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

[Alexander Schubert]

Martin,

you wrote: “I think we have already covered country and territory names in WT5, to the extent that there is general acceptance to continue the AGB treatment….”

 

And this is a very good indicator as to why the inhabitants of cities with a sizeable population need SOME “protection” as well. Of the 233 countries and territories listed in Wikipedia ONE THIRD (80) have less than 1 Million inhabitants. And we seem to agree that they need EXTREME “protection” – a letter of non-objection is seemingly not even enough. 32 of these territories have even less than 100,000 inhabitants. 

In that respect: the Internet usage becomes more and more LOCAL. People are looking up stuff IN THEIR CITY – not predominantly  in another country or nationally. People look for stores, the cinema schedule, etc. Depending on the source it seems that already over two thirds of all searches in Google are LOCAL! In large cities that will logically be much higher. A city is a much better Internet identifier than a country. When we over-protect country names that way – how can we claim to be halfway congruent if we do need at least provide SOME protection to cities as well? At least sizeable cities.

With 15% of all territories having less than 100,000 inhabitants I assume the BARE MINIUM would be to protect all cities with at least 100,000 people. A cut-off size at between 10,000 and 50,000 would make much more sense as in many countries there are few cities making the 100,000 cut-off. In Latvia there are at least 4 cities worth a city gTLD just in the next round – but only ONE (the capital – which is anyway protected) makes the 100,000 cut-off! In Switzerland there are a whole bunch of cities that might want to go for a city gTLD (e.g. to promote tourism, eGovernment, etc) – but just 5 (outside the capital)  would be protected. 

Thanks,

Alexander.berlin

 

 

 

 

From: Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Martin Sutton
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2018 10:50 AM
To: DE SALINS Ghislain <ghislain.de-salins at finances.gouv.fr>
Cc: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Conference call: city names

 

Ghislain, 

 

Thank you for the information. I think we have already covered country and territory names in WT5, to the extent that there is general acceptance to continue the AGB treatment, so France would, of course, be included in those terms.

 

Kind regards,

 

Martin

Sent from my iPhone


On 10 May 2018, at 08:39, DE SALINS Ghislain <ghislain.de-salins at finances.gouv.fr <mailto:ghislain.de-salins at finances.gouv.fr> > wrote:

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