[At-Large] IGO names: is this worth war?

[John R. Levine]

> While it is overkill to give a blanket ban on every IGO, I would rather
> give protection to a handful of organizations that don't need it, in return
> for protecting a number of organizations that would be critically impacted
> if their names were not protected. I am speaking specifically regarding
> organizations that do significant public fundraising in the public good --
> the Red Cross (+ Red Crescent, etc), UNICEF, UNHCR, and others

This should not be a difficult call.  The ALAC is supposed to represent 
the interests of Internet users.  It would be bad if users were confused 
by a TLD that looked like an international organization but was in fact 
run by a domain speculator.  Users do not care, and we on their behalf do 
not care, if a reserved name interferes with some speculator's business 
plan.  In view of the ongoing failure of the new gTLD round to attract 
meaningful interest beyond speculators and criminals, any claim that yet 
more new TLDs will benefit users is implausible.

So if they have a list of reserved TLD names, reserve them all.  From the 
point of view of the users, it is at worst harmless.

By the way, I looked at the proposed ITU resolution and I didn't see 
anything about reserving second level names.  In any event, it's a bit 
late to do that retroactively on the handful of TLDs that matter.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly