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21 April 2017

Interim Paper Cross-Community Working Group on Use of Names of Countries and Territories as Top Level Domains

COMMENT

Maureen Hilyard

Wafa Dahmani Zaafouri

20 April 2017

Bart Boswinkel
Bart.Boswinkel@icann.org

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Brief Overview

Purpose: The ccNSO and GNSO chartered a cross-community working group to:

  • Further review the current status of representations of country and territory names, as they exist under current ICANN policies, guidelines and procedures;
  • Provide advice regarding the feasibility of developing a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SOs and ACs; and
  • Should such a framework be deemed feasible, provide detailed advice as to the content of the framework.

Current Status: The CWG has concluded its deliberations whether a harmonized framework is feasible and has concluded for various reasons such a framework is not feasible. The CWG is seeking community feedback and comments on its conclusions and recommendations.

Next Steps: After the closure of the public comment forum, the CWG will review the comments received and revise its conclusions and recommendations, if deemed appropriate, to include in the Final Paper. This paper will be submitted to the ccNSO and GNSO Councils for discussion, adoption and next steps.

Section I: Description, Explanation, and Purpose

The objective of the CWG-UCTN is to draw upon the collective expertise of the participating SOs and ACs and others to:

  • Further review the current status of representations of country and territory names, as they exist under current ICANN policies, guidelines and procedures;
  • Provide advice regarding the feasibility of developing a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SO's and AC's; and
  • Should such a framework be deemed feasible, provide detailed advice as to the content of the framework.

The CWG-UCTN reports on its discussions regarding options around a consistent framework for the treatment of country and territory names as top-level Internet domains (TLDs) and seeks to provide "a review and analysis of the [CWG-UCTN's] objective, draft recommendation and the rationale for the recommendations.

Section II: Background

In March 2014, the ccNSO and GNSO Councils chartered the CWG-UCTN. The objective of the CWG-UCTN is to draw upon the collective expertise of the participating SOs and ACs and others, to:

  • Further review the current status of representations of country and territory names, as they exist under current ICANN policies, guidelines and procedures;
  • Provide advice regarding the feasibility of developing a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SO's and AC's; and
  • Should such a framework be deemed feasible, provide detailed advice as to the content of the framework.

The Interim Paper is the first step to report and inform the community on the progress to date of the CWG-UCTN with respect to its objectives, in particular with respect to providing advice to the ccNSO and GNSO regarding the feasibility of developing a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SOs and ACs.

The first three sections of the Interim Paper provide background on the use of country and territory names in the Domain Name System (DNS), with a focus on use of the country codes in the formative years of the DNS (section 1.2), RFC 1591 (1.3) and post RFC 1591 (1.4). Section 1.4 also contains a more in depth description of ISO 3166 and the related role of the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency with respect to the procedures to assign codes to the name of countries, dependencies, or other areas of particular geopolitical interest. Given the complexity of the topic and cross-community aspects of it, further and again related, Annex B of this paper contains a description of the evolution of the definition of country and territory names leading up to the first round of the new gTLD process.

The ccNSO Study Group, and the CWG-UCTN are briefly introduced in Section 2 and 3 and the paper and Section 4 contains a discussion of the CWG-UCTN's methodology. Section 5 provides a summary of the work completed by the CWG on 2-letter country codes and 3-letter country codes.

The formation of the CWG-UCTN is a recommendation of the earlier ccNSO Study Group on the Use of Country and Territory Names, which was established in May 2011. In its Final Report [PDF, 717 KB], the Study Group recommended that a Cross-Community Working Group be established to:

  • Further review the current status of representations of country and territory names, as they exist under current ICANN policies, guidelines and procedures;
  • Provide advice regarding the feasibility of developing a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SOs and ACs; and
  • Should such a framework be deemed feasible, provide detailed advice as to the content of the framework.

The Study Group considered that such a framework would inform future ICANN policies and procedures as to how names of countries and territories could be used as TLDs:

That is, which policy or procedure is applied to a country or territory name as TLD, determines the applicable governance framework, the structure of relationships between the relevant stakeholders (including end-users) and their respective roles and responsibilities. This is not just relevant for the selection or delegation stage, but also for subsequent stages, once a country or territory name top-level domain is operational.

Section III: Relevant Resources

Interim Paper CWG-UCTN: https://ccnso.icann.org/workinggroups/ccwg-ctn-interim-paper-09feb17-en.pdf [PDF, 1.31 MB]

October 2016 Progress Report CWG-UCTN: https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/49354211/ProgressReport_postHelsinki_Final%20%2025%20October.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1477472845000&api=v2 [PDF, 522 KB]

Charter CWG-UCTN: https://ccnso.icann.org/workinggroups/unct-framework-charter-27mar14-en.pdf [PDF, 118 KB]

Final Report ccNSO Study Group on use of Country and Territory Names, September 2013: https://ccnso.icann.org/workinggroups/unct-final-08sep12-en.pdf [PDF, 717 KB]

Background information CWG-UCTN:

Section IV: Additional Information

Section V: Reports

Staff Contact

Bart Boswinkel
Bart.Boswinkel@icann.org

 

FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED

The final version to be submitted, if the draft is ratified, will be placed here by upon completion of the vote. 

 

FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC

The final draft version to be voted upon by the ALAC will be placed here before the vote is to begin.

 

FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED

The first draft submitted will be placed here before the call for comments begins.

The ALAC appreciates the difficulties experienced by the CWG Framework for the Use of Country and Territory Names as TLDS (CWG-UCTN) in attempting to fulfil its objective to "develop a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SOs and ACs" and we make the following comments with regards to the recommendations posed in the CWG report.

We too agree with Recommendations 1, 2 and 4 noting that the objective of the harmonised framework is important enough to establish a new and inclusive CWG, working on a more clarified Charter, that will continue and complete the development of the framework.

We also opted for Recommendation 3 (c) as it clearly and succinctly defines the intent and direction of the CWG. Any explanation as to why this is important is very clearly detailed in your report.   

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