Re: [council] GAC and country name reservations

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>]

I strongly agree with your suggestion. Name reservations are a
blunt policy instrument that should probably not be used at all,
because most rights in names depend on use. Blanket, mechanical
reservations cannot take into account variations in use (not to
mention variations across countries in legal rights).

Even if one supports some of the ideas GAC suggested, 
it is unclear to me how an Advisory Committee to the Board 
would be empowered to set domain name policy without 
going through the DNSO.

>>> "Philip Sheppard" <philip.sheppard@aim.be> 09/24/01 10:56AM >>>
In a communiqué made by the Government Advisory Council at its Montevideo meeting http://www.icann.org/committees/gac/communique-09sep01.htm "the GAC recommends that the names of countries and distinct economies, particularly those contained in the ISO 3166-1 standard, as applied by ICANN in identifying ccTLDs, should be reserved by the .info Registry, (or if registered in the Sunrise Period challenged by the Registry and, if successful, then reserved) in Latin characters in their official language(s) and in English and assigned to the corresponding governments and public authorities, at their request, for use. These names in other IDN character sets should be reserved in the same way as soon as they become available"


In the same communiqué the GAC further "draws the attention of ICANN and the Registries to the fact that a large number of other names, including administrative sub-divisions of countries and distinct economies as recognised in international fora, may give rise to contested registrations. Accordingly the GAC recommends that Registrars and eventual Registrants should be made aware of this".

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I believe that the NC should issue a statement about this and ask you to consult in your constituencies rapidly. I currently propose that we could consider:

- urging caution on the GAC in taking this step, 

- point out that dot info is but the start of a TLD expansion and something much more interesting for countries could be possible

- propose that WIPO is the best place for discussion on geographical names.



Comments please.

Philip

NC Chair