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

[bill@mail.nic.nu (J. William Semich)]

Josh:

I'm not sure it is pure fantasy, although you may be closer to the 
"reality" than I.

I do recall that it was Jon Postel's intention that all US government 
agencies, divisions, etc. should start using .us instead of .gov, and given 
time, I could find at least half a dozen references in which he said as 
much, both as IANA and as the .us administrator.

Anyway, I agree it would be a difficult thing to change - still, no harm in 
putting it back on the table, right?

Best regards,

Bill Semich

At 02:27 PM 9/19/2001 -0700, Josh Elliott wrote:
>Bill,
>
>While I understand your point, I still think you are in fantasy world.  The
>reality is that the US will not give up .GOV or .MIL.  I suggest we find a
>more realistic alternative or just leave the governments of the world to use
>their cctld.  Think of .GOV and .MIL as the Internet's donation to the US
>gvt for building the Net in the first place.
>
>If we are going to truly have competition among gTLDs, then country names or
>ISO-3166 codes should not be protected in the new gTLDs as they are not
>protected in .com, .net, and .org.
>
>Josh
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-ga@dnso.org [mailto:owner-ga@dnso.org]On Behalf Of J.
>William Semich
>Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 7:59 AM
>To: Roberto Gaetano; Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr;
>alexander@svensson.de; ga@dnso.org
>Subject: Re: [ga] Geographic and Geopolitical Names in .info
>
>
>
>I strongly recommend that the US Government's DOC release .gov for the use
>by all other officially recognized (by the UN?) government/geopolitical
>organizations wishing to have their own domain names, and not reserve
>geopolitical names in .info for government use. Then at least the
>"consumers" of information on the Internet will know when they are at an
>official government site, and can judge the quality and truthfulness of the
>information presented in that light.
>
>For example, Afghanistan.gov would clearly have information that is
>sanctioned and approved by the government of Afghanistan; but
>Afghanistan.info may have more complete, and objective, information, if it
>is allowed to be registered by an independent source of information about
>Afghanistan (perhaps the Encyclopedia Britannica or some other reliable
>source of information.) The same would hold for usa.info and others.
>
>The key issue here is that a domain name for governments should clearly be
>labeled as just that. And the .gov domain name which is currently "closed
>for US use only", should be opened to other governments to serve that
>purpose internationally, and not the more general .info.
>
>The purpose and meaning of ".info" should not be twisted to mean "whatever
>a particular government of the day wants you to know."
>
>Bill Semich
>Internet Users Society - Niue
>
>At 02:10 PM 9/19/01 +0000, 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
> >
> >
> >
> >_________________________________________________________________
> >Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
> >
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