[At-Large] At-Large Use of Country and Territory Names as Top Level Domains

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 23 September 2015 at 09:43, Porteneuve Elisabeth (labo)
<elisabeth.porteneuve at latmos.ipsl.fr> wrote:

> I do not believe anyone have problem to recognise Confédération Helvétique - Swiss Confederation, using 4 official administrative languages, that means: French, German, Italian and Romansh.

I stand by what I said. If you think that  "Confédération Helvétique"
is a globally-recognized name for Switzerland, you need to travel more
;-).

But Switzerland seems uniquely weird in this way. It has four official
languages, but national institutions either use three of them (post
office and railway) or they abandon all of them and use English (the
national airline) or Latin (the ccTLD). The only docs I have seen use
all four official languages at once are government signage and
letterhead.

(And speaking of Latin, I would assert that more people recognize the
term "Helvetica" as a font than a country.)

> Khmer is the autonym for the language of the nation of Cambodia, similar to Deutsch for the nation of Germany. Therefore .kh and .de, easy.

Why do you assume that what comes easy to you comes easy to others?

> Apparently even native English speakers know "Full-length names (such as .deutchland)" ;-)

Some, not all, not even most. Don't assume.

(I had to see a hockey tournament to know the native full-length name
of Finland (ccTLD: .fi). How many non-Scandinavians and
non-sports-fans here would know it without looking it up?)

(back on-topic}

The full-country-name situation is wildly diverse in its multilingual
state and can not really be policed. (could all possible multi-lingual
forms of a country name -- such as "frankreich" -- be restricted?).

OTOH, I still assert that ISO, an actual treaty body, has far more
public authority and trust than ICANN could ever dream of having. As
such, its designated three-letter names should remain off-limits.

In any case, this may be moot to argue, at least for now, as I imagine
that the GAC will be pretty forceful about this.

- Evan