In the upcoming months thousands of two-letter new gTLDs that coincide with code names of countries and dependent territories according to the international standard ISO 3166 will be released. The ICANN Board passed resolution, which allows registration of these names, reports Domain Incite. This means that such names as RU, US or UK (corresponding in ISO 3166 to Russia, USA and UK) could appear in the new domains; they also match ccTLD names.
Initially, ICANN management supposed that the new domains’ registries would provide an exclusive availability period on registration of such names to governments and registries of corresponding ccTLDs. However, in the final text of the resolution the word “must” was replaced by “may”. Therefore, everything depends on registries’ good will. However, the resolution does imply certain protective measures. For instance, registrants will have to agree to not present themselves as government representatives or national registries by using two-letter “country” domains (apart from the cases when they actually are official representatives). Moreover, registries of the new domains are obliged to deal with governments’ and national registries’ complaints quickly and eliminate possible irregularities in the use of two-letter domain names that correspond to country codes. However, the wording of the resolution is rather vague and it’s hard to tell how effective such protection will be.
Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) ICANN doesn’t have a common position on this matter. Representatives of Italy and Spain, for example, are strongly opposed to names “IT” and “ES” being registered in new domains without governmental and national registries’ approval. Meanwhile, representatives of the UK and US demonstrate complete indifference to the possibility of names “UK” and “US” being used in the new domains.
