Ukraine request yikes

Tue Mar 1 21:08:39 UTC 2022

On Mar 1, 2022, at 12:27 PM, Rubens Kuhl <rubensk at gmail.com> wrote:
>> More or less.  The Government Advisory Committee member from Ukraine has asked ICANN to:
>> - Revoke .RU, .рф, and .SU (all Russian-managed ccTLDs)
>> 
>> As the GAC member undoubtedly knows, that’s not how ICANN works. Barring a court/executive order in ICANN’s jurisdiction (and even then, it gets a bit sticky see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/13/dc-court-rules-that-top-level-domain-not-subject-to-seizure/), ICANN essentially treats ccTLDs as national sovereign resources. A third party, no matter how justified, requesting a change of this nature will not go anywhere. Simply put, ICANN is NOT a regulator in the forma sense, it is a private entity incorporated in California. The powers that it has are the result of mutual contractual obligations and it’s a bit unlikely the Russian government has entered into any contracts with ICANN, particularly those that would allow ICANN to unilaterally revoke any of the Russian ccTLDs.
> 
> I wonder how ICANN would react to ISO removing RU/RUS from ISO 3166-2/3.

See .SU.

(SU was moved from allocated to "transitionally reserved” back when the USSR broke up. My recollection is that an agreement was reached by which .SU users would be migrated out to appropriate new ccTLDs, that is, the ccTLDs based on ISO codes created for former Soviet republics, and no new entries would be added to .SU. However, when ICANN tried to propose a plan to finalize removing .SU from the root (around 2006 or so), the operators of .SU reopened registrations and complained to the US Dept. of Commerce, who were overseeing ICANN performance of the IANA Functions contract. Eventually, the Russian government was able to convince ISO-3166/MA to move SU to “exceptionally reserved” (like UK, EU, and a number of others) and forward motion on removing .SU from the root essentially ceased.)

Regards,
-drc

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