Between June 26-29, Johannesburg, South Africa, hosts ICANN59, the second ever Policy Forum, which focuses on the rules and regulation for the network community. The first Policy Forum was held a year ago in Helsinki, Finland. The delegation of Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ takes part in ICANN59.
This year, the forum’s participants focused on the protection of geographical indications, i.e. the designations that correspond to a specific geographical location, a country, territory, region or city. This issue has been discussed for quite a while, and a Working Group on the Protection of Geographic Names was created within ICANN to deal with this subject and discuss the possible solutions with TLD domain registries and governments across the world. Many countries, including Russia, insist on coordinating the registration of domain names matching the names of countries or territories in all TLDs without exception, including new gTLDs. This has become a matter of grave concern for these countries after the recent resolution by the ICANN Board to grant approval for the registration in new gTLDs of domain names that match names of countries or territories.
Seeking to reassure the network community, ICANN created a number of new working groups, and also came up with a package of measures aimed at mitigating the consequences of this decision. For example, whenever a country sees that its name or country code are used improperly as domain names in gTLDs, and is unable to settle the matter through constructive dialogue between the government and the registry, it can ask ICANN to help settle the dispute.
The delegation of Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has been actively contributing to this debate. Its director, Andrei Vorobyev, said that the new working group so far lacks official status, which makes it unclear how and whether the opinions of its participants will be taken into account. “If the purpose of this working group is to mitigate the consequences of the decision that has been taken, all countries should be represented in it. I believe that in the current situation the working group could serve as an effective platform for a new discussion that would take into account the position expressed earlier by GAC (Government Advisory Committee) and ccNSO representatives. In fact, they came up with quite a few useful and feasible proposals. Of course, the ICANN Board is receiving proposals from GNSO (Generic Name Supporting Organization) that are headed in the opposite direction. For this reason, I support Brazil’s point of view. Our Brazilian colleagues suggest that GAC focus on understanding the consequences of policy changes and begin a frank and inclusive discussion of the most sensitive issues with gNSO andc cNSO representatives. GAC should win the support of the entire community after ICANN changed its policy without coordinating its decision with all the stakeholders,” Andrei Vorobyev said.
“Just like other countries, from the very outset Russia had voiced misgivings over the possibility to use domain names matching the names of countries or territories without seeking approval from the government of the country in question. Russia and other countries kept calm during discussions within a special working group, and the resulting report featured our position. By taking a decision without taking into account our position, ICANN made a mistake, since mitigation measures cannot match the concerns expressed by Russia and other countries. So far, there have been more questions than answers. That said, a new working group has been established, and we hope that this new framework will make it possible to discuss real ways for protecting country names in new gTLDs,” Russia’s GAC representative YuliyaYelanskaya commented.
This issue has been discussed since 2012, with country representatives within GAC expressing conflicting views. Some countries have always been ready to allow registration of domain names containing country names in all new domains. Other countries did not oppose using country names in brand domains, while requesting an approval procedure for general use domains. Many countries, including Russia, insisted on requiring approval in all domains without exception.
This issue was also discussed in a number of other ICANN bodies. While GNSO always favored domain registration without any restrictions, there was no consensus on this point within ссNSO with the divide along the same lines as within GAC. The next major step in this respect would be the adoption of a decision to allow registration of two and three-letter country codes of countries and territories, and not only as second-level domains, but also as top-level domains.
