[governance] NTIA on certain geographic names...

Roland Perry roland at internetpolicyagency.com
Tue Jul 9 08:04:15 EDT 2013


In message 
<CACTo+v8O__vkuZKDTs8SaNGS+gzhf_+_WmfJhBwHYLRyxn41Cw at mail.gmail.com>, at 
10:18:42 on Mon, 8 Jul 2013, Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com> writes
>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

Geographic names are a minefield. Paris, Texas; anyone?

But the ICANN process decided (as it has before with countries) to use 
ISO lists. Although when I asked at an ICANN meeting, staff could not 
produce a copy of the list so that we could understand what it was we 
were potentially agreeing to.

However, ISO (being to some extent based on places you might want to 
mail a letter to) does not recognise 'non-sovereign regions' like 
Scandinavia or Patagonia.

It does, however, recognise regions within countries, like Delta (in 
Nigeria) which creates an instant conflict with a well known airline.
-- 
Roland Perry

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