[governance] Is really Bulgarian Cyrillic .?? (.bg) similar to other Latin ccTLDs?

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

I tend to divide this issue into two parts.

- It makes sense to me that the new gTLD program is restricted from 2 character ISO equivalents as that area was mapped off for the ccTLDs a long time ago.

- as for the ccTLD in Fastrack being so limited, I think the ccNSO could have made that a policy decision.  Reading the policy documents, I do see the restriction.  what I see is: " is confusingly similar to an existing TLD or applied-for TLD".  Says nothing about ISO list cdoes that have not been used yet.

Of course in this particular case, even if the policy was there, the similarity isn't, so I think it the harmful confusing similarity issue needs to be reviewed by an external panel that can be agreed to by both parties, ICANN and the applicants.  

Unfortunately the policy as written seems to leave the decision of forming a panel with more expertise to the panel itself.  This is of course absurd, as is the lack of appeal.  This is, therefore, the kind of case where Board oversight is required to allow a proper review and appeal.  

In any case, the panel is not prohibited from acting in an open manner or from consulting with an applicant as to the proper composition of an additional review panel. Sometimes expecting a panel to do the right thing, is the best response to  a problem caused by public assertion of an error having been made.  I beleive this whole issue could probably be dealt with by ICANN and its DNS Stability Panel working with the applicant and creating a truly impartial panel that had the appropriate international expertise to investigate the cases of harmful confusing similarity in IDN ccTLDs.

In the meantime, in the spirit of bottom-up activism, I have taken it upon myself, after my trip to Bulgaria, to work on a possible draft of a possible letter to the ICANN Board on this issue and should be able to send a draft to this list in a few days for consideration.

avri

On 13 Nov 2011, at 03:30, Imran Ahmed Shah wrote:

>> 
>> About the restriction against any 2-char that resembles ASCII characters - this
>> has to do with the history of how country-codes are decided upon. That is,
>> via the ISO list. It may not be a very useful restriction, but a new ICANN
>> process should not be against an already existing process. If this is to changed
>> then an agreement must be made with ISO that ICANN can use such 2-char
>> combinations and that ISO is not delegating them in the future.
>> 
>> That may be more logically, but until this has been decided upon I really see
>> no issue with ICANN having that limitation. I could never be certain, but I
>> would guess the conversation on this list would have been completely
>> different if an ICANN process would cause issues for example for the ISO list
>> and their future implementations on that list.
>> 
>> Tina
>> 
> [IAS:] ICANN process for TLDs was not dependent to the list of 2-char combination managed by ISO to follow, however, it was only being used for a reference list as well as the World Bank list were the references to verify the UN approved Countries and Territories..
> [IAS:] I have cited during early discussion that if ICANN is referring to ISO 3166 list, ISO has to add the columns of the 2-char, 3-char country codes/abbreviations in the official languages of the related country. If, this process could have been done as early the Fast Track program was launched or now for future reference before the launching of the application period for new gTLDs, then the issue could be resolved before the start of the domain of the ICANN. It mean that ICANN has nothing to do for the evaluation of the desired string, like in the case of the ccTLDs, it is not the business of the IANA or ICANN to ask that who is the Country and its String.
> 
> Imran
> 
> 
> 

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