.nyc - here we go...

Wed Jul 3 03:12:27 UTC 2013

>
> Thank you for explaining this.  Again, probably.
>
> So the cities in those countries could buy them (if they could
> afford them) but not the countries?  So .portvila is available,
> but not .vanuatu?
>

Yes. Country names will be part of the expansion of the ccTLD space, where
usually countries are not asked to pay evaluation fees, just annual fees
much like current country codes.

What about places like Singapore?  The city name is the same as
> the country name.
>

Excluded by being a country name.

>
> "I haven't read enough, but what's to stop speculators paying
> the $186,000 then charging the tiny countries mors when they
> are able to make the purchase?"
>
> s/tiny countries/cities in tiny countries/
>
> Does the speculator issue have to go to arbitration?
>

The $185k is an evaluation fee, not a "buy now" price. Part of the
evaluation process is to determine if the string has a geographic nature,
and if does, if there is proper government support. There could be issues
if a city name that is not in the ISO lists (nation capitals, state names)
that happens to be a plausible non-geographic name. Let's take Sao Paulo
(largest brazilian city) for example: it's the name of a catholic saint in
Portuguese, so an applicant claiming to a be a gTLD targeted at the saint
devotees could in theory apply (it's not the case as Sao Paulo is also a
state name listed in ISO 3166) and after getting the delegation repurpose
it to serve Sao Paulo individuals and businesses.

Besides many objection procedures, one of them a community rights objection
that could be used in a case such as the one I described, governments have
a veto power that even requiring consensus among representatives would
probably be used to stop the application. Both mechanisms (objections and
government veto) are in play at two TLDs facing opposition from
south-american countries: .amazon (from Amazon Inc., opposed by countries
of the Amazon region like Brazil and Peru ) and .patagonia (opposed by the
region of same name encompassing Argentina and Chile). The outcomes of both
will likely be known this month at ICANN's meeting in Durban.

Summary: there are residual risks, but the checks and balances of the
process are likely to stop bad actors, at the cost of also stopping some
good actors. Error in the side of caution preferred.

Rubens