Cross Community Working Group on the Use of Country and Territory Names as Top-Level Domains

Cross Community Working Group on the Use of Country and Territory Names as Top-Level Domains
Status:	Completed
Issue Areas:	Protected Strings
Date Established:
Charter:	[ WG Charter]
Workspace:	[ Community Wiki]

Objective and Scope

The objective of the Working group was to draw upon the collective expertise of the participating SOs and ACs and others, and based on the initial analysis of the ccNSO Study Group on the Use of names for Countries and territories as TLDs, further review the current status of representations of country and territory names, as they existed under then current ICANN policies, guidelines and procedures. Secondly, provide advice regarding the feasibility of developing a consistent and uniform definitional framework that could be applicable across the respective SO's and AC's; and should such a framework be deemed feasible, provide detailed advice as to the content of the framework. The scope of the WG was limited to:

• Representations of names of Countries, Territories and their subdivisions listed on or eligible to be listed on the Alpha-2 code International Standard for country codes and codes for their subdivisions (ISO 3166-1), (Names of Country and Territory). Other geographical indicators, such as regions, were excluded;
• The use of Country and Territory names as Top Level Domains. The use of Country and Territory names as second or other level was excluded.

Group Charter

Charter for the Cross-Community WG Framework for Use of Country and Territory Names as TLDs

Membership

Membership of the Group included GNSO, ccNSO, ALAC, GAC participants (and as an expert on subject of ISO3166, Jaap Akkerhuis).

Work done

Deliberations of the Cross-Community working group were initially based on the ccNSO Study Group on the use of Country and Territory Names Final Report. In it's work Working Group faced few challenges and positively identified lack of consensus in the community on subject of Alpha-3 Codes in ISO3166-1, almost the only topic which was agreed upon was status quo on use of so called "2 Chars" (Alpha-2 Codes in ISO3166-1), which are still for ccTLD use only at the Top-Level.

Results of the CWG Elaborations

During 20 September 2017 GNSO Council meeting, the GNSO Council adopted the Final Report of the CWG-UCTN. As a result the CCWG was closed.

Output and Draft Documents

• Final Paper - CWG-UCTN (15 June 2017)

Additional URLs

1. ccNSO page of the Cross-Community Working Group on Use of Country/Territory Names as TLDs
2. UCTN Cross-Community Working Group Wiki Workspace