<nettime> 'IANA' to revoke .su ccTLD?

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<http://icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=984&mode=thread&order=0>


   [68]Country-Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) 

   Is .su Doomed? (And - ha! - will there be any public debate?)

   Posted by [69]michael on Sunday, October 20 @ 14:23:11 MDT

   Contributed by [70]michael

   Wired News carries a fascinating [71]story stating that ICANN ccTLD
   liason [72]Herbert Vitzthum "announced at the Moscow conference in
   late September that dot-su would be revoked".

   The story raises two issues: First, what should happen to orphan
   ccTLDs if the country they are associated with ceases to exist -- but
   the registrations remain? Second -- as we've often asked [73]before --
   how is it that these decisions that ICANN takes while wearing its
   "IANA" hat happen without any public discussion, or even notice?
   As Alexander Svensson noted on the ICANN GA list, .su is "no longer on
   the ISO 3166-1 list ([74]http://shorl.com/bustypugyleju), but it's on
   the list of "reserved code elements" since September 1992.
   ([75]http://www.ccc.de/~andy/ICANN/iso3166-res.pdf - 632 kB)".

   There isn't an RFC, or even a ICP on what to do about orphan ISO codes
   when a country vanishes. If, as [76]RFC 920 and [77]RFC 1591 state,
   the rule for ccTLD creation is "reflect the ISO list", and the ISO
   list shirks, that certainly could be read to suggest that the ccTLD
   should go too. Certainly, that's what [78]ICANN has done when a
   country changes its name.

   But there's an arguably even more fundamental principle that could be
   brought to bear: you might call it, [79]the internet is for everyone,
   or the idea that stability is a key internet virtue, or the idea that
   whatever ICANN does, it shouldn't make it harder for people to use the
   Internet to communicate. From each of these perspectives, the .su
   domain should stay -- or at least the 28,000 existing second-level
   registrants in .su ought to be able to keep their names (new
   registrations are frozen, Wired reports).

   Interesting as these issues are, there's no need for ICANNWatch
   readers or anyone else to worry about them. You see, it appears that
   ICANN is going to decide this intersting question in the usual way: in
   secret, with no public notice or consultation. Indeed, it appears that
   to date the ICANN staff member who's going to make this decision
   affecting many thousands of people (there are a substantial number of
   third-level registrants in the .su domain, and of course all the
   people with .su bookmarks, and all the e-mail users with .su
   addresses) [80]hasn't even bothered to raise the question with the
   ICANN Board, much less any supporting organization or the public.

   Business as usual -- and it will only get worse and more secretive
   after the upcoming abolish-elections-and-any-pretense-of-democracy
   "reform"...

   Related Links

     [81]More about Country-Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs)

References

  68. http://icannwatch.org/search.php?topic=9
  69. http://www.law.tm/
  70. http://icannwatch.org/user.php?op=userinfo&uname=michael
  71. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,55687,00.html
  72. http://www.icann.org/biog/vitzthum.htm
  73. http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=336
  74. http://shorl.com/bustypugyleju
  75. http://www.ccc.de/~andy/ICANN/iso3166-res.pdf
  76. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0920.txt
  77. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1591.txt
  78. http://www.iana.org/reports/zr-report-20jun01.htm
  79. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3271.txt
  80. http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga-full/Arc11/msg01516.html
  81. http://icannwatch.org/search.php?topic=9

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