Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 11:24
PM
Subject: RE: [registrars] Fw: [council]
GAC and country name reservations
Erica,
The GAC is
a standing committee of ICANN whose responsibility is to interpret whether
ICANN's actions are consonant with and do not violate national
laws. It has no clear remit to proactively set ICANN rules, and in
this case its pronouncements should be ignored if not
protested.
The GAC
recommendation is flawed and dangerous on several fronts. In New York,
at the behest of the International Olympic Committee, we saw several Greek
restaurants forced to change their names because of their use of the word
"Olympic", even though their use of the name predated the special status given
to the IOC and its trademarks by Federal law. We could easily see a
repeat of this kind of absurdity.
Here's
what the GAC communique says:
"...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.
The GAC also 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."
Perhaps
it's just sloppy drafting by the GAC, but on my reading this is not just about
country names, but also about any "administrative sub-divisions", which would
include states, provinces, municipalities, police units, political parties,
art museums, etc., etc. In some countries (e.g. France) there is
practically nothing outside flea markets which are not administrative units of
the central government.
What about
"China Online" or "Bell Canada" or other names which incorporate country
names? How about "France Telecom", and ICANN-accredited registrar?
The GAC does not address this issue, but this is exactly how the Olympic Diner
in New York lost its name.
As we all
know, exclusion lists in a registry are very difficult to design and manage
effectively because a variation ("Surinam" and "Suriname"), a translation
("Germany" and "Deutschland"), or an abbreviation ("United
States of America" and "USA") can have equivalent meaning to humans but are
meaningless to machines.
ICANN has
a well-defined mechanism for dealing with "contested registrations", designed
in fact by WIPO, which is a member of GAC (why it's a member of GAC is an
entirely different question). As everyone here knows, registrars were
advised by ICANN to remain blind to registered names and to *not* exercise any
oversight with regard to domain name choices. I therefore don't
understand registrars would need to be aware or implement any restrictions,
especially one as open-ended and ill-defined as the GAC's.
I should
also note that one of the ICANN Board members, Nii Quaynor, who will be
helping to host the upcoming ICANN meeting in Accra, uses an email address at
"ghana.com". Will he be stripped of that?
Registrars
should be aware of the GAC's activist agenda and its strong preference for
governmental control of the Internet. These views are on full display in
the "GAC Principles" where ICANN is reduced to a technical co-ordinating body
which works at the behest of governmental authorities, and which were invoked,
very short-sightedly, by ICANN itself when it redelegated the .AU domain last
month. The independence of ccTLDs has been severly undermined by
the GAC, and I would urge registrars to speak out against governmental
incursion into the gTLD namespaces, especially when the attempt is as
ham-fisted as this one.
Antony Van
Couvering
NameEngine
I draw the attention of Registrars to the recent GAC Communique
which recomends that the names of countries and distinct ecnomies should be
reserved in any new gTLDs and warns that the registration of such names may
be subject to dispute. This warning picks up issues being canvassed
under the WIPO process - partiularly the concern by many governments that
they should be recognised a having intellectual propery rights in
political/geographical names.
Many governments are signatory to a treaty (or similar
agreement) under which they recognise appellation rights in relation to
other industries. While I am not fully across this, I do know
that this has significantly impacted on the wine industry - so that
only wines made from grapes grown in the French Champaigne area can be
called "champaigne", ditto "burgundy" etc. This had a big impact on
the wine industry world wide and established a prededent which gives
governments some form of IP rights in place names.
As I see it, this is primarily an issue for Registries
who are being asked to reserve the relevant names. However, in the
absence of any defined list of relevant names (such as the two letter
country codes on the the ISO 3166-1 list) there is scope for confusion and
dispute - which has the potential to impact on Registrar
business.
The NC is taking this issue under consideration and solicits
comment from the Registrar constituency.
erica
Sent: 24 September 2001 16:56
Subject: [council] GAC and country name reservations
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".
---------------------------------------
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