[ih] Internet should be in private hands

[Dr Eberhard W Lisse]

There is nothing odd here.

As one of the longer serving ccTLD Managers (.NA, 1991) I recall that
Postel wanted not to be in the business of deciding what a country is
or not.

So, as he wrote in RFC 1591 (April 1994):

	"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."

The ISO maintains the International Standard ISO 3166-1:2020(E) "Codes
for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions".

I would not delve to much and too deep into who within the ISO develops
the list, or how, basically the will of the government of the
country/subdivision concerned how it wants that name to be represented
filters down.  And as time has shown it seems to work out.


UK, EU, AC and SU for that matter (and others) are not assigned but what
is called exceptionally reserved:

	"Code elements may be reserved, in exceptional cases, for country
	names which the ISO 3166/MA has decided not to include in the code
	corresponding to this document, but for which an interchange
	requirement exists.  Before such code elements are reserved, advice
	from the relevant authority should be sought."
  
JE and GG were for a while exceptionally reserved but are now assigned.

.UK was one of the first ccTLDs (1987) and I do not remember if it
existed before UK became exceptionally reserved or afterwards, which
would be however quite interesting :-)-O

.GB (with the same WHOIS date as .UK) interestingly is still in the
root, managed by JANET (which may or may not exist any longer).

.CH started in 1987

SW is unassigned.


Details matter...

el

On 2022-12-07 20:54 , John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> That is an odd error in ISO in ISO 3166 given the organizations
> involved.  (Being pedantic.)
> 
> Great Britain is a geographical term, while UK designates the
> political unit, which was what was of concern to the organizations
> involved.
> 
> 3166 was developed by TC46 which does documentation, libraries,
> museums, etc "in collaboration with the following International
> Organizations: Customs Cooperation Council (CCC), [since 1995: World
> Customs Organization (WCO)], United Nations Economic Commission for
> Europe (ECE), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
> (FAO), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), International Air
> Transport Association (IATA), International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),
> International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), International Federation of
> Library Associations (IFLA), International Labour Office (ILO),
> International Telecommunication Union (ITU), International Union of
> Railways (UIC), United Nations Organization (UN), United Nations
> Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Universal Postal Union
> (UPU), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and World
> Health Organization (WHO).”
> 
> You would have thought one of them would have caught it.  ;-)
> 
> Also, I remember seeing the initial CC TLD list at the time that had
> Switzerland as .sw, rather than .ch, which would have been familiar to
> any stamp collector.  ;-)
> 
> Everyone learned something.  ;-)
> 
> John
> 
>> On Dec 7, 2022, at 12:14, Ole Jacobsen via Internet-history
>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> Jon Postel also wanted ccTLDs to use the official ISO 3166 list of
>> countries, which became a problem for the UK whose ISO 3166 code is
>> GB, so Jon had to make an exception.
>>
>> Life was simple back then :-)
>>
>> Ole
>>
>>> On Dec 7, 2022, at 08:29, Craig Partridge via Internet-history
>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 8:47 PM John Gilmore via Internet-history <
>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I recall a time when the Domain Name System top-level domain (TLD)
>>>> for each country had to be handled by a private party, not by the
>>>> government that ran the country.
>>>>
>>> As I recall, Jon Postel didn't object to a government handling -- he
>>> simply wanted a responsible custodian.  In most cases, governments
>>> weren't prepared.
>>>
>>> The reason for this recollection is that I believe some European
>>> governments took a role in designating who ran their initial TLD and
>>> that CSNET did a certain amount of mediating (and I worked for CSNET
>>> at the time).  But my memory may be conflating multiple issues as
>>> there were also European governments who argued over who controlled
>>> their CSNET connection to the Internet.
>>>
>>> Craig
[...]


-- 
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse   \         /       Obstetrician & Gynaecologist
el at lisse.NA             / *      |  Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell)
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