Proposed ALAC Statement on One and Two Character .CAT domains
ALAC’s statement on a proposed amendment from Fundacio puntCAT to Appendix 6 of the .CAT Registry Agreement
Name of Proposed Service: .cat single and two-character names registration services
Technical description of Proposed Service: PuntCAT initially reserved all one and two character second level names in the .cat TLD, as specified in the Appendix 6 of the puntCAT/ICANN contract.
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See appendix 6 at http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/cat/proposed-cat-agmt-09aug05.pdf
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Additional Second-Level Reservations.
In addition, the following names shall be reserved at the second level:
• All single-character labels.
• All two-character labels shall be initially reserved. The reservation of a two-character label string shall be released to the extent that the
Registry reaches agreement with the government and country-code manager, or the ISO 3166 maintenance agency, whichever appropriate. The Registry may also propose release of these reservations based on its implementation of measures to avoid confusion with the corresponding country codes.
PuntCAT now proposes to release and allocate all single and two-character domain names on the second level.
The puntCAT proposal is available at http://www.icann.org/en/registries/rsep/puntcat-request-19oct09-en.pdf
The proposal stipulates inter-alia that:
The allocation process of the single and two-character domain names on the second level will be handled by puntCAT case by case.
The release will be done under certain conditions that applicants must fulfil:
a) The applicant must be a legal person, remaining individual applicants ineligible.
b) The domain name must have some relationship with the applicant legal denomination, or its acronym
c) The applicant must be a high profile entity in the .cat community, or have strong ties to the Catalan speaking marketplace
The reason for the requirements stated above is that the fundació puntCAT believes these names should only be available to entities that have shown throughout its demeanour that they have a strong interest in promoting their services according to the principles that fundació puntCAT embodies. Therefore, and given the value associated to the single and two letter domain names and the nature of the sponsored community puntCAT represents, this allocation system provides a balance that adequately fits both the needs of the interested applicants, and the sponsoring community.
Several Registry requests for the release of two character names have been approved by ICANN in the past (.aero, .jobs, .name, .mobi and .coop) with ICANN noting that there are no associated stability and security issues
As provided for by existing consensus policy (http://www.icann.org/en/registries/rsep/rsep.html ), ICANN has undertaken a preliminary determination to determine whether the proposal might raise significant security or stability, or competition issues. ICANN's determination is that the proposal did not raise such issues in .CAT.
Note that, from 13 June to 13 July 2008, ICANN conducted a public comment forum on a proposed single-character second-level domain names allocation framework (http://www.icann.org/en/registries/rsep/proposed-scsld-allocation-framework-13jun08.htm ), which supported the allocation single-character second-level domain names in existing registries and reviewed various allocation methods.
- ALAC recognizes that one and two character second level names in the .cat TLD would be a scarce resource and are likely to have huge demand in the market.
- ALAC believes that the proposed allocation method is inadequate and that it should be coupled with methods which can include: first come first served, random lottery, auctions, and registry allocation through a request for proposals process.
- ALAC supports that the allocation process should be based on its implementation of measures to avoid confusion with corresponding country codes.
- ALAC strongly recommends that the allocation process of one and two character second level names in the .cat TLD_together with_the proposed use of funds be done as per theSingle-Character Second-Level Domain Name (SC SLD) Allocation Framework available at http://www.icann.org/en/registries/rsep/proposed-scsld-allocation-framework-13jun08.htm