[discuss] Possible approaches to solving "problem no. 1"

Mon Feb 17 01:56:54 UTC 2014

On 17/02/2014 2:47 p.m., Steve Crocker wrote:
>> Actually the discussion does raise some interesting aspects, particularly in the new gTLD environment. There are a good many new gTLDs that are more aligned in principles to ccTLDs than to the legacy gTLDs - especially country, city and territory names, and also some local non-ASCII language gTLDs. Sovereign rights issues arise somewhat similarly as they do to ccTLDs, as do serving the local Internet community. The US Government "control" via the IANA contract should arguably be trumped by the greater rights of sovereignty and servicing the local community.
>>
>> I wonder if ICANN would give any consideration to applications made for gTLDs under the auspices of RFC1591, rather than the new gTLD processes that have evolved since ICANN was created? Wouldn't there be greater vibrancy and diversity under the more simple framework created by RFC1591? Is ICANNs role to generate stock standard outputs, or to encourage real diversity?
>
> Several years ago I tried to stimulate some discussion along a similar line.  The political/contractual distinction between ccTLDs and gTLDs turned out to be so dominant that it was impossible to draw the lines any other way.
>
> I think the only way to accomplish what you have in mind is to to work within the ICANN framework to bring RFC 1591 ideas into to the GNSO policy framework.  I have no idea whether this might be feasible.
>
> Meanwhile, additional ccTLDs have been created for IDN-ccTLDs.  That's probably not exactly what you have in mind, but it touches on your idea.

Agreed, that the IDN ccTLDs created on the fasttrack were subject to the 
RFC1591 requirements only, considerably simpler / cheaper / quicker than 
the ICANN gTLD process. Which does prove that ICANN can accept new 
non-ISO-3166 ccTLD applications (and RFC1591 determined that the 
ISO-3166 list was the one to be used for delegations of ccTLDs). Which 
leads the way to the interesting possibility that aspiring gTLDs could 
use RFC1591 instead of the ICANN gTLD process - which might be relevant 
to territories, regions or sub-regions that are not recognised on 
ISO-3166. For example, the Oceania region might apply for .oceania...

Cheers

Keith