Re: ISO 3166 namespace administration

["Cary Karp" <ck@nrm.se>]

Quoting Jeff Williams:

> But I have always considered the discussions on this list
> from and international point of view.  I assume that the IACH
> members are viewing these postings in that light. At least I
> hope they are.

I have no doubt that the IAHC is considering this issue from an
international point of view. Since theirs is, by definition, a
fledgling effort, I simply felt that its value could only be
enhanced by at least calling attention to some of the
mechanisms on which older (and demonstrably functional)
internationalization efforts are based.

Quoting Kevin Brown:

> Can you reply and reconfirm that all ISO TLDs are delegated
> to sovereign bodies? Cary seems to think, as I do , that
> there is a mis mash of delegations out there. Perry you re
> convinced that Delegations were given to sovereign bodies.

The pivotal question is not whether a TLD has been delegated to 
a sovereign body -- in absence of specific knowledge, I'd be 
prepared to stipulate that all have -- but whether the sovereign 
body has in turn delegated the operation of the domain to some 
agency in the affairs of which it is not further prepared to 
intervene.

Since many of my statements about this will be based on a
subjective appraisal of the situation, it might be prudent to
describe the perspective from which I approach this issue. I am
an employee of the Swedish government and manage several 2LD's
operated by museums and other cultural organizations in .SE.  I
also manage 2LD's for various international organizations
within the corresponding community in .COM, .NET and .ORG.
Disregarding any contact with InterNIC, my activity has often
put me in direct contact with the authority that operates .SE
and in a consultative relationship with organizations in many
other ISO-3166 domains. I feel justified in laying claim to some
degree of familiarity with the diversity of procedures in
various areas of 3166 space.

I am not sure of the exact terms by which the root delegated .SE
to the authority that currently operates it. I do know that the
TLD authority is operated by a governmental agency and receives
a governmental subsidy. This is likely not the sole means by
which it is financed, but I am quite sure that the governmental
participancy is of decisive importance. In any case, the
governmental funding is used for activities explicited
deliniated in the Annual State Budget.  (If I've got this wrong,
I hope it will goad a representative of the TLD into joining
this discussion.)

The correctness of this description not withstanding, I have
been party to countless meetings at which various governmental
agencies have expressed frustration with the operation of .SE
being beyond their control. The most amusing case is the denial
of the designations sweden.se and sverige.se to the government's
own Central Administration Offices. The reason given was that 
there was no way to specify the agency that had control over 
that designation. I have attended several meetings at Government
Headquarters which also were attended by the Director of the
agency that manages the TLD where, although never on the meeting
agendas, this and other similar episodes were hashed over.

Does it sound to anybody as though I were describing a TLD
under sovereign governmental control?

I would like to add that I have had no negative experience with
any of the TLD registration authorities with which I have dealt.
Nonetheless, I feel that .SE is inherently the most stable of
them simply because it is stringently operated according to
rules that are clearly and unambiguously stated (although
admittedly not invariably hyperintelligent). These include
questioning a requested domain designation prior to the actual
delegation. Once something.se has been established, that's
that.

Quoting myself:

> Has the IAHC ever discussed anything along these lines? Even
> if not the NGO aspect, what about some form of aggregation of
> those who can speak authoritatively on behalf of the
> 3166TLDs?

I do not expect a formal response from the IAHC to these 
questions. If any member would care to provide a personal 
commentary on the situation, I'd be quite pleased.

As should be clear from my initial contributions to the IAHC
discussion, I am interested in means by which the museum
community might be able to establish a consolidated domain
identity. The IAHC Proposal puts us in a significantly different
situation than the one implicit in the Postel Draft. The smaller
the risk that we might be further surprised by the final IAHC
Proposal, the easier it will be for us to chart our further
course. Any informal suggestion of where all this might be going
could only be to all our benefits.


Cary Karp               Department of Information Technology
mailto:ck@nrm.se        Swedish Museum of Natural History
http://ck.nrm.se/       Svante Arrheniusv. 3
Phone: +46 8 666 4055   Box 50007
Fax:   +46 8 666 4235   104 05 Stockholm, Sweden