor" geographical entities - such as a small stream or a hill. Or a tiny dwelling somewhere in the nowhere. Especially if there is an entity that is MUCH better known to the public (e.g. a well-known brand  vs. a small mountain) or if it is identical to a generic term: ".new" and the New River.
> 
> The big question is: How do we policy the line that separates the entities that deserve "protection" from the rest? A repository? Lists of any sort? Population size? Or maybe a panel that decides case by case (caution: Beauty contest alarm)? But having no protections at all is not going to work. To LOWER the already low bar is bonkers in my mind. I wish GAC would pay more attention - there are forces trying to take away DNS infrastructure from The People.
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Alexander.berlin
> 
> FROM: Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5-bounces at icann.org] ON BEHALF OF Greg Shatan
> SENT: Wednesday, May 02, 2018 7:42 AM
> TO: David Cake <dave at davecake.net>
> CC: leonard obonyo via Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 at icann.org>
> SUBJECT: 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> 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> 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 www.auda.org.au [1]
> 
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