[ga] FYI: Proposed Action Plan on .info Country Names

[Alexander Svensson <alexander@svensson.de>]

http://www.icann.org/montevideo/action-plan-country-names-09oct01.htm
_________
[...]
 Proposed Action Plan

 The Board's resolution 01.93 directed the President to propose an
 action plan for rapid analysis of the technical and other issues
 related to the concerns raised by the GAC. The following plan is
 proposed pursuant to that resolution:

 1. To allow discussion of the issues raised by the GAC request
 concerning .info names, maintain reservation of the 327 .info names.

 The interim reservation of country and distinct economy names in
 .info enables the ICANN community to evaluate the technical and
 other issues related to the concerns raised by the GAC, and whether
 the temporarily reserved names in .info should be made available to
 governments and distinct economies at their request, as requested
 by the GAC and agreed to by Afilias. The reservation should be
 maintained until the March 2002 ICANN meeting in Accra.

 2. Convene a discussion group to explore appropriate ways of
 addressing the short-term issue of the disposition of the 327
 .info names.

 The GAC communiqué and ICANN Board resolutions in Montevideo show a
 divergence of opinions regarding the GAC's recommendations concerning
 country names within .info. To help resolve this divergence, a
 discussion group should be convened consisting of members of the
 ICANN Board and the GAC. In addition, representatives of Afilias and
 WIPO should be invited to join the group. The discussion group should
 invite input to the specific issue of assignment of these 327 names
 from the DNSO and other interested parties within the Internet
 community.

 The discussion group should address at least the following issues as
 part of its analysis. It should be emphasized that there is now a
 precise proposed list available that has been derived from ISO-3166
 and that this list has been endorsed by GAC, that is, the technical
 problems of which country lists to select has been superseded by the
 pragmatic acceptance of a precise list of names.

 a) Should ICANN prohibit the agreed arrangements for the assignment
 of up to the 327 of the temporarily "frozen" .info names to
 governments for use to support official informational websites? Are
 there considerations that require prohibiting the agreed arrangements?

 b) Would assignment of these .info country names impede future
 discussions regarding the general policy for country or distinct
 economy names in other TLDs?

 c) Would allowing the agreed arrangement for the .info country names
 create a precedent that could lead to similar requirements for other
 TLDs? Is the GAC willing to commit that reservations of country
 distinct economy names will not be sought in other TLDs at least
 until the outcome of the WIPO-2 discussions?

 The discussion group's conclusions should be provided to the ICANN
 Board before the Accra meeting in March 2002.

 3. Encourage the Domain Name Supporting Organization to evaluate
 possible approaches for longer-term arrangements concerning use of
 geographic names within the DNS, including having the matter
 addressed in other fora such as the WIPO-2 process.

 In addition to addressing the short-term issue of .info names as
 described above, attention should be given to the longer-term
 issue of how country names should be treated in other TLDs. This
 longer-term issue was raised in the November 2000 GAC communiqué
 and is also the subject of discussion within the WIPO-2 process
 and other intergovernmental fora.

 The Domain Name Supporting Organization should be encouraged to
 consider this long-term issue. It should include in its
 consideration whether the issue is better addressed outside the
 ICANN process, such as the WIPO-2 process and other intergovernmental
 fora.
_________

See also:
http://websvr01.afilias.info/whois_search/reserved_names
(I really like santasede-statodellacittadelvaticano.info...)

Best regards,
/// Alexander
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