Dear Work Track 5 members,

The WT leadership would like to hear feedback from the group about draft recommendation 7. The current text of the recommendation reads:

The Work Track recommends continuing to consider the following category a country and territory name which is reserved and unavailable for delegation, as stated in the 2012 Applicant Guidebook section 2.2.1.4.1.vi:

permutation or transposition of any of the names included in items (i) through (v). Permutations include removal of spaces, insertion of punctuation, and addition or removal of grammatical articles like “the.” A transposition is considered a change in the sequence of the long or short–form name, for example, “RepublicCzech” or “IslandsCayman.”

The Work Track recommends clarifying language regarding permutation and transposition of country and territory names to specifically state categories of country and territory names for which permutations are reserved and categories of country and territory names for which transpositions are reserved. Many members of the Work Track found the language of this provision confusing as written in the 2012 Applicant Guidebook. For example, transpositions of three character codes appears to have been permitted in the 2012 round, but this was not clear from the AGB language.

The ICANN community may want to consider whether a future process should be established to determine if, when, and how specific interested parties, such as relevant government authorities, may apply for country and territory names.

Currently, the recommendation suggests clarifying the text of the AGB, but does not make a specific suggestion as to how the text should be edited. One possible way forward is to have a general policy recommendation to improve the clarity of the provision, optionally followed by Implementation Guidance suggesting a specific edit to the AGB. Alexander has included a specific suggestion for edits to the AGB text below. If you have thoughts or suggestions on this topic or the specific suggestion below, please respond to this thread.

Kind regards,

Emily

From: Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Susan Payne <susan.payne@valideus.com>
Date: Wednesday, 8 August 2018 at 15:00
To: "alexander@schubert.berlin" <alexander@schubert.berlin>, "gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5@icann.org" <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5@icann.org>
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] WT5 Agenda, Work Plan & Consensus Call on Country & Territory Names - Please review before our call.

All, in the midst of the various other exchanges this email from Alexander seems to have been a little overlooked.

Alexander thanks for catching this. You are absolutely correct that the permutations provision (recommendation 7) should not cover 3-letter codes. We discussed this more than once during WG calls and there was no disagreement that I recall. Staff pointed out that your interpretation (ie that a permutation would cover, and exclude, the same three letters in any order) has not been applied in practice*. Many of us felt that your interpretation was never the intention, and indeed that you cannot change the order to create an entirely different 3-letter term and call that a permutation. Regardless, there was widespread agreement during the previous times this came up that this would benefit from clarification since the reference to permutations in relation to 3-letter codes is meaningless. I wouldn’t view this as you “giving” something to brands, since this has always been the case, but appreciate you spotting the error.

*Here’s an example from the last round: GIN (3-letter code for Guinea); ING (TLD delegated to Google). I haven’t bothered to look for multiple examples.

Susan Payne
Head of Legal Policy | Valideus Ltd

E: susan.payne@valideus.com
D: +44 20 7421 8255
T: +44 20 7421 8299
M: +44 7971 661175

From: Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5 [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Alexander Schubert
Sent: 07 August 2018 16:27
To: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5@icann.org
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] WT5 Agenda, Work Plan & Consensus Call on Country & Territory Names - Please review before our call.

Hi work track members,

In the email from August 6^th we got the attached document: “Recommendations - country and territory names - 6 August 2018 v2”.

I have some questions and corrections:

“RECOMMENDATION #2” specifies “the 2012 Applicant Guidebook section 2.2.1.4.2.i”! Seems it should be section 2.2.1.4.1.i!
We recommend to continue 2.2.1.4.1.vi in this document. In regard to 3-letter country codes section 2.2.1.4.1.vi specifies that permutations (ABC has the two permutations BCA and CAB, letters “rotate” but aren’t “scrambled” which would be a transposition) would be unavailable as well. Which never made ANY sense. Nobody would REMOTELY be able to guess what country permutation is hidden behind EUD or ALV (my two countries DE and LV).
Hence I urge that we recommend to have 2.2.1.4.1.vi NOT anymore referencing to 2.2.1.4.1.i! Transpositions were anyway only referencing to long or short form country names (not to 3 letter codes), and you can’t “remove” punctuation or spaces from a 3 letter code (because by definition there is none). Brand Defenders listen up: If the permutation provision would remain then COUNTLESS 3-letter brands would be denied application without ANY real world reason. Every 3 letter code has two permutations – we would TRIPLE the reserved names by keeping 2.2.1.4.1.vi referencing to “I”. Instead I recommend change wording to:
“it is a permutation or transposition of any of the names included in items (ii) through (v). “.
I personally don’t much care – but my hope is if we do “something” that benefits brands – brands might agree to help protecting sizeable cities: by requiring Government support!
The reference error continues in RECOMMENDATION #3: Should be 2.2.1.4.1.ii and so on.

I cannot recall full support of keeping them unavailable when we discussed permutations of 3 letter ISO 3166 country codes. In whose interest is that? Innocent question to the GAC members: is there ANY country out there that honestly believes that any of its two permutations might be in ANY way conflated with the original 3-letter code? While about 50% of the 3-letter codes are pure garbage (I doubt that there are many Germans who would create a connection between Germany and a domain ending in “.deu”) even for the 50% that are somewhat known (like ARG, LUX, BRA or ISR) it takes quite some effort to guess what country was meant if you see that just as gTLD WITHOUT knowing a country is potentially targeted. Once you only see the permutation without any other reference: there is just no connection with the country:

RGA, GAR
UXL, XLU
RAB, ABR
SRI, RIS

I doubt that anybody here could name just ONE permutation of a 3-letter country code (ISO 3166 Alpha-3) that one out of a ten thousand random Internet users would conflate with the original country. What exactly do we protect here? Whom? Certainly NOT the people of those countries, they are completely NOT affected at all. The good people of Israel most certainly wouldn’t mind if SRI International (sri.com, formerly “The Stanford Research Institute”) would apply for .sri and present their services there. Small detail: sri.com is the 8^th oldest .com domain ever registered; It dates back to January 1986. This domain dates back to the inception of the DNS; SRI was one of the entities that MADE the Internet what it is today. Indeed they were part of the very first computer to computer connection in the Arpanet in 1969.
You all know that I am at times a very “protective” guy. But I wonder how I would explain to the people who literally started the Internet up how I supported a rule that denied SRI their 3-letter code to be part of the top-level of the Internet. Brand folks: you might want to weigh in. Because it is YOU that will have to answer that question to YOUR client one day!

Thanks,

Alexander