[ga] is ICANN or is ICANN not?
Dear Kim, I thank you for your rather interesting "this was not the question: this is my response" mail series. I think we can now conclude that the ICANN/IANA, with NTIA support, is preparing to replace ISO 3166 by the non-ISO 3166 interoperable IANA/SER (RFC 4646) in order to decide what an e-country is. This follows from: - the fact that ".su" is still in the IANA DNS root file and has not been changed to ".suhh" as per ISO 3166. - your constant reference to ISO 3166 when RFC 1591 and ICANN documents refer to ISO 3166. - the http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-05dec06.htm Discussion Paper on Retiring Country Code Top-Level Domains. - your description of this discussion: "this is about retiring codes that are no longer active in the ISO 3166 standard, and the appropriate mechanism to work toward the goal. There is no aim to turn off active TLDs, but rather to ensure there is a responsible and orderly transition." - your comment "We're generally in touch with NTIA every other day or so. They are fully informed of our work in this area" - you wrote "We have no desire to change the adherence to ISO 3166 []. However, it could be in the fullness of time that the community agrees to use something else to decide what constitutes a valid country code" - the IETF, which is to "influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet" has indeed published for the community the RFC 4646, installing the IANA LSE Registry with non ISO 3166 interoperable rules of the management of country codes. ISO 3166 is the most used standard. The stability of the Internet and international applications has been based on it for 30 years now (1978). This has been endorsed by Jon Postel (RFC 920, 1984, and RFC 1591, 1994, ccTLD Memo #1, 1999) and by ICANN (ICP-1). Code elements are never retired, but are rather moved to part 3 (ISO 3166-3) and the identifier is changed into an alpha4. RFC 4646 does not follow that policy. No one would be foolish enough to endanger the stability provided by ISO 3166. Except if your "fullness of the time" means when the IANA LSE Registry has become the de facto new normative axis of the world, supporting IETF standards that will possibly be based upon compatible US patented applications. This Internet community's "fullness of the time" would then fully know a global US Internet (as per the Congress resolution and Tunis agreement), controlled through the ietf-languages@xxxxxxxxxxxxx mailing list, using US patent based non interoperable standards (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4342), and deployed through IANA/LSER endorsed ccNSO ccTLDs. Such a scheme, which is an alternative to the IGF (because of the lack of interoperability of the used country codes), could only ultimately lead to an Internet split. This would be to the detriment of everyone, starting with the US Industry that would lose its international interoperability. Is ICANN or is ICANN not engaged in this? I know you do not want to answer this. I wonder why. All the best, jfc
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