Re: "the ICANN Board resolved that the ICANN community including the GNSO, ccNSO, GAC, and ALAC provide the Board with responses to the published list of issues and questions that need to be addressed in order to move forward with IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes in a manner that ensures the continued security and stability of the Internet. The Board requests status reports regarding progress by the conclusion of the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles in October 2007." I will admit to being confused by the questions initially put forth in the Issues Paper: "Selection of IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two letter codes". The document begins with the following: Which territories are eligible for an IDN ccTLD? The existence of IDNs as ccTLDs assumes a direct relationship between an IDN TLD string and a territory as in ASCII ccTLDs. a) Should this relationship be maintained? b) If so, should the territories which are potentially eligible for IDN ccTLDs be exactly the same as the territories that are listed in the ISO-3166-1 list? c) If not, should another list be used or should another mechanism be developed? No answers are provided to these questions, yet the groundwork on this topic on the advantages and disadvantages of geographical units was laid out five years ago in the paper "Discussion Paper on Non-ASCII Top-Level Domain Policy Issues (Revised Draft)" at http://www.icann.org/committees/idn/non-ascii-tld-paper-13jun02.htm and offered a greater sense of clarity (as at least an effort was made to evaluate the relative pros and cons). At first glance it seems like this document is a step backwards... would be nice to hear the views of others. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow