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

Prototypical answer:

The Hartford will incorporate all ICANN policies and requirements into its domain name registration agreements. At this time, The Hartford does not plan to allow use of geographic names at any level of .THEHARTFORD domain names. The Hartford will use The Verisign Registry Solution in addition to its own domain name registration policies to prevent inappropriate use of geographic names.

The Verisign Registry Solution provides a mechanism for reserving 2nd level domain names preventing them from being registered. This functionality includes a list of strings which the system will not allow to be registered. Strings can be added and removed from this list as needed.

For the protection of geographic names for .THEHARTFORD, the country and territory names contained in the following internationally recognized lists shall be initially blocked:

1. 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:
http:⁄⁄www.iso.org⁄iso⁄support⁄country_codes⁄iso_3166_code_lists⁄iso-3166-1_decoding_table.htm#EU

2. 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:

Technical reference manual for the standardization of geographical names, Part III – available here: http:⁄⁄unstats.un.org⁄unsd⁄geoinfo⁄UNGEGN⁄publications.html

3. the list of United Nations member states in 6 official United Nations languages prepared by the Working Group on Country Names of the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names;

The most recent list of country names approved by the Working Group was submitted on behalf of UNGEGN for the Ninth UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in August 2007: E⁄CONF.98⁄89 Add.1

As new versions of these 3 internationally recognized lists are published, the list of names Reserved by the Verisign Registry System will be updated to reflect any changes.

If The Hartford desires to use a country code in its second or third level domain names in the future, it will seek agreement from that country’s government and approval from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee.

In addition to providing protection for Geographic names, this reserved name functionality will be used to reserve other names specifically ineligible for delegation. For instance section 2.2.1.2.3 of the Applicant Guidebook lists Strings associated with the International Olympic Committee and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movements to be prohibited from delegation per the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) request.

All the strings on these lists as well as any others put forth by the GAC and approved by ICANN will be included in the list of reserved names.

There are no plans at this time to release any of the reserved names. If however The Hartford intends to release any of the names at a future date, the appropriate procedures outlined in Section 5 of Specification 5 on the release of reserved names will be followed.

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