[governance] NTIA on certain geographic names...

[Mawaki Chango]

It makes sense to me that national sovereignty does not provide for any
exclusive rights over the use of names of places or words of a language,
even if that language is only spoken in one country on earth. However, the
people living in those places (eg, cities) should have a say in one form or
the other, to the extent that the name at hand unambiguously or
presumptively designates one such place or that the TLD string is meant to
do so. In other terms, this should be the business of the local community,
not the central government.

On the other hand, I wish the US government recognizes that what cannot be
granted to national sovereignty in terms of gTLD strings cannot and should
not be granted to intellectual property rights (IPR) holders. There was a
time when registries eemed to claim a sort of PR over the meaning of the
TLD they're managing, or IPR stakeholders generally over that of their
ASCII domain names, and tried to preempt ownership of any future IDN
versions. I don't even understand how we got there, since I thought
registries do not have property rights per se over (or ownership of) the
gTLD. While I exited that debate some time ago, I hope this is a settled
matter that IPR holders over a given string of characters in a given
jurisdiction do not automatically enjoy an exclusive right over the
intended meaning of that string in all jurisdictions, and thus, over all
versions of it in any scripts at the same domain name level. The global
nature of the Internet notwithstanding, the ultimate sources of actual
rights are still off line.

Mawaki










On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca> wrote:

> July 2013
>
> U.S. STATEMENT ON GEOGRAPHIC NAMES IN ADVANCE OF ICANN DURBAN MEETING
>
> The United States has listened carefully to the concerns expressed by
> colleagues on certain geographic strings. It is our sincere hope that
> individual governments can resolve their concerns on specific geographic
> strings through agreements on specific safeguards negotiated with the
> relevant applicants. We encourage all parties to continue to do so
> leading to Durban. However, in the event the parties cannot reach
> agreement by the time this matter comes up for decision in the GAC, the
> United States is willing in Durban to abstain and remain neutral on
> .shenzen (IDN in Chinese), .persiangulf, .guangzhou (IDN in Chinese),
> .amazon (and IDNs in Japanese and Chinese), .patagonia, .yun, and .thai,
> thereby allowing the GAC to present consensus objections on these
> strings to the Board, if no other government objects.
>
> The United States affirms our support for the free flow of information
> and freedom of expression and does not view sovereignty as a valid basis
> for objecting to the use of terms, and we have concerns about the effect
> of such claims on the integrity of the process. We considered that the
> GAC was of the same mind when it accepted ICANN’s definition of
> geographic names in February 2011 and agreed that any potential
> confusion with a geographic name could be mitigated through agreement
> between the applicant and the concerned government. In addition, the
> United States is not aware of an international consensus that recognizes
> inherent governmental rights in geographic terms. Therefore, the choice
> made in this discrete case does not prejudice future United States
> positions within the ICANN model or beyond.
>
> Recognizing that the current rules for the new gTLD program do not
> specifically prohibit or condition these strings, we expect the specific
> issue of how to better address individual government concerns as well as
> other relevant considerations, including the free flow of information
> and freedom of expression, in the context of geographic terms, to be
> considered in the review of the new gTLD program as mandated by the
> Affirmation of Commitments . This review hopefully will provide guidance
> as to how better to address this issue in future rounds of new gTLDs.
>
>
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