Re: [wg-c] Commission Working paper on the creation of .EU

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

Hi All,
	I know I'm a week late, but hey, I needed the two week holiday! (and
catching up is a pain).

> Kevin,
> In the internet there is no such thing.  These things were always at the whim
> of Dr Postel as long as he didn't raize the ire of the NSF.  Now with the DoC
> being involved and ICANN doing what it pleases, anything is probably fair game.
> 
> But the fact remains that he is correct, it is the current practice, and I
> fully support it remaining that way. 
> 
> So then the question remains, do regions qualify for "regional" domains in the
> ccTLD class?
> 
> Interesting question. 
> 
> But rather than places them in the 2 letter domain category traditionally
> reserved for ISO-3166 based delegation, I would much prefer to see them use a 3
> letter variation, like .eur, which makes more sense anyway.
> 
> I also think that Milton has it spot on.  There is absolutely NO reason why the
> European Union proposal should be considered as ANY different from any new TLD,
> and subject to all of the processes that are being developed for same.

If the European Union were to attempt an approach by going directly to ICANN
and saying "put '.eu' in the roots and give it to me" without any OTHER
action, then it would be quite abnormal, and I would agree totally with you
in that the attitude would be no different from f.e. IOD requesting '.web'.
Also, they would be going completely against the acceptance (you may or not
like it, but it is there) that two-letter codes are for ISO-3166 2-letter
listings.

However, that is *not* what the European Union is doing. The European Union
has approached ISO and said "hi, we want the code '.eu' in ISO-3166". As
such, the ISO-3166 maintanance agency *seems* quite favorable in that it has
already included '.eu' in the list of reserved codes.

Assuming that the EU *does* achieve listing of ".eu", then inclusion in the
traditional root system is something that could be considered a right. In
any case, RFC-1591 states quite clearly that IANA (now ICANN) is *NOT* in
the business of deciding who is or isn't a country and that the decision is
deferred to the ISO-3166 list. In other words, if your two-letters are in
ISO-3166 you get an entry in the taditional roots, and if your two-letters
are not in ISO-3166, you don't. The only exception to that was the request
from UK to have ".uk" instead of ".gb" because it was more inclusive.

You may argue all you want the merits or lack of them as to whether the EU
can or not be considered a country, but keep in mind that although we
call the current group of 2-letter TLDs the "ccTLDs", in fact in that list
there are quite a LOT of combinations over which the consideration of them
as a country is more than debatable. For example (and forgive any mistake I
may have made by attributing as dependent a territory that is independent):

.tf Franch Southern Territories (in fact antarctic islands with penguins living
    on them).
.io British Indian Ocean Territory (I've never actually figured out what
    islands or body of water this is supposed to cover).
.fk Falkland Islands (british colony -disputed by Argentina- but certainly
    NOT independent. Either British or Argentinian, depending where you stand)
.pr Puerto Rico (is it an independent country? If so, then why are you
    legally entitled to stick "made in USA" to produce from there?)
.gp, .mq, .gf, .re Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guyanne and Reunion. All
    of them are what France calls "DOM" which means overseas department, or
    in other words, provinces that are not on the mainland.
.nc, .yt, .pf, .pm New Caledonia, Mayotte, French Polinesia, St Pierre and
    Michelon. ALL of them are what France calls "TOM" which means overseas
    territories. They have some degeree of autonomy but still depend on
    France.
.mh Marshall Islands (USA territory I believe?).
.vi US Virgin Islands (also USA territory?).
.hk Hong-Kong (try telling China that Hong-Kong is a country).
.gi Gibraltar (UK colony, with some autonomy but...)
.im, .je, .gg Isle of Mann, Jersey and Guernsey. All of them small islands
    around UK under british sovereignty (with different levels of autonomy,
    but not countries)
.gl Greenland (it belongs to Denmark!)
.an Netherlands Antilles (A dutch colony in the Caribbean, fully dependent
    on the Netherlands).
.aq Antartica. Hey, is THIS a country?????

And that's just a list off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm missing half of
them...

On the other side of the coin, we could argue for inclusion with lots of
different reasons for Tibet, Scotland, Western Sahara, Basque Country,
Corsica, Kurds (or whatever you'd like to call a Kurd countrolled
territory) etc etc etc...

The fact of the matter is that IANA and now ICANN is *NOT* in the political
business of granting or not country status to ANYTHING. It just picks up
ISO-3166 "as is" and works off that. 
For entities like IOD it is very convenient to try and ignore this and
somehow paint an addition of '.eu' as jumping the queue, but for that
matter, two ccTLDs that I have direct involvement with were included AFTER
Chris setup his ".web"-zone, so under that consideration quite a few
two-letter TLDs have already passed in front of him too!!!

Do you have a gripe with ".eu" being listed as European Union in ISO-3166?
Then take it up with the ISO maintenance agency. But do note that the
current European Union is not that much different from the federation of
states that makes up USA (U is United and S is States).
Whatever, it is NOT something that ICANN should at all get involved with,
nor do I think should this WG get involved with either, unless of course the
European Union decides to add ".eu" via some other method than by going
through ISO-3166.
Same goes for Palestine.
If Chris can manage to pull one off with ISO and get IOD listed as a country
with ".we" as a two letter code, then fine by me if he gets that inserted in
the legacy roots.

Yours, John Broomfield.