User news - Comments related to .su ccTLD
Dear ALAC: Reuters is reporting that a large # of Russian Internet enthusiasts would like to petition ICANN to keep the .SU ccTLD. As these are - "users", that we are supposed to represent... well, what do we want to do? Shall we see if we can get one of the groups involved to brief ALAC on their issues, so that we can - if needed represent their concerns to the board.. ? regards Robert -- http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL1986480720070919 USSR still alive on Internet and won't go quietly Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:20pm EDT By James Kilner MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Internet enthusiasts are locked in a tussle with an international body over a relic of the Soviet past -- the .su domain name assigned to the country just before the Soviet Union collapsed. The U.S.-based body that oversees the World Wide Web's structure, ICANN, says the name is out of date and wants to kill it off. But thousands of Internet users still use the suffix -- in part for its nostalgia value -- and are fighting to save it. Though nearly 16 years have passed since the end of the Soviet Union, .su is increasingly popular with businesses, clubs and political groups and Russian lobbyists on Wednesday said they had started negotiations with ICANN to keep it. "We want to try and save it," Alexei Platonov, director of the independent Russian Institute of Public Networks, which promotes technology use, said at a news briefing. "First there is the community and secondly there is also the history of the domain name ... It's original and offers Web site names that other domains don't have any more," Platonov said. The .su domain name was assigned to the Soviet Union as its country code on September 19, 1990 at the start of the internet revolution. The Soviet Union ceased to exist 15 months later. The .ru domain assigned to Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart is by far the most popular domain name for Russians but people continue to register the .su the domain name. Figures released by the .su lobbyists show there are nearly 10,000 registered Web sites with the domain name and around 1,500 new ones have been added this year. ICANN, or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, say it is tackling the .su name as part of its drive to clean the internet of seemingly outdated domain names. Countries' domain names are designated according to an international list called ISO 3166-1 which holds two letter codes for every nation. As the Soviet Union is no longer on the list, the .su domain should be scrapped just as .cs died after Czechoslovakia split into the Czech republic and Slovakia in 1993, ICANN has said. After Zaire changed its name in 1997 to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the .zr domain name was also scrapped. "In 1992 it (.su) was taken off the ISO list and since that day it has been at odds with the ISO standard," Kim Davies from ICANN told Reuters in a telephone interview from Los Angeles earlier this year. "Our primary aim is to maintain the stability of the internet." Russian .su lobbyists, who are independent from the government, pointed out though that other two letter country domain names not on the ISO 3166-1 list are being used. These include Britain's .uk for the United Kingdom which gained prominence over the list's .gb for Great Britain. But the Russian campaigners say there is no danger of an Internet Cold War breaking out over the issue. "I have to stress relations are friendly," said Alexei Soldatov, head of the Fund for the Development of the Internet, a Russian non- governmental group. © Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
Interesting thread on that here: http://blog.icann.org/?p=195 I'm not convinced that ICANN *must* retire .SU, primarily because I don't think the ISO will ever repurpose the SU characters for some other country's use. At least for a few generations, SU will always be associated with the Soviet Union. On Sep 21, 2007, at 7:18 AM, Robert Guerra wrote:
Dear ALAC:
Reuters is reporting that a large # of Russian Internet enthusiasts would like to petition ICANN to keep the .SU ccTLD. As these are - "users", that we are supposed to represent... well, what do we want to do?
Shall we see if we can get one of the groups involved to brief ALAC on their issues, so that we can - if needed represent their concerns to the board.. ?
regards
Robert --
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL1986480720070919
USSR still alive on Internet and won't go quietly Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:20pm EDT
By James Kilner
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Internet enthusiasts are locked in a tussle with an international body over a relic of the Soviet past -- the .su domain name assigned to the country just before the Soviet Union collapsed.
The U.S.-based body that oversees the World Wide Web's structure, ICANN, says the name is out of date and wants to kill it off. But thousands of Internet users still use the suffix -- in part for its nostalgia value -- and are fighting to save it.
Though nearly 16 years have passed since the end of the Soviet Union, .su is increasingly popular with businesses, clubs and political groups and Russian lobbyists on Wednesday said they had started negotiations with ICANN to keep it.
"We want to try and save it," Alexei Platonov, director of the independent Russian Institute of Public Networks, which promotes technology use, said at a news briefing.
"First there is the community and secondly there is also the history of the domain name ... It's original and offers Web site names that other domains don't have any more," Platonov said.
The .su domain name was assigned to the Soviet Union as its country code on September 19, 1990 at the start of the internet revolution. The Soviet Union ceased to exist 15 months later.
The .ru domain assigned to Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart is by far the most popular domain name for Russians but people continue to register the .su the domain name.
Figures released by the .su lobbyists show there are nearly 10,000 registered Web sites with the domain name and around 1,500 new ones have been added this year.
ICANN, or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, say it is tackling the .su name as part of its drive to clean the internet of seemingly outdated domain names.
Countries' domain names are designated according to an international list called ISO 3166-1 which holds two letter codes for every nation.
As the Soviet Union is no longer on the list, the .su domain should be scrapped just as .cs died after Czechoslovakia split into the Czech republic and Slovakia in 1993, ICANN has said.
After Zaire changed its name in 1997 to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the .zr domain name was also scrapped.
"In 1992 it (.su) was taken off the ISO list and since that day it has been at odds with the ISO standard," Kim Davies from ICANN told Reuters in a telephone interview from Los Angeles earlier this year.
"Our primary aim is to maintain the stability of the internet."
Russian .su lobbyists, who are independent from the government, pointed out though that other two letter country domain names not on the ISO 3166-1 list are being used.
These include Britain's .uk for the United Kingdom which gained prominence over the list's .gb for Great Britain.
But the Russian campaigners say there is no danger of an Internet Cold War breaking out over the issue.
"I have to stress relations are friendly," said Alexei Soldatov, head of the Fund for the Development of the Internet, a Russian non- governmental group.
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
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Bret Fausett ha scritto:
Interesting thread on that here:
I'm not convinced that ICANN *must* retire .SU, primarily because I don't think the ISO will ever repurpose the SU characters for some other country's use. At least for a few generations, SU will always be associated with the Soviet Union.
The issue came up for chit-chat with the Board months ago (I think it's in one of my past reports). I understand the difficulty in keeping it as a ccTLD if it goes away from the ISO list, and even if it doesn't, because there would be issues about who is the appropriate party in case of redelegations etc.; also, ICANN is afraid of establishing a precedent that allows no-more-existing ccTLDs to stay, especially when a transition was supposed to happen (though I'm unsure whether anyone can produce a piece of paper where someone ever agreed to transition it out, even in '91...). However, most techies' position seems to be "we don't care about registrants, they should have known it'd have gone away", which I find unfair, because no one, including ICANN, ever warned people that this domain would have gone away. So simply turning it off, which is what several people in the ICANN community seem to advocate, sounds unacceptable to me. My two-cent proposal would have been to keep all registrations but transition it to a gTLD, perhaps changing suffix through a predictable scheme - for example, .SU could become .XSU, and other ccTLDs for which a transition is unadvisable could follow a similar scheme in the future (before you ask, no, there's no .XX ccTLD). This would allow to manage the domain as a gTLD policy-wise, but would also provide a clear transition path that does not confuse users too much: yes it's a transition, but it's just one extra char, and it's the same for all the domains under .SU, so the average user will figure it out quite easily, much like, say, an area code renumbering in the telephone numbering system. But I'm afraid that this might also become a political issue, with several former-Soviet-now-American-friendly countries pushing for .SU to disappear forever, together with lots of bad memories (and with the Soviet nostalgic advocates in their own neighbourhoods); and Russia pushing for it to stay, as it's often used by Russian minorities in ex-Soviet countries. And the (alleged) Estonian cyberwar didn't make this easier. Regards, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Greetings! The issue raised around keeping .SU is very sensitive. As a FORMER citizen of the SU I can collect much more petitions against keeping .SU compared to the number of those who want to keep it. ... Internet prohibits pornography, nazi web sites, etc. More than a quarter of the population of Moldova was killed or deported during the SU. If looking at things from this perspective this is similar to what the Nazi did in their times. So, it is very simple - SU does not exist any more, and it can not stay as a ccTLD any longer. Vittorio's proposal to have a gTLD .XSU is good - it can be one option, but I am more than sure that those Russians opting for SU would rather prefer to register in .RU. Best regards everyone, Veronica ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vittorio Bertola" <vb@bertola.eu> To: "Bret Fausett" <bfausett@internet.law.pro> Cc: "At-Large Worldwide" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 6:15 PM Subject: Re: [At-Large] User news - Comments related to .su ccTLD
Bret Fausett ha scritto:
Interesting thread on that here:
I'm not convinced that ICANN *must* retire .SU, primarily because I don't think the ISO will ever repurpose the SU characters for some other country's use. At least for a few generations, SU will always be associated with the Soviet Union.
The issue came up for chit-chat with the Board months ago (I think it's in one of my past reports).
I understand the difficulty in keeping it as a ccTLD if it goes away from the ISO list, and even if it doesn't, because there would be issues about who is the appropriate party in case of redelegations etc.; also, ICANN is afraid of establishing a precedent that allows no-more-existing ccTLDs to stay, especially when a transition was supposed to happen (though I'm unsure whether anyone can produce a piece of paper where someone ever agreed to transition it out, even in '91...).
However, most techies' position seems to be "we don't care about registrants, they should have known it'd have gone away", which I find unfair, because no one, including ICANN, ever warned people that this domain would have gone away. So simply turning it off, which is what several people in the ICANN community seem to advocate, sounds unacceptable to me.
My two-cent proposal would have been to keep all registrations but transition it to a gTLD, perhaps changing suffix through a predictable scheme - for example, .SU could become .XSU, and other ccTLDs for which a transition is unadvisable could follow a similar scheme in the future (before you ask, no, there's no .XX ccTLD). This would allow to manage the domain as a gTLD policy-wise, but would also provide a clear transition path that does not confuse users too much: yes it's a transition, but it's just one extra char, and it's the same for all the domains under .SU, so the average user will figure it out quite easily, much like, say, an area code renumbering in the telephone numbering system.
But I'm afraid that this might also become a political issue, with several former-Soviet-now-American-friendly countries pushing for .SU to disappear forever, together with lots of bad memories (and with the Soviet nostalgic advocates in their own neighbourhoods); and Russia pushing for it to stay, as it's often used by Russian minorities in ex-Soviet countries. And the (alleged) Estonian cyberwar didn't make this easier.
Regards, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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Veronica: I agree with you. That being said, I think at-large should be a place where such items are discussed. After all, if users have concerns on or about ICANN issues then at-large and ALAC should be involved. At least, it should be consulted. A related ccTLD issue is that of .yu. I recently visited Belgrade and noticed many billboards with URL's announcing a specific product or company. YU is still being used, and vary widely despite what we may hear from ICANN meetings. So what do we do? A slovenian ALS has just joined us. Perhaps they can let us know their thoughts on this issue. Will be interesting to see if there opinions match yours in regards to .su.. ? regards, Robert --- Robert Guerra <rguerra@privaterra.ca> Managing Director, Privaterra Tel +1 416 893 0377 On 21-Sep-07, at 12:00 PM, Veronica Cretu wrote:
Greetings! The issue raised around keeping .SU is very sensitive. As a FORMER citizen of the SU I can collect much more petitions against keeping .SU compared to the number of those who want to keep it. ... Internet prohibits pornography, nazi web sites, etc. More than a quarter of the population of Moldova was killed or deported during the SU. If looking at things from this perspective this is similar to what the Nazi did in their times. So, it is very simple - SU does not exist any more, and it can not stay as a ccTLD any longer. Vittorio's proposal to have a gTLD .XSU is good - it can be one option, but I am more than sure that those Russians opting for SU would rather prefer to register in .RU.
Best regards everyone, Veronica
----- Original Message ----- From: "Vittorio Bertola" <vb@bertola.eu> To: "Bret Fausett" <bfausett@internet.law.pro> Cc: "At-Large Worldwide" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 6:15 PM Subject: Re: [At-Large] User news - Comments related to .su ccTLD
Bret Fausett ha scritto:
Interesting thread on that here:
I'm not convinced that ICANN *must* retire .SU, primarily because I don't think the ISO will ever repurpose the SU characters for some other country's use. At least for a few generations, SU will always be associated with the Soviet Union.
The issue came up for chit-chat with the Board months ago (I think it's in one of my past reports).
I understand the difficulty in keeping it as a ccTLD if it goes away from the ISO list, and even if it doesn't, because there would be issues about who is the appropriate party in case of redelegations etc.; also, ICANN is afraid of establishing a precedent that allows no-more- existing ccTLDs to stay, especially when a transition was supposed to happen (though I'm unsure whether anyone can produce a piece of paper where someone ever agreed to transition it out, even in '91...).
However, most techies' position seems to be "we don't care about registrants, they should have known it'd have gone away", which I find unfair, because no one, including ICANN, ever warned people that this domain would have gone away. So simply turning it off, which is what several people in the ICANN community seem to advocate, sounds unacceptable to me.
My two-cent proposal would have been to keep all registrations but transition it to a gTLD, perhaps changing suffix through a predictable scheme - for example, .SU could become .XSU, and other ccTLDs for which a transition is unadvisable could follow a similar scheme in the future (before you ask, no, there's no .XX ccTLD). This would allow to manage the domain as a gTLD policy-wise, but would also provide a clear transition path that does not confuse users too much: yes it's a transition, but it's just one extra char, and it's the same for all the domains under .SU, so the average user will figure it out quite easily, much like, say, an area code renumbering in the telephone numbering system.
But I'm afraid that this might also become a political issue, with several former-Soviet-now-American-friendly countries pushing for .SU to disappear forever, together with lots of bad memories (and with the Soviet nostalgic advocates in their own neighbourhoods); and Russia pushing for it to stay, as it's often used by Russian minorities in ex-Soviet countries. And the (alleged) Estonian cyberwar didn't make this easier.
Regards, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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A few comments. Robert Guerra:
A related ccTLD issue is that of .yu. I recently visited Belgrade and noticed many billboards with URL's announcing a specific product or company. YU is still being used, and vary widely despite what we may hear from ICANN meetings. So what do we do?
The recent agreement was that .YU was being phased out, while the new .SR (and .ME) were phased in. The indicative timeframe is 2-3 years. We cannot expect .YU to vanish instantly, also because the .RS (and .ME) were not established yet. It is a catch 22: you cannot migrate to something that does not exist yet, and you cannot condition the delegation of a new TLD to the disappearance of the "ancestor" without leaving registrants without their domains. Veronica Cretu:
... Internet prohibits pornography, nazi web sites, etc. More than a quarter of the population of Moldova was killed or deported during the SU. If looking at things from this perspective this is similar to what the Nazi did in their times.
I would like to try to separate TLD from the contents. I can understand the reasons to forcefully close a web site with offensive content (although I believe that different people might have different opinions on that) from forcefully closing a TLD that has hosted sites that were acquiescent to bad things happening, but also web sites that were related, for instance, to research and development. To make an example, suppose we have now a dictatorship in Badcountryland, we cannot assume that when the dispotic dictator will no longer be in power we will also change the ISO code of Badcountryland. Bret Fausett:
I'm not convinced that ICANN *must* retire .SU, primarily because I don't think the ISO will ever repurpose the SU characters for some other country's use.
Unfortunately, this has happened before. The code "CS", assigned to former Czechoslowakia, was reassigned to Serbia and Montenegro. Luckily IANA managed to convince the .YU operators to avoid requesting delegation of the new code and migration of .YU into .CS, otherwise we would have had a gigantic mess. But may I stress the fact that, while the ccTLD was never requested, and therefore never delegated, the ISO-3166 Maintenance Agency had indeed reassigned the code. Vittorio Bertola:
I'm unsure whether anyone can produce a piece of paper where someone ever agreed to transition it out, even in '91...
That is indeed the problem. Back then, IANA had only verbal engagement from the new .RU operator about the migration out from .SU. As we all know, "verba volant, scripta manent", so the same mistake has not been repeated for .YU.
However, most techies' position seems to be "we don't care about registrants, they should have known it'd have gone away", which I find unfair, because no one, including ICANN, ever warned people that this domain would have gone away.
I completely agree with Vittorio, with the only caveat that ICANN had a very good reason for not warning the registrants, which is that it did not exist yet. The task to warn the registrants was of the .SU operator, but as discussed above, this was never put down contractually.
(before you ask, no, there's no .XX ccTLD).
There will never be. XX is reserved by ISO-3166, like the whole X- series, for user-defined applications. Cheers, Roberto
participants (5)
-
Bret Fausett -
Robert Guerra -
Roberto Gaetano -
Veronica Cretu -
Vittorio Bertola