22 Describe proposed measures for protection of geographic names at the second and other levels in the applied-for gTLD

Prototypical answer:

-Rules applicable to the protection of geographic names at the second and other levels in the applied-for gTLD :

In accordance with GAC advice on geographic names at the second level, the registry operator will put the following names on the reserved list:
-The short form (in English) of all country and territory names contained on the ISO 3166-1 list, including the European Union, which is exceptionally reserved on the ISO 3166-1 List, and its scope extended in August 1999 to any application needing to represent the name European Union:
http:⁄⁄www.iso.org⁄iso⁄support⁄country_codes⁄iso_3166_code_lists⁄iso-3166-1_decoding_table.htm#EU
-The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names, Part III Names of Countries of the World. This lists the names of 193 independent States generally recognized by the international community in the language or languages used in an official capacity within each country and is current as of August 2006:
http:⁄⁄unstats.un.org⁄unsd⁄geoinfo⁄ungegn⁄docs⁄pubs⁄UNGEGN%20tech%20ref%20manual_m87_combined.pdf
-List of UN member states in 6 official UN languages prepared by the Working Group on Country Names of the United Nations Conference on the standardization of Geographical Names:
http:⁄⁄unstats.un.org⁄unsd⁄geoinfo⁄9th-UNCSGN-Docs⁄E-CONF-98-89- Add1.pdf

However, the registry operator recognises that there may be cases where a request to register and use a geographic name at the second level should be considered valid.

Examples of such cases are:
-The City of Paris itself may wish to register a 〈geographic-name〉 .PARIS domain for its own use as part of an official event organised in Paris and referencing the geographic region in said domain name. For example, Paris is often host to celebrations of the culture and language of another country.
-Cultural centers located in Paris may wish to highlight their links to the geographic region they represent (e.g.: the Chinese cultural center in Paris - http:⁄⁄www.cccparis.org⁄).
-The geographic regionʹs public authority wishes to register the domain name for its own use.

In all cases, whether it is the registry operator wishing to register a geographical name for official or public service use, or whether it is an individual applicant, the City of Paris is committed to obtaining the approval of the relevant authority.

For registration requests from the relevant public authority, the registry operator will put in place the procedure agreed between the GAC and Afilias for the Dot INFO gTLD as referenced in the letter written by Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, GAC Chair, on Sept 9, 2003.

For any other request to register a geographic name, the applicant will need to provide registry operator with proof of non-objection or support from the relevant public authority. Once this has been submitted and verified, requests of this kind will be handled on a case-by-case basis only by registry operator.

Registry operator does plan to monitor use of geographic names below the second level (i.e. subdomain used by a .PARIS domain name registrant), as the procedures that would be needed to monitor this are considered too complex and expensive. Traditional dispute resolution procedures or legal procedures exist to address such cases.

-Technical implementation of the protection of geographic names:

Technical protection of terms:

The registry uses its own reserved terms database. The purpose of this database, in addition to protect the defined set of terms, is to allow actions (creations, updates, deletions), user rights (consult or edit) and traceability (history of actions) for each terms it contains.

During the registration of a domain name, the checker placed on the Shared Registry System (SRS) uses two types of checks on the requested terms. The first type of checks is based on syntax, the second one, is based on semantics. The reserved terms database is part of the second type of tests, based on semantics.

The reserved terms database is used in the Shared Registry System (SRS) during its semantics checks only if the domain name request has successfully passed the syntax checks.

The database table allows to classify the terms is contains by categories. The categories allow the registry to identify different types of terms (geographic names, religious terms, cultural...). In the case of geographic names the categories in the database allow subclassifications such as country names or city names.

The checker placed on the SRS applies the semantics checks to a domain name request using the registry’s policies translated into technical rules. The SRS checker uses the reserved terms database to verify the presence or not of the term in its table and acts accordingly. If the term and its category are present in the database the SRS checker will apply the registry’s policy of blocking the registration unless a valid authorization code is presented.

E.g: If “france” is requested by a registrar for registration without a valid authorization code the SRS checker will verify if the term and its category are present in the reserved terms database. The database will indicate that “france” is present in its tables under the “country” category. The SRS checker will then reject the creation request.

Unblocking a reserved term through an authorization code mechanism:

In order to create a domain name containing a reserved term for a registrant, registrars must fill out an online form protected by a captcha code. This form requires the registrar to fill out the requested domain name, the registrant information (nic-handle) and the reason or legitimate interest within a maximum of 4000 characters.

The reserved term request will automatically be sent to the registry’s back office into a queue for human validation by one of the registry’s validation agents. If the legitimate interest of the domain registrant is enough evidence that the domain creation complies with the registry’s policies the validation agent will generate an authorization code that will be sent by email to the registrar that made the request.

For security reasons the registrar’s email address on which the authorization code is sent to is the one defined as the NOC email address.
For additional security reasons the registry has decided that this authorization code is valid on the SRS for a maximum of 15 days. After 15 days the authorization code will expire and a new request will be necessary to retrieve a new authorization code.
The code generated by the registry’s validation agent can only be used for a domain name creation of the requested term for the requested registrant by the requesting registrar. Meaning that an authorization code cannot be used by another registrar or for another holder (identified by its nic-handle).

In case the request does not comply with the registry’s policies or if the given information is not sufficient to generate an authorization code, the validation agent will ask the registrar for complementary information. The registrar has 15 days to answer and provide sufficient information and or complementary documentation to the registry’s validation agent. After 15 days without sufficient information or documents, the authorization code request is abandoned.

Once the registrar receives an authorization code from the registry’s validation agent, the registrar has 15 days to initiate a creation operation on the requested reserved term. This authorization code is fully compatible to the registry’s EPP interface and is used during a creation operation as the auth_info code (see question 24 on EPP).

When the domain name creation operation with the valid authorization code is initiated by the registrar the SRS checker will automatically verify the code, the holder and the requesting registrar with the information contained in the registry’s back office. If the data is correct the creation operation will be processed like any regular domain name creation.

Similar gTLD applications: (3)