Re: Country Code TLDs

[Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>]

postel@ISI.EDU wrote:
> 
> Dave Morton:
> 
> The country codes from ISO-3166 that are used as top-level domain names
> are specifically the two-letter codes.
> 
> The three-letter codes from ISO-3166 will not be used as "official"
> country code top-level domain names.
> 
> However, if somehow under the plan for new general purpose
> international top-level domains a new three-letter iTLD of "AFG" was
> created and the manager of that iTLD established a policy for that
> domain limiting use to registering second level names that were somehow
> associated with AFGHANISTAN, that would be perfectly ok.
> 
> --jon.

I don't think it is okay.  This creates extreme ambiguity in the
namespace.  What about the creation of .AFG as a general purpose iTLD? 
People could tend to associate that with Afghanistan.  Perhaps not, but
in the case of .USA, their is little doubt it would be confused with
.US.  

I don't believe that new iTLDs should be permitted which are
"substantially identical"(somehow I am not sure that was the right
word:-).

It seems to me that we will ALL be sorry, maybe not this year, or even
this decade.  But, we will ALL be sorry someday, if we allow
freewheeling allocation of iTLDs.  iTLDs should be for specific purposes
with maybe a .alt(or something) to put anything else in.

The iahc should perhaps consider as they move toward new TLD's(if they
move toward new TLDs), are you creating TLD's or registries?  Which
drives the process.  I and others believe that the TLD creation should
drive the process, not the registry creation.

Vince Wolodkin