Geographic names and Dispute Fees

[Fuatai Purcell <fuataiselafi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wish to make three points on the gTLD Draft Applicat Guidbook.
 
1 ICANN need to revise this section of the guide to ensure that every effort is 
made to minimise possible disputes with governments in the future.  The 
question is, are the existing guidelines sufficient for governments to 
safeguard their legal rights to geographic and country names?
 
2  Please take into account the small eonomies when you finalise dispute fees. 
I am speaking from the point of view of government with a very small national 
budget and where US$5000-8000 is a lot of money.
 
3 This is the most important part. There are still a lot of governments that 
have a low awareness and understanding of gTLDs. ICANN should be responsible 
for ensuring that governments (all) have a good understanding of GTLDs. My 
recommendation is for ICANN to put together a team to organise regional and 
subregional workshops on gTLD. That way, if a government doesn't turn up and 
they dispute an application, they have to find the money and ICANN can say - we 
did the workshop where you were invited but you did not attend.
The private sector is fine as far as I am concerned because they are the 
registries, but it is governments, and in particular, the small island 
developing states that really need help in understanding the impact of the new 
gTLD to them.
 
Thank you


      Get the latest headlines with Yahoo!Xtra News - http://nz.news.yahoo.com