[NCUC-DISCUSS] Cross Community Discussion/ Geographic Names at the Top Level Session II

[Mueller, Milton L]

Farzy said

> > The issue is some in GAC and CCNSO want to claim any name that is
> > remotely related to the sovereign. 

Niels said: 
> Do we think this is a bad thing per se?

Hell yes, this is a bad thing per se. Maybe I don't understand your comment Niels, but I would like to understand how a person who runs an organization devoted to freedom of expression would consider granting property rights to all geographic names in the domain name space to governments qua governments. 

Just as NCUC has historically resisted trademark maximalism, whereby TM holders seek to extend their limited exclusivity to huge new scope in the digital environment, so we must resist geographic names maximalism by states. Geographic names can be used in a number of creative ways for a wide variety of purposes. No one owns them. Not even the people who live in the regions, in my opinion. 

The idea that some collectivities have pre-ordained exclusive "rights" to names in the DNS simply is false. Exclusivity only exists when the use of the name is fraudulent or intentionally misleading.  There is a book written about geographic names in  international law by Heather, someone involved in ICANN, and it exposed that there were no legal basis for most if not all of the claims governments are putting forward. 

NCSG really has to stand up for freedom on this one. 

> Maybe ccTLDs are better at building TLDs than the ppl in the gTLD space,
> especially if you look at the outcomes of the last gTLD round (largely spam
> and defensive registration).

ccTLDs are neither intrinsically better or intrinsically worse and building TLDs. Like Verisign, most of them were the only game in town for many years.