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

[Steve Crocker]

The new ccTLD path applied only to existing countries and territories.  I think Oceania would have to get an entry in ISO 3166-1 first.

Steve


On Feb 16, 2014, at 8:56 PM, Keith Davidson <keith at internetnz.net.nz> wrote:

> 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