[lac-discuss-en] Repurposing the ccTLD

Mon Jul 3 19:43:51 UTC 2023

Hi,

wish this issue was new... or as easy as it is made to appear.

To summarize in plain language, the article refers to the fact that Anguilla's domain name is .AI and that suggests that it could be used as a pseudo-generic TLD instead of any requirements it may have at present to favor registrants with residence/citizenship in the island itself, and to make a brisk business of it for the operator which at present is a community college.

The first cases of such repurposing go way back to the 1990's, with .nu (Niue), .ag (Antigua and Barbuda, which they thought could be attractive to German companies that use the suffix AG, Aktiengesellschaft, a rough equivalent to Ltd.), and a few more, of which notably Tuvalu's .tv.

Things came to a head when in 2000-2001 the operators in Colombia, our very dear friend and a good citizen, Ricardo Pedraza, operating from the Universidad de los Andes, tried to repurpose .co as an alternative for .com, on grounds both of typosquatting and of .com names already taken by other registrants. They had a solid, well-crafted plan to change their operation to a for-profit and it was going well until someone in the government reacted under the heading "the name of the country is part of the country's heritage and you can't sell it" and almost put Ricardo and the President of the university in jail. Some of us  - mainly myself as the Latin American on the Board of Directors at the time, and a brilliant staff person from ICANN org, had to negotiate very hard with the Chief Counsel of the Ministry of Telecommunications to help them understand that the Domain Name System is a global good and that they should act more prudently, respecting the good faith of the incumbent operator and abiding by the rules set in RFC 1599 and in ICP-3 (more on that soon.) The memory of this event is all the more vivid since it took place in the Montevideo meeting of ICANN, on the eve of September 11, 2001.

Soon afterwards, an election brought in a new government in Colombia and they went on to  actually privatize the whole operation in very much the same way .co had proposed. An RFP was put out, a large international commercial domain-name operator (Affilias?) came in, and on it went since then.

.tv is Tuvalu's ccTLD and it has been exploited commercially as an anchor name for television networks and the industry in general. It also went through much turmoil until it settled into an agreement with an operator who would pay a small fee to the country, basically building an airstrip and paying its membership in the UN, plus granting domain names to all of 9,000 inhabitants.

What .co has had to do over the years responds to several key factors of which we as At Large users must be wary and are lessons to take into account for Anguilla.

The very first one is that gTLDs like .com are bound by a lot of rules, by contract and by jurisprudence or its equivalent, starting with their contract with ICANN and the RRA (Registry-Registrar Agreement.) These instruments contain strong safeguards for users, such as forbidding insider dealing in which the registry monetizes in its favor the information it gets from registrants, who have to use the registrAR operation, not the registRY. They have to sign agreements with registrars like GoDaddy, provide a dispute-resolution procedure, run a secure, scalable operation, and much more.

And what do you know, .co or .tv are ccTLDs so they are in the ccNSO, not in the GNSO where policies for gTLDs are developed, so basically they are off the hook. That is why some ccTLDs have become infamous at times, as happened to a Central Assian country, Turkmenistan, with .TM, or Hong Kong; lack of control on registrations leads to all kinds of malfeasance, now generically known as domain-name abuse against which we At Large users have taken such an energetic stance through our elected officers and representatives.

So if the sense of the message to the list is "support Anguilla in monetizing its domain name for its semantic similitude to the acronym for 'Artificial intelligence' let's first look at the terms in which this would be done and make sure we only engage in a proposal that simultaneously protects and promotes the interests and principles dear to both Anguilla citizens and At Large users world wide.

And, doing so, let's make sure participants disclose such interests as consulting engagements with the parties involved. We had some trouble like that in the .co case.

Now for RFC 1599 and ICP-3: as Postel said, "we are not in the business of deciding what is and  what is not a country." Policy within each ccTLD is the country's or territory's own realm. Deciding who gets the delegation to operate the registry is a sovereign decision of the community but it DOES undergo review in IANA in order to protect the community from cheats and abuses (review the history of Cameroon's .cm for examples.) The change from a locally-oriented to an operation of global reach in the feverish market of AI may require boosting the College's capacities or may give rise to the temptation to shift the operation to a commercial, capable operator. We must be on the Anguillans' side to make sure they are not cheated away from their heritage if this policy change starts to take place. You may all notice that many of the cases of ccTLDs masquerading as gTLDs have taken place in small, insular countries, or in heavily underdeveloped or misgoverned countries. I would not quite call these abuses "colonial" as they were not undertaken by nation-states, but the spirit of business abuse is what we are talking about and fending off.

Happy to discuss further.

Alejandro Pisanty

________________________________
De: lac-discuss-en <lac-discuss-en-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org> en nombre de Carlton Samuels <carlton.samuels at gmail.com>
Enviado: lunes, 3 de julio de 2023 12:15 p. m.
Para: LAC-Discuss-en
Asunto: [lac-discuss-en] Repurposing the ccTLD

Where do developing economies go to make a few pennies in the domain names business? The business models for ccTLDs are as variable as are the national administrations. But every now and then we get a break playing the hand we've got. The word is serendipity and Anguilla (.ai) is just the latest. One could add .ag, .bz, .pr and .co to his list.

When Oscar [Moreno] (.pr) (May he RIP!) and Patrick [Lay] (.ag) educated me on what was actually happening in their zones, it was a very short journey to support.

The ccTLD is part of the fabric of works that support end user access to the internet. In Anguilla's case, it is a point of major support for Anguilla Community College and sustainability is top of mind.

We should affirmatively strive to maximize the crumbs we get so we continue to exist and online.

https://circleid.com/posts/20230626-dot-ai-you-ready-a-domain-to-add-to-your-portfoli-before-someone-else-does
[https://circleid.com/images/member_photos/photo_9321.jpg]<https://circleid.com/posts/20230626-dot-ai-you-ready-a-domain-to-add-to-your-portfoli-before-someone-else-does>

.AI You Ready? A Domain to Add to Your Portfolio… Before Someone Else Does<https://circleid.com/posts/20230626-dot-ai-you-ready-a-domain-to-add-to-your-portfoli-before-someone-else-does>
circleid.com
On the sunny beaches of Anguilla -- a small island of just 35 square miles -- I'm sure artificial intelligence (AI) is the last thing people are thinking about. The primary industries of Anguilla, set in the Leeward islands in the Caribbean, are tourism and offshore banking. However, this nation has been assigned the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .AI -- which is being repurposed to represent artificial intelligence.

CAS

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Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround
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