Document: Principles for the Delegation and Administration of Country
Code Top Level Domains (23 February 2000) Requested Change: In the last
sentence of Section 7.5 delete ", or a reasonable period in which to transfer to
another TLD" -- that is, the last sentence of Section 7.5 should read, "In the event
of a reassignment of delegation, registrants in the ccTLD should be afforded continued
name resolution."
Rationale: It is in the interests of the global internet
community that URIs be stable. People bookmark pages. People send links
in email. This has long been a truism. Most commentators on the subject
have made the assumption that a domain itself is stable and have concentrated on
persuading domain holders to indefinitely maintain URIs once they have been created
within that domain. See, for example, Tim Berners-Lee at http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html
or Jakob Nielsen at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html.
Section 7.5, as
written, seems to suggest that it is acceptable for a new registrar of a ccTLD to
simultaneously break all URIs in a subdomain, as long as a "reasonable period" of
notice is given. This suggestion should be rejected.
Registrants in a ccTLD
and those in the global internet community who access their URIs are innocent bystanders
of any reassignment of delegation whether initiated by the relevant public authority
or by ICANN. ICANN should take the position that all existing URIs in a ccTLD
should continue to function in case of such reassignment.