ICANN Reviews Revoking Outdated Suffixes

[Bender]

(AP) -- Over the past few years, the Internet has seen new domain names such as ".eu" for Europe and ".travel" for the travel industry. Now, the key oversight agency is looking to get rid of some.


Meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers began accepting public comments this week on how best to revoke outdated suffixes, primarily assigned to countries that no longer exist.

The Soviet Union's ".su" is the leading candidate for deletion, although the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro are transitioning from ".yu" to their own country codes. A Google search generated millions of ".su" and ".yu" sites.

East Timor now uses ".tl," though about 150,000 sites remain under its older code, ".tp."

Also obsolete is Great Britain's ".gb," which produced no sites on Google. Britons typically use ".uk" for the United Kingdom.

ICANN assigns country codes based on standards set by the International Organization for Standardization, which in turn takes information from the United Nations.

Conflicts can potentially occur when codes are reassigned.

Czechoslovakia didn't need ".cs" after it split into the Czech Republic (".cz") and Slovakia (".sk"). Serbia and Montenegro got ".cs" following the breakup of Yugoslavia, before further splitting into Serbia (".rs") and Montenegro (".me"). (In this case, a crisis was averted because Czechoslovakia let go of ".cs" long before it was reassigned, and Serbia and Montenegro never used it before splitting up.)

A few other domains have already disappeared, including East Germany's ".dd" and Zaire's ".zr" after the country became the Democratic Republic of the Congo (".cd").

ICANN wants to establish a formal policy and is accepting comments online until Jan. 31. Further deletions will likely take a year or longer to give users time to change.

Reductions in the number of domains - now 265 - are likely to be temporary. ICANN is crafting rules on how to roll out additional domains, including ones in non-English characters.

ICANN also is launching a review of eligibility rules for ".int," a domain reserved for international organizations.

http://www.physorg.com/news84736562.html

[Gerry]

two hundred and sixty five

I was wondering what the total was.

Good read and thanks for the story!

[Sarcle]

Yes and either .com gets aliased to .IDN through Dname. Or Icann ends up with about 50,000 extentions. And if that is the case trademark holders have lots of work and lawsuits to do in the near future.

[Rubber Duck]

Yes and either .com gets aliased to .IDN through Dname. Or Icann ends up with about 50,000 extentions. And if that is the case trademark holders have lots of work and lawsuits to do in the near future.

Don't worry. Those that think there is going to be a separate dot com registry for each of hundreds of languages, just haven't thought this through. Not only because it would be totally unworkable and an Information Property Nightmare, but also because there is no reasonable way in which sovereignty or other legal rights can be established over a language. The official language of Pakistan is much widely spoken in India. How realistically are you going to award the right to one or the other, without provoking nuclear war. And even if you did that and both population were annihilated, Verisign would still win through in courts, even though the practical use of such an extension would then be academic. The bottom line is that the only TRUE IDN are in the here and now. They may take on different guises over the next 12 months, but however much crap is talked on the subject, nothing is about to change that will significantly affect existing investments in language character domains.

[Sarcle]

Don't worry. Those that think there is going to be a separate dot com registry for each of hundreds of languages, just haven't thought this through. Not only because it would be totally unworkable and an Information Property Nightmare, but also because there is no reasonable way in which sovereignty or other legal rights can be established over a language. The official language of Pakistan is much widely spoken in India. How realistically are you going to award the right to one or the other, without provoking nuclear war. And even if you did that and both population were annihilated, Verisign would still win through in courts, even though the practical use of such an extension would then be academic. The bottom line is that the only TRUE IDN are in the here and now. They may take on different guises over the next 12 months, but however much crap is talked on the subject, nothing is about to change that will significantly affect existing investments in language character domains.

Yes, personally I am not worried.

I was just trying to make it as simple as I could for those that still can't quite seem to grasp that idns are here and what is here is what's going to stay.

It would be a "near impossible" no I guess those are not the right words. "F-ing impossible" feat for Icann to pull this off and keep stability of the internet to .com ever language in the world to a different root especially since their goal to have IDN.IDN esablished by the end of this coming year. Dname is the only solution for this, and Verisign I'm sure will be damned if .com and .net are going to be given away to anyone else other than them.

[Rubber Duck]

Extract from Bruce Tonkins during IDN Workshops in Sao Paulo:

http://www.icann.org/meetings/saopau...op-06dec06.htm

THE STRING CRITERIA WE'RE TRYING TO CAPTURE SUCH THAT THEY WOULD APPLY TO BOTH AN IDN GTLD AS WELL AS A GTLD THAT DOESN'T USE THAT STANDARD, AND SO THE FIRST ONE IS PRETTY MUCH PICKING UP A LOT OF THE DISCUSSION WE HAVE HEARD SO FAR IN THAT ANY NEW STRING THAT'S INTRODUCED SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSINGLY SIMILAR TO AN EXISTING TLD.

THE STRING SHOULDN'T INFRINGE THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS, IT SHOULD NOT CAUSE TECHNICAL INSTABILITY. AND THIS IS ISSUES WHERE PARTICULAR STRINGS -- AND WE GIVE EXAMPLES LIKE DOT EXE, FOR EXAMPLE, MAY CAUSE ISSUES WITH SOME SOFTWARE THAT ASSUMES THAT'S AN EXECUTABLE FILE AS OPPOSED TO A DOMAIN NAME. AND THERE IS NO DOUBT THERE ARE IDN SCENARIOS HERE AS WELL THAT WE WOULD NEED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT.

AND WE'RE ALSO SEEKING INPUT FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON SOME OF THE STRING ISSUES THAT THEY MAY HAVE. AN EXAMPLE OF A STRING ISSUE THAT THEY MAY HAVE IN TERMS OF PUBLIC POLICY IS THEY MAY STATE THAT A GENERIC TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN SHOULDN'T INCLUDE THE NAME OF A COUNTRY NAME OR PERHAPS THE NAME OF AN EXISTING PLACE....

SO WE WOULD GIVE EXAMPLES OF THE SORTS OF IDN STRINGS THAT WOULD LIKELY CONFLICT WITH EXISTING TLDS. WE WOULD TRY TO PRODUCE THESE GUIDELINES WITH THE OBJECT TO MAXIMIZE THE CHANCE THAT A STRING PROPOSED BY A NEW GTLD WOULD NOT GET ANY OBJECTIONS FROM THE COMMUNITY.

SO IN TERMS OF THE PROCESS FOR INTRODUCING NEW GTLDS, ANY PROPOSED STRING WOULD BE PUBLISHED, AND WIDELY PUBLICIZED. AND OBVIOUSLY DEPENDING ON WHAT THAT STRING WAS, ICANN WOULD MAKE AN EFFORT TO CONTACT THOSE PARTIES THAT MAY BE AFFECTED......

A COMMUNITY CAN OBJECT TO THE STRINGS, BUT BASED ON THE STRING CRITERIAS. THEY CAN'T JUST BE "I OBJECT BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE THAT STRING." IT HAS TO BE "I OBJECT TO THAT STRING BECAUSE IT'S CONFUSINGLY SIMILAR TO AN EXISTING STRING" OR THEY BELIEVE THERE COULD BE TECHNICAL PROBLEMS WITH THAT STRING. AND THEY NEED TO PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF THAT. IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO SIMPLY SAY "I THINK THERE MIGHT BE CAUSE A PROBLEM." THEY WOULD NEED TO PROVIDE EVIDENCE THAT THERE WOULD, IN FACT, BE AN EVIDENCE.....

If any of this suggests to you that Verisign is somehow going to be jostled off the ball with Dot Com, then I suggest that you check your English Dot Coms just to make sure your are in the correct language space. The only true IDN.IDN that is going to mean IDN.com in any language will be part of the Verisign Dot Com registery. IDN.com are TRUE IDNs, they are in use now and there usage is growing.

Yes. IDN.com is not ideal, but realistically, if I were in China and I had to produce Chinese characters for dot CN, to get them to resolve I could manage that. You don't have to be a linguist to mechanically reproduce two or three characters. In the same way the Chinese will manage to do that until a better solution comes along. Lets face it, they are already having to do it with everything. The thing that stumps them is the second level. To be proficient at inputting all the keywords you might potentially need to input, you will need very significant language skills.

If you were shown Chinese character strings, how many of them could you even remember, let alone reproduce, most westerners seem to think that this will have no impact on the functioning of the Internet in Asia. Many of them seem think that use of anything other than English on the Internet is a Balkanisation of the Internet and is equivalent to splitting the root. They cannot grasp that the Internet must and will reflect the linguistic and cultural diversity of the World we all live in. Yes, not all the content on the Internet will be intelligible to all. Actually, it hasn't been for a very long time now. Only English speakers had it all to themselves and that era came to a close well over 5 years ago. There a already Billions of pages in Chinese alone.

To TRUE IDNers all I can say is, wake up, smell the coffee and try to get with the plot!

[Raider]

I'm surprised that .cm is not on that list, althouh not outdated, it should over never been granted in the first place.

[Rubber Duck]

I'm surprised that .cm is not on that list, althouh not outdated, it should over never been granted in the first place.

The origins of Country Codes pre-date the Internet by a very long distance indeed.

http://www.statoids.com/w3166his.html

It may be that going to WIPO on a confusingly similar basis is something that Verisign would rather avoid.

It would in any case create something of a dilemma as with C being a very common letter for the start of countries names, and all the other constants with Cameroon being taken, what options would that have left? The only unused letter left is E. Would CE mean anything to someone in the Cameroon. Somehow, I doubt it!

[Terminator]

Sometimes I mistype my dot coms, for example when checking my stats at domainspa.com. the .cm takes me to another page

I would think with all the brains working at Microsoft, they would install a configuration in their IE browser to allow the user to default certain TLD's, TLD's that we use the most.....Just an idea.

[Rubber Duck]

Even though most of my IDN are dot com and such an arrangement would be even more beneficial to owners of these domains than the conventional dot coms, I would strongly argue against such a solution, but if you check such practices are already in place to some degree.

I personally, believe that it is very dangerous to encourage large companies to decide for themselves where our searches are redirected. If it doesn't resolve then try again. If you get what is clearly the wrong page, then try again. If you are being deliberately typo squatted, then UDRP. If you are simply whinging over some lost type-in that was strictly yours in the first place then stop whining.

As a domainer, you may be taking commercial advantage of the DNS. That is very a very fortunate thing for you, but don't make the mistake of assuming that the whole system has been designed specifically for you benefit. It has not!

[Steen]

Good news. Here I thought ICANN did nothing, turns out they hold worldwide meetings to discuss underused extensions and may even take action.

I'm surprised that .cm is not on that list, althouh not outdated, it should over never been granted in the first place.

That's really not for ICANN to decide (how ccTLDs are used.)

[DNWizardX9]

I'm surprised that .cm is not on that list, althouh not outdated, it should over never been granted in the first place.

The extensions were granted a while back. There are 16 million people living in Cameroon. Why don't they deserve the extension? Stop being selfish.