[address-policy-wg] IPv6 Policy Clarification - Initial allocation criteria "d)"

> >>>Well, I was unclear. I was referring to the policy of the national 
IR? 
> >>>Who sets that policy? Actually, what is the national IR? National 
> >>>government? Who gives the national IR authority?
> >>
> >>Do you know how nations get ccTLDs?
> >>
> >>Hint: We have UN.
> > 
> > 
> > To bring in the governments into an address policy discussion should 
qualify
> > for application of Godwin's law.  "The thread has ended here".
> 
> So, we don't have ccTLDs. OK.

This is terribly confused.

In fact, nations get ccTLDs by accepting incoming international mail, i.e. 
letters and parcels. Any area of the world that has a postal system which 
receives incoming mail, also has a two-letter code assigned by the 
Universal Postal Union. They aren't terribly concerned about political 
divisions when making the code allocations. The important thing is that 
the area must have a separate postal system and since Taiwan has a postal 
system separate from the People's Republic of China, it also gets a UPU 
code. Same thing for Hong Kong. And mainland France also had a code until 
recently (MF) to distinguish it from the French overseas departments and 
territories which all have their own individual codes.

IANA and ICANN simply refer to the UPU list to decide whether or not to 
give out a ccTLD. They prefer to give the ccTLD to an administrator who 
has the support of the majority of Internet users in the ccTLD area and 
there is a dispute procedure to sort out arguments. If necessary, 
governments can win those disputes but it usually is not necessary for 
governments to get involved at all because the independent ccTLD 
organizations in most countries try to do a good enough job that nobody 
complains about them.

Strangely enough, this is not that different from the RIR system.

--Michael Dillon