Discussion Paper on Retiring Country Code Top-Level Domains

[Olivier Guillard <Olivier.Guillard@xxxxxx>]

This is a comment from IANA WG: http://ianawg.ccnso.org to the IANA 
consultation "Discussion on Retiring Country Code Top-Level Domains": 
http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-05dec06.htm

This discussion has already been raised in the IANA WG in June 2006. At that 
time, we escalated this issue to the ccNSO level, since IANA WG members 
beleived that it addressed matters that were outside the scope of our group.

Behind (and before) the operational problem of retiring ccTLD from the root 
zone file, it seems to us that the broader issue of consistency between 
iso3166 and ccTLD list is raised with this discussion.

To our knowledge, the usage of iso3166 as a reference for ccTLD is 
historical and no clear decision indicates that consistency between those 
lists is necessary or critical.

We recognize that inconsistency between iso3166 and ccTLD lists may produce 
unexpected effects, and may create incidences with regard to the relevance 
of certain documents.

We also notice that ICANN is member of iso3166 MA:
http://www.iso.org/iso/fr/prods-services/iso3166ma/04background-on-iso-3166/iso3166-ma-members.html

We highlight that retiring any particular TLD from the root zone file 
(weither because it is not in the iso3166 lists or for any other reason), 
would have important impacts (legal, economical, practical...), especially 
for the users of this TLD: such a decision should be considered very 
carefully.

We also understand that each TLD situation is different; however we 
recommand that the rules to be adopted are clear and readable: we don't 
beleive that adopting a double standard would be a desirable situation.

IANA WG encourages IANA to let the community know about issues that arise 
and need to be dealt with by IANA management, and that would be of interest 
to the community, consulting appropriatly, strengthening dialog and 
communication.

We thank IANA for its main concern and attention regularly demonstrated on 
this area.

The IANA WG stays ready to contribute and assist IANA to move forward with 
these issues.

-- 
Olivier Guillard
IANAWG chair