At-Large Introduction of Two-Character Domain Names for 20 TLDs associated with Top Level Domain Holdings Limited Workspace

Comment Close Date	Statement Name	Status	Assignee(s)	Call for Comments Open	Call for Comments Close	Vote Announcement	Vote Open	Vote Reminder	Vote Close	Date of Submission	Staff Contact and Email	Statement Number
13.08.2014	Introduction of Two-Character Domain Names for .LUXURY, .WANG, XN--3BST00M, XN--6QQ986B3XL, XN--CZRU2D, XN--45Q11C, .BUILD, .REN, .PIZZA, .RESTAURANT, .GIFTS, .SARL, XN--55QX5D, XN--IO0A7I, and 20 TLDs associated with Top Level Domain Holdings Limited	ADOPTED by default, see this motion	Dev Anand Teelucksingh	23.08.2014	27.08.2014 20:00 UTC	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	30.08.2014	Krista Papac krista.papac@icann.org	AL-ALAC-ST-0814-03-00-EN

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FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED

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FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED

See At-Large Introduction of Two-Character Domain Names in the New gTLD Namespace Workspace for the first draft

The At-Large Community has taken note of the many Registry Services Evaluation Process (RSEP) requests submitted to ICANN by many New gTLD Registries applying for exceptions to Specification 5, Section 2 of the New gTLD Registry Agreement (see page 68 of the http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/agreement-approved-09jan14-en.pdf for the text of Specification 5, Section 2).

Many of the RSEP requests are for the release of two character ASCII labels not on the ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 standard. However, the ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 standard is not a static document; it will be updated to reflect changes to countries and territories. For example, BQ, CW and SX were added to the ISO 3166-2 alpha 2 standard in late 2010 (see http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_3166-1_newsletter_vi-8_split_of_the_dutch_antilles_final-en.pdf). This gives rise to a potential disparity in the implementation of Specification 5, Section 2 where future countries and territories would be treated differently than those countries and territories on today's ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 list.

However, two character ASCII labels at the second level have been made available for some gTLDs and many ccTLDs. Shorter domains are more desirable to potential registrants and two character ASCII labels can be used for alternative meanings than the one for the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard. For these reasons, absent any DNS-related security or stability issues, the ALAC believes that all the restrictions of two character ASCII labels at the 2nd level within a TLD should ultimately be removed, and has no problem with the current exceptions being approved.