ICANN Two-Character Letter-Letter- "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Comments"

[International Affairs <intaff@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Sir/Madam:

At the outset, let me thank you for giving us the opportunity to comment on the 
proposed measures for Letter/Letter two-character ASCII Labels. Indeed, 
soliciting comments from the various stakeholders is crucial and extremely 
important especially that the new policy will have implications on the current 
activities and might contradict with national laws.

In this regards, the Saudi Arabian Government would like to express its strong 
opposition to the country codes and country names as second level domains 
(SLDs) process.

Since the "sa" code is assigned to Saudi Arabia as per ISO standard 3166, and 
this code is widely recognized both on and off the Internet as an identifier 
for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian government is deeply 
concerned that releasing the two characters of its country code, country name 
and any other related codes or names of any part of Saudi Arabia at the second 
level will be misleading and confusing for Internet users. Furthermore with 
this process individuals and entities could offer services that are assumed by 
users to comply with Saudi laws and regulations, while they are not. The 
current SLDs process will result in very serious consequences at all levels, 
including abuses, impersonation, fraudulent activity among others. Putting the 
countries in a position where they have to do a defensive registration on many 
new gTLDs is not appropriate and not practical.

Therefore should the SLDs proceed, the Saudi Arabian Government requests that 
it be consulted before any current or future related registrations, and that 
all such registrations be subject to its pre-authorization.

We thank you again for your understanding and we look forward for your actions 
based on our aforementioned comments.

Best regards,

[cid:image001.jpg@01D1F7D2.E3276E20]