[dns-wg] retiring old ccTLDs

Robert Martin-Legène wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 11:45:34AM -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
>> On the other hand, SU has specifically been deleted by ISO, hence the
>> ccTLD needs to be deleted as well (just like ZR was back in the day).
>> For that matter, TP is way overdue for being deleted, as the TL domain
>> has been up and running for a long time now. I think we can cut YU
>> some slack until the ME and RS domains are up and running, but then
>> that one needs to go too.
> 
> Hello Doug.
> 
> IIRC the initial discussion came from some not seing this as something
> which "needs to be done"

Disappointing on its face to start with.

> and from Crain saying there was no policy.

I am not in a position to comment on what John may or may not have
said, how it may or may not have been interpreted, or the environment
John was operating in during the early days of ICANN.

> Indeed your own posts seems to indicate this lack of policy too.

I'm honestly confused as to how you could come to that conclusion, but
it's not worth debating. I'll do my best to make my thoughts clear below.

> But
> just for clarification, I wonder if you would like to say if the wording
> above stems from a policy somewhere or from your own conviction?

Let's start with RFC 1591
ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1591.txt (which any of you who
are involved with the administration of a TLD should probably go back
and read periodically), especially Section 4.2:

2) Country Codes

   The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is
   not a country.
   The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code
   top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a
   procedure for determining which entities should be and should not
   be on that list.

Then in May of 1999, ICANN reaffirmed those principles in ICP-1.
http://www.icann.org/icp/icp-1.htm

There is a policy, and there is precedent (for names being removed
from the root after the country code is deleted from the ISO list).
What there is not is a clearly defined procedure on how and when it
should be done. In the past that has been left up to the good will of
the ccTLD operators. Unfortunately, it seems that in at least some
cases that good will can no longer be relied on.

Max Tulyev wrote:

> You also can take a look at official SU statistics, for example,
> previous month:
>
> http://stat.nic.ru/en_su/2006/10/31/trend-20061031.shtml
> http://stat.nic.ru/en_su/2006/10/31/summ_trend-20061031.shtml
>
> This domain grows even it have huge price (
> http://www.nic.ru/en/index.html ). So people really need it.

A) Wanting something is not the same as needing it.
B) My feeling is that what you're saying here (substantial
registration growth in spite of the high price) speaks more to the
motivations of the SU operators for maintaining their domain than it
does for the necessity of keeping it in the root.

Doug

-- 
    If you're never wrong, you're not trying hard enough