There's an important policy issue here about what weight a political process should have in ICANN's decisions. Once upon a long time ago, Jon Postel specifically declined to issue ccTLDs to governments, only to groups representing users, on the theory that governments change, but the users are always here. (ICANN has proven more sympathetic to government interests than Postel.) So if the residents of Berlin want a .BERLIN, but the local government makes it a political issue for one side or another, what should ICANN do? The bidding of the prevailing political party or the will of the users? Do you balance them? What weight do you give each? What if the German government supports it but the municipal government opposes it? .BERLIN is an interesting test case because it is far ahead of other city/municipal-based bids for TLDs. It's also interesting because ICANN has experience with countries (ccTLDs) and even regions (.CAT, .ASIA) but has no experience with municipalities. I have no idea what Berlin is like, but my personal experience is that municipal governments are more volatile than larger political entities, so this could present a different set of issues than what we've seen in the past. Bret On Dec 11, 2007, at 8:20 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
OK, enlighten me. Why is the local political handling of one specific TLD the business of ALAC? Why should the global at-large community (or even EURALO) get involved in what seems to me like a purely local issue?