ICANN U-turn over outdated domains

Nick Wilsdon  Feb 11, 2007

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5 Responses to “ICANN U-turn over outdated domains”

1. Kim Davies Says:
   February 13th, 2007 at 12:33 am

   ICANN started a consultation process by asking for public comments on the current policy. It is now reviewing those comments.

   To clarify, ICANN has not made any statements of any kind that it will change policies, including it has not “agreed to leave the extensions alone”.

   The current policy is that ICANN does not decide what constitutes a valid country-code, that is determined by the ISO 3166-1 standard which is not administered by ICANN.

2. » ICANN U-turn over outdated domains Domainnews.com The Domain Name Industry News, Domain Says:
   February 16th, 2007 at 7:53 am

   […] The proposal to delete some outdated ccTLDs by ICANN is addressed by an article in the Russian language Cnews and reported in English by Multilingual Search. The article claims the proposal has been derailed. Following discussions in Sao Paulo, Cnews claims “the public proceedings have been dogged by protests and threats of legal action from domain owners, less than happy at the prospect of loosing their domain, marketing and branding expenses. ICANN finally agreed to leave the extensions alone.” See http://www.multilingual-search.com/icann-u-turn-over-outdated-domains/11/02/2007/en/ for the full article or for the original CNews story in Russian, see http://www.cnews.ru/news/top/index.shtml?2007/02/07/234517. […]

3. David Temple Says:
   February 17th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

   Kim, If the ISO 3166-a standard determines a valid country code and ICANN does not administer that code then why is ICANN starting a “consultation process” by asking for and reviewing public comments. Is ICANN providing recommendations for or against the changes then? What exactly is ICANN’s role in all of this and who makes the final deterination?

4. Kim Davies Says:
   February 18th, 2007 at 4:16 am

   ICANN is not providing recommendations for or against changes. What happens is that when the ISO 3166-1 standard removes a code, the operators are advised that they need to transition to the new code(s) that represent the country. IANA entrusts the operator to do this in a responsible way the meets with the needs of the local Internet community.

   In some circumstances, the operators have either taken a disproportionately long time to decommission the code, or in some cases, actively promote it as available for registration to new registrants.

   The review is to indentify if the current procedure of retirement of country-codes can be improved. It is not to suggest ICANN should start deciding what is or isn’t a valid country code.

5. Nick Wilsdon Says:
   February 18th, 2007 at 8:44 am

   Thanks for commenting here Kim and your clarification on the matter.

   Decommissioning an extension when so many owners stand to loose their investment in building that branding is problematic. Unlike the .gb extension which has sold a mere handful of domains, the .su extension is still thriving. I can’t see any progress down this route that meet the needs of the local Internet community.

   The .su/.ru situation has risen out of extraordinary circumstances. It seems wrong that domain owners should be penalized for these.

   Not to be controversial but I also find the one code/one country argument a little weak in light of America’s current position. They have assumed a practical hold over .com as well as the country code of .us. Take Google.us for example, which redirects to the .com version of the engine. Until we have a more international treatment of the TLD’s, critising Russia for having two ccTLD seems a little unfair.

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