Re: [ga] Geographic and Geopolitical Names in .info

[Dan Steinberg <synthesis@videotron.ca>]

Thanks Roberto,

I was about to raise these points, but you eloquently saved me the effort.

Just one thing to add: many country strings in many languages have meanings
other than the country. For example "france" is not only the name of a country
in both English and French and probably a few other languages. But it is also a
relatively common first name.

As I compose this note I'm thinking that I have many many more things I could
add, like the question of non-ASCII character sets (which the IETF is commited
to implementing), the issue of ___________, etc.  But since I promised just one
more...

As the alphabetical directors noted, more thinking is required.

Roberto Gaetano wrote:

> Elisabeth Porteneuve wrote:
> >
> >Would you explain why you consider trademarks rights
> >more important that countrie's and people's rights ?
> >
>
> I am not under the impression that Alexander was considering TM superior
> rights as the countries' rights.
> As for the people's rights, I don't see them always better protected by a
> Government rather than by another body. But that's bringing us away from the
> scope of the comment.
>
> I also think that the reservation of the country name as per ISO-3166 does
> not make sense at all, and I am very much surprised that the GAC did not
> notice it. According to the motion voted by ICANN, fancy things will happen,
> like for instance:
> - the names "germany.info" and "allemagne.info" will be reserved for
> Germany, while maybe the German Government would have probably have rather
> chosen "Deutschland.info", but the latter is not in ISO-3166 (remember that
> ISO-3166 is bilingual French-English, but does not contain the names in
> their native language[s]);
> - very useful and easy to guess strings like "holy see (vatican city
> state).info" and "macedonia, the former yugoslav republic of.info" will be
> reserved.
>
> Also, ISO-3166 does not define the names of the countries, but their codes:
> the names are provided for reference to point to the ISO codes. In fact, if
> you look at ISO-3166 attentively, there are some slight glitches in the
> names (for instance, "Taiwan, Province of China" should read "Taiwan
> Province of China", without comma).
> The authoritative source for the names is not ISO, but the United Nations
> Statistic Division (see: http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/). Official
> bulletins define both the short form, used in day-to-day work, and the long
> (official) form. Moreover, this list is translated in all official UN
> languages, and UNSD keeps track of the names of the countries in their
> native language[s]. First hand, complete and correct information.
> In simple words, the matter is a little bit more complicated than what some
> Directors have assumed.
>
> Anyway, my personal pick is for a specialised TLD where the Member States of
> the UN can register one or more SLDs of their choice (to be consistent with
> the documentation managed by UNSD), and then it is their choice whether they
> want to use it or not, subdivide geographically, give it to trademarks
> owners or tourist associations or their national Registry. They can choose
> if the name will be in English, French, or the national language[s],
> provided, as I said, that the string is compatible with the UNSD
> documentation.
>
> My personal thanks to Directors (in alphabetical order) Abril y Abril,
> Auerbach, Blokzijl, Mueller-Maguhn, Murai, Pisanty, Quaynor, who voted
> against, arguing that some more thinking was needed before deciding.
>
> Best regards
> Roberto
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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--
Dan Steinberg

SYNTHESIS:Law & Technology
35, du Ravin  phone: (613) 794-5356
Chelsea, Quebec  fax:   (819) 827-4398
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