Re: [soac-mapo] Third "draft recommendation" (individual government objections)

[Evan Leibovitch <evan@xxxxxxxxx>]

An objection by a sovereign government can be one of many things, and
these functions are not mutually exclusive:

1) A public declaration that an application is undesirable and the use
of the proposed string is counter to the domestic public interest;

2) A request to the applicant to reconsider/amend/withdraw (possibly
escalating from "request" to "demand" if the applicant is a resident
of -- or does business in -- that country)

3) A public warning that the country may block the string if approved

4) A request to ICANN to block the application from succeeding


Of these, only #4 requires intervention by ICANN in the application
process. Indeed, if the objection is based on politics (ie, to appease
an angry population), the real intent of the objection may be nothing
more than to fulfil #1.

The mere provision of an objection process that allows national (or
even regional) complaints to be fully aired and "on the record" --
with the tacit acknowledgement that the complaint is insufficiently
grounded to cause ICANN to block it globally -- may serve a valuable
purpose. This is even so for objections that have no chance (and maybe
no intention) of resulting in a blockage of the application.

- Evan