[discuss] Boundaries and sovereignty

Sat Feb 1 10:18:43 UTC 2014

Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 1, 2014, at 3:51 PM, Michel Gauthier <mg at telepresse.com> wrote:
> 
> At 22:36 31/01/2014, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
>> One rationale of trying to remain apolitical was to adopt the ISO 3166 mechanism of assigning country codes.
> 
> I am not sure I understand this? Could you explain more?
> Thank you.
> M G 

Imagine countries and territories fighting for over Country Code top level domains. Imagine for a moment, if Brazil and Brunei were to fight over something like .br .This is merely a hypothetical situation as we know Brazil is assigned .br
This adds a level of politicization if countries and territories would start fighting over names placing the burden of assignment an administrative nightmare. To prioritize a country over another becomes political. It is complex because countries and territories go through self determination, annexes which result in names constantly in flux. New countries are borne, such as South Sudan or former colonies become countries such as New Hebrides (former condominium) to Vanuatu. You can see the change history here: http://www.statoids.com/w3166his.html

The ISO 3166 takes away that layer of politicization from IANA. As the burden to select which country gets which country code is determined by the ISO, see: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes

Whilst there will always be conflicts over country codes, the political risk is mitigated and minimised.