Comment of the State North Rhine-Westfalia on Geo TLD Prioritation

[<Walter.Flaig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

            Comment by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia on Geo Prioritization

 

 

To Whom It May Concern,

 

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is thankful for the opportunity to 
comment on the newly proposed prioritization drawing method for prioritizing 
applications for evaluation, and ultimately, delegation. North Rhine-Westphalia 
supports the application of Minds + Machines GmbH for the top level domain 
".nrw".

 

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is concerned about the public interest not 
being represented properly in the current drawing method. Prioritizing "IDN Top 
Level Domains" (IDNs) is indeed aiming in the right direction to promote public 
interest and to underline ICANN´s plan of a better global outreach, 
nevertheless, we strongly want to point out that "Geographical Name Top-Level 
Domains" (GeoTLDs) should be processed in a similar way. 

 

ICANN, as the global guardian of the Domain Name System, has the responsibility 
to ensure a fair balance between public and private interests. GeoTLDs are 
important to the respective local communities all over the world. Therefore 
GeoTLDs heavily support ICANN´s plan of improved global outreach. GeoTLD 
applicants clearly operate in the public interest and ICANN should acknowledge 
the support they received by the relevant local authority that was elected by 
the public to serve them and act in their interest. 

 

In our view, the proposed drawing method could disrupt this balance between 
public and private interests, as there is a great chance that Geo applications, 
clearly acting in the public interest, may be entering the root far behind 
applications that do not represent the public interest.

 

Therefore we ask ICANN to add GeoTLDs in its prioritization plan. The 
prioritization of the 56 GeoTLDs (7 of the 63 GeoTLD applications are IDNs and 
already prioritized) would defer the allocation of other generic TLDs only for 
a short period of time. We think this is reasonable to protect the global 
public interest.

 

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Walter Flaig
Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Energie, Industrie, Mittelstand und Handwerk des 
Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
Referat IIIA2
Haroldstr. 4
40213 Düsseldorf
Tel: 0211/837-2538