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

[Charles Mok (gmail)]

FWIW, I just did a search on OFAC website and found that OFAC itself
commonly refer to Taiwan as, well, Taiwan. Not Taiwan, Province of China,
or even Republic of China. So I submit that in order to satisfy OFAC
requirements, it is sufficient and even better to simply use a term that
they use.

One example:
https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20201110

Charles
in my personal capacity



On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 3:57 PM Charles Mok (gmail) <charlespmok at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Andrew,
>
> If we have to follow some "standard", I still find that ISO 3166 is
> probably the only one that calls the place "Taiwan, Province of China",
> which is not followed by most inter-governmental or non-governmental bodies
> of the world, which, for better or worse, most commonly use "Chinese
> Taipei" (which, as I said, still doesn't satisfy everyone but nonetheless
> sound marginally better than "Taiwan, Province of China").
>
> If ISOC really has to ask that question of where people come from because
> of OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) restrictions (down to just
> holding an open reception), then I have to say, even OFAC itself, as a US
> government organization, would NEVER call Taiwan a province of China. OFAC
> as part of the United States government would not tell us to follow ISO
> 3166 if they know that is the name. The United States president would not
> call Taiwan a province of China.
>
> Please understand that issues like these are very sensitive and do mean a
> lot to a lot of people, and any organization must take great care in
> deciding what to do or call names.
>
> Charles
> in my personal capacity
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 3:43 PM Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates <
> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 03:05:33PM -0700, Charles Mok (gmail) wrote:
>>
>> >For us, ISOC, I find that if we follow the ISO 3166 basis for ccTLDs as
>> our
>> >nomenclature for country names
>>
>> That is not what I said.  What I said was that the reasoning in RFC 1591
>> provides the quite correct observation that there is an actual UN agency
>> responsible for determining these matters, and the UN seems to be competent
>> to decide what is and isn't a country and what the official names of those
>> things are, and we are not.  Therefore, we follow the only standard there
>> is for this question, and we use that.
>>
>> >have to, right? If we follow the convention in ICANN GAC, then it would
>> be
>>
>> I have no idea how the convention in ICANN GAC emerged, but since they're
>> not a standards body I don't know what the basis would be for following
>> their practices rather than anyone else's.  Do you have some information
>> about how the GAC settled on this variation from UN practice?  Do you know
>> how long ago that change happened?  (I don't, and a casual glance at the
>> GAC pages don't tell me.)  What I can see is that when various IDNA strings
>> were assigned to TWNIC in 2010, ICANN still used the official UN name for
>> the country in its report.  I don't know whether that comported with GAC
>> advice at the time.
>>
>> >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?
>>
>> We try to use the two-letter code whenever we can, but it presents
>> usability issues for people picking their country name from a list if they
>> happen not to be familiar with ISO 3166.  As for why not, it is because
>> doing anything except following ISO 3166 puts the Internet Society (and,
>> let's be honest, it's someone on the staff of the Internet Society who'd
>> have to do this) in the unhappy position of having to decide what the right
>> name is for something and then accepting responsibility whenever they made
>> a mistake.  Whereas if we use the actual international standard for these
>> things, we have some basis for our selection that isn't, "I did what I
>> thought best."
>>
>> >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?
>>
>> We have to care where people are from because we are incorporated in the
>> US and therefore have to comply with OFAC restrictions.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Sullivan, President & CEO, Internet Society
>> e:sullivan at isoc.org m:+1 416 731 1261
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