As a great many North American commercial and non-commercial institutions may be implicated in the upcoming policy process (for example, the web address for FAO Schwarz, the 140-year old toy retailer -- fao.com -- may be found to be "confusing" to those looking for the Food and Agriculture Organization IGO), I would ask NARALO members to weigh in on the topic in a diligent manner to protect the North American interests that may be placed at risk.
How are North American interests different from those in other regions in this regard? I guess much depends on whether one considers .com, .org and .net to be American by context or simply by ownership. In any case, the example above seems pointless in two contexts: 1) The Food and Agriculture Organization, by definition(!), is not even appropriate for the .com TLD (If the changes help to get commercial squatters out of .org and ,net, count me in. There is no reason that mcdonalds.org should be the diety-entitled property of a burger chain if an NPO or NGO or IGO of the same name exists. Conversely, there is no reason that an IGO should be competing/confusing in the namespace used by commercial entities.) 2) There are multiple applications of pretty well every acronym of four letters or less, so whomever gets it would be accused of "confusion". Any legitimate company with the initials "FAO" is no more entitled to the three-lettered domain than anyone else. Of course, WIPO may see things differently. ;-) - Evan