[Chapter-delegates] Invitation: ISOC at ICANN78 reception (really Taiwan)

[Charles Mok (gmail)]

Dear all,

First, I concur with Andrew that it is probably not true that when the ISOC
chapter in Taiwan was formed almost 20 years ago it was called ISOC Taipei
Chapter because they could not call it ISOC Taiwan Chapter. But I haven't
heard before about the part that they have to be called ISOC Taiwan
Province of China -- I will have to leave that to the folks in that chapter
to reconfirm. If it is the case, it is understandable that they would
choose not to call it that way.

Having said that, I think we have to realize that Taiwan in 1996, when the
chapter was formed, and today is vastly different, in terms of the way they
view themselves and the world sees them. In those days, or even now, in
various international forums, from APEC to the Olympics, etc, they are
called Chinese Taipei, and in the "old days" maybe more found it to be
acceptable, but today it may not be the same, again, internally or
externally.

Since this is in the context of this invitation being part of an event ISOC
is holding at ICANN, I can only point out that, in the GAC (Governmental
Advisory Committee) of ICANN, Taiwan is a member of GAC but under the name
of "Chinese Taipei" (https://gac.icann.org/about/members). I humbly submit
that if we follow this nomenclature, while it is (to me included) not as
ideal as simply "Taiwan", "Chinese Taipei" may still be marginally less
offensive than "Taiwan (Province of China)" -- though not everyone will
agree -- which is not part of even the ICANN nomenclature (correct me if I
am wrong), except in the extremely narrow and historical context of the ISO
3166 document which has to do with ccTLDs, because or else I would find it
difficult for the Taiwanese people and their government to participate in
ICANN GAC under that kind of a name.

For us, ISOC, I find that if we follow the ISO 3166 basis for ccTLDs as our
nomenclature for country names, it is only voluntary. We can but we do not
have to, right? If we follow the convention in ICANN GAC, then it would be
"Chinese Taipei". If we simply forego categorizing "where do you come from"
by "country name" and instead simply as what "country/region" or "economy"
you come from, then we can say "Taiwan", just as many other websites are
doing when they are asking for addresses -- unless you are pressured by the
good country of PRC (like they do to some airlines and hotels like
Marriott) but I don't believe they are doing to ISOC, and not that we
should worry about that anyway. So why not? Or if we really want to follow
ISO 3166, why not just list by the two-digit code, e.g. TW, CN,
US, whatever, and we don't have to get into this unnecessary argument,
right?

After all, in the case of this reception at ICANN, should ISOC really care
which country someone comes from to join, other than some
statistical purpose? Why do we even have to ask the question? This is a
complicated world, and we should try to break down barriers rather than
inadvertently erect them or help to keep them up. Why not just delete that
question, or leave the question but let people fill in the blank without a
pulldown menu? It's not like ISOC can expect 1000 people to come to
the reception and you will have a lot of manual answers to handle, though
maybe 1000 people to come may be a brilliant thing. Anyway, I hope we do
not become closer to what is like the UN IGF, where Taiwanese citizens are
barred from attending because they have to declare their citizenship and
what passport they hold. I believe whatever we can do to make ISOC more
inclusive to everyone and make them feel more welcomed, the better.

Thanks and regards,
Charles


On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 12:46 PM Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 04:34:03PM +0200, Johan Helsingius via
> Chapter-delegates wrote:
> >Thank you for the invitation, but on the registration form I happened
> >to notice that Taiwan is listed as "Province of China" in the list
> >of participant countries. While I can understand that that is based
> >on ISO3166 and thus UN politics
>
> Yes.  RFC 1591 said this:
>
>        The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code
>        top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a
>        procedure for determining which entities should be and should not
>        be on that list.
>
> We think the general principle for naming countries should probably follow
> the same guidance, so we use the same principles.  In general we prefer to
> stick to the 2-character country codes, but sometimes that is too hard for
> humans to use and we need to spell things out.  That's what happened in
> this case.
>
> > , I then checked with a colleague
> >from Taiwan, and was told that they were also not allowed to
> >have an "ISOC Taiwan Chapter", but only a Taipei Chapter.
>
> That isn't the way I heard it (with the understanding that I wasn't
> employed here when the compromise was reached -- the chapter was chartered
> in 1996).  As I understand things, the problem was that if the chapter
> wanted to be called the Taiwan Chapter, then its formal name would need to
> be the Internet Society Taiwan (Province of China) Chapter, and that was
> not acceptable to some people.  The solution that people apparently hit on
> was to establish a Taipei Chapter instead.
>
> Note that the entire chapters community has a say over who else becomes a
> chapter, which makes place names and so forth somewhat more complicated
> than it might otherwise be.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan, President & CEO, Internet Society
> e:sullivan at isoc.org m:+1 416 731 1261
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