Vittorio Bertola wrote, On 09/02/2007 14:30:
Specifically, I would be concerned if ICANN, in front of a technically valid application, refused to approve it for fear of an upset reaction by some governments (starting from Morocco). Indeed. Adding a new ccTLD to the root is an administrative and technical process, not a political one. Actually the acronym ccTLD is improper. The ISO codes match statistical entities as defined by the UN. Sovereign countries are only a part of these.
After the triple-x saga, it would be good for the ICANN board to send out a clear signal that it intends to limit itself to its narrow technical role of preserving the security and stability of the Internet, not taking into account irrelevant political pressure. Per RFC920: "Domains are administrative entities. The purpose and expected use of domains is to divide the name management required of a central administration and assign it to sub-administrations. There are no geographical, topological, or technological constraints on a domain." And per RFC1591: "The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a country. The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a procedure for determining which entities should be and should not be on that list." Patrick