Re: PAB How long domain names

John Charles Broomfield (jbroom@outremer.com)
Wed, 03 Dec 1997 10:23:16 -0400


Hi guys,

Javier Sola wrote:

> 1) Should 1 letter characters be allowed as SLDs?
> 2) Should two letter country codes be allowed as SLD ? Should the country=
> have priority in an ACP ?
> 3) Should generics be allowed ? Should CORE manage Third level domains under=
> the most popular SLDs ?

Recently, I had the #1 problem crop up here in Guadeloupe. I had a
request for
registration of "a" under ".gp".
I checked up to see if there were any technical problems first of all,
and it
seems that there are none. Then I queried why all one letter domains
under
current gTLDs had been reserved by IANA and was told it was to avoid the
fighting.
I reasoned that here in Guadeloupe the "demand" for domains in general
EVER is
going to be relatively low (tot population of GP is around 340.000), so
the chances
of collisions here are also going to be quite low. Thus I delegated it
(I still don't
understand whay the guy wanted "a.gp", but there you are, check it at
www.a.gp if you
want).
The problem is collision and fighting IMO. I would argue for reservation
of the one
letter domains to IANA (do a "whois a.com") precisely to avoid this.

Question #2(a) has recently popped up on the RIPE TLD-ADMIN mailing
list, and the
arguments put forward AGAINST allowing registration of the ISO CC under
new gTLDs
is that it induces confusion. A member of the FR NIC was the most vocal
as far as
"prohibiting" goes, whereas in general the other NICs were rather more
relaxed, saying
that this type of confusion already exists in the other gTLDs and that
CCs were not
reserved, and thus doing so now could accentuate confusion in the
current gTLDs.
My view is that no reservation should be made of these SLDs, but however
I think that
the country (not the NIC of that country code) should have priority. To
put an example.
Say YY is the code for YY-land, anybody setting up YY.whatever will
probably be
announcing services for or from YY-land (or confusion will arise, sorry
if your
companies initials are YY). If the country YY-land demands that that SLD
be taken away
from the registrant, you'd have a nasty diplomatic incident if the
country wasn't
respected. I would phrase it something along the lines of court orders
from the
country in question demanding transfer of a CC SLD should be respected.

On question #3a, I've had quite negative experience with a certain NIC
when generics
are refused, because it's basically the problem of "who get's to decide
what's
a generic?" (I'm sure Javier knows which NIC I'm thinking of). In what
language are
we going to consider generics? Are we going to block all of Websters? In
short,
unenforcable IMO. As far as #3b goes, if someone wants to market a
service that
delegates names under their SLD, then let them. I don't think we should
get involved
in that.

So:
1. NO
2. YES, YES
3. YES, NO

Yours, John Broomfield.