[Chapter-delegates] WG: NY-ISOC Questions

[Hans P. Dittler]

Hello Chris,
Hello Joly,

I took the liberty to forward your questions also to the .berlin people.

You can find their answers below, perhaps they can be used in your
.nyc-discussion later today 


Hans Peter Dittler
Member of the board
ISOC.DE
Internet Society German Chapter e.V

--------------------------------
Answers from 
 Dirk Krischenowski | dotBERLIN [mailto:krischenowski at dotberlin.de] 

>I have some initial questions from members of the Colorado chapter:

>Has ICANN made any fromal decision to allow these city TLDs yet,
>either in 'prototype' or 'standard' guise?


No, ICANN will evaluate each single cityTLD application in the same
depth
and with the same high standards like any other gTLD application.
There's no
ccTLD-like fast-track procedure for cityTLDs, but it is imaginable that
this
might be established if there's a reasonable pattern behind the cityTLD
applications and some political pressure from the GAC.


>Has any decision been made on how to issue these and on how / who can
>use them?  In more detail; there are many common city names and a
>large number of duplicates around the world.  My assumption is that
>size and age of the city will need to come into play but what will the
>specific requirements / standards be to determine who gets what TLD?
>Following that logic, what mechanisms have been thought of or put in
>place for usage restrictions.  The value of these new local geo TLDs
>is that they represent a single community so I would think that value
>is harmed if the TLD is missused (even with good intentions).  For
>example, what if people in Paris, TX, USA begin to register .paris
>domains?

Nearly any attempt to regulate the use of a TLD has failed, either if
the
registration requirements are too strict (e.g. .museum, .travel, .pro)
which
resulted in a more or less bankruptcy of the TLD and at the end of the
day
to a liberalisation of the registration rules. Or the theoretical
registration requirements have never been enforced (e.g. .org, .net,
.biz)
which resulted in a big success for the TLD. Also the GeoTLDs .cat,
.asia
and .eu are restricted but in any case it is good that there's a way for
interested parties to join these communities. By restricting a cityTLD
too
much means to exclude many eligible and interested people, businesses
and
organisations. This is worse than having a few entities which are not
conform with the Eligibility Requirements. The examples .us and .cat
have
shown that people are aware that the Eligibility Requirements can be
enforced and act considerate when registering a .us/.cat domain name.  

And I think that no one is really confused if some Parisiens companies
and
individuals in Texas like to signify their website with a .paris (e.g.
company-xzy.paris), a user would be much more confused if the finds
company-xyz.us, company-xyz.org or company-xyz.com which has really
nothing
to do with where the company xyz is located. 

The challenge with multiple city names can only be solved if the
applying
cityTLD works together with the other cities with the same name. We (the
.berliners) used multiple political and economic ways to contact and
incorporate other Berlins in our application. For instance, we have
visited
the Berlin in Vermont a couple of weeks ago, organised by the
German-Amercian Chamber of Commerce. But in fact most of the Berlins
worldwide seems not to be interested in participating in the application
(too complicated) but would like to use the domain names later (the easy
way).

>I think most of us know and believe that the current organizations who
>have been fighting for city TLDs for the past few years have the best
>intentions.  Still, once the genie is out of the bottle, will this
>open the door for miscreants to capitalize on registrants and other
>innocent bystanders?  Possible issues such as domain squatting,
>phishing scams, etc come to mind readily.

Since upcoming cityTLDs will be operated under the same parameters like
all other new and existing gTLDs they also have to fullfil at least the
same
requirements for fighting fraud, securing trademarks and other
mechanisms.
By this the city and other regional TLDs are in the same flood when
ICANN
opens the gate, but the bottleneck will be very strict controlled and
only
ok application will have a chance.