Business Constituency comment on Release of Country and Territory Names in .BMW and .MINI TLDs

[Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Business Constituency (“BC”) appreciates the opportunity to provide 
comments to the proposed amendments to the .BMW and .MINI registry agreements 
submitted through the Registry Services Evaluation Policy (“RSEP”) on 
13-Nov-2014 and posted for public comment on 11-Dec-2014 at 
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/bmw-mini-amendment-2014-12-11-en.

In its RSEP request, Registry Operator Bayerische Motoren Werke 
Aktiengesellschaft seeks the release of all country and territory names, as 
defined in Section 4 of Specification 5 of the Registry Agreement, at all 
levels of the .BMW and .MINI TLDs.  The BC fully supports this request.

The BC believes that the use of country and territory names will allow such 
.BRAND registries to segment their TLDs in a way that is meaningful to Internet 
users around the globe.  Geographic segmentation will bring greater efficacy to 
.BRAND TLDs, ultimately benefitting businesses and consumers by helping the 
registry operator target content to audiences in specific geographic regions, 
using linguistically appropriate domain names and content.

In addition, we firmly believe that the release of country and territory names 
for .BRAND TLDs will enhance security and trust in online commerce by 
permitting businesses to exercise more control over the security and stability 
of their customized web sites.

For all these reasons, the BC fully supports this proposal and urges ICANN to 
amend the registry agreements for the .BMW and .MINI TLDs accordingly.

--

This comment was drafted by J. Scott Evans and Andy Abrams, and was approved in 
accord with our charter.

Steve DelBianco
Vice chair for policy coordination
ICANN Business Constituency