Discussion at ICANN website about SU. domain ended

On December 5th has been posted to ICANN website (the international corporation which administrates the Internet address space) a document proposing the Internet community representatives to discuss the possibility of deletion of some biliteral top level domains including SU.

ISO – International UN Organization for Standardization - compiles a table of biliteral codes of different countries. As a result of geopolitical changes this table is being constantly modified. According to the corresponding ISO body which is to maintain the table’s relevance to the political state of affairs in the world, in case a country disappears the corresponding bilateral code should be indicated in transitionally or exceptionally reserved codes list.

As ICANN explains it is necessary to liquidate old domains in order to delegate them to a new country (territory).

However in the ICANN document concerned are given examples of cases when “former national domain” continues to exist even after the country itself disappears (like SU), or when of some historical reasons a country obtains two codes (like UK and GB for Great Britain, or TP and TL for East Timor) etc. Apart from that ICANN gives examples of some countries managed to successfully switch from one domain to another. Yet all the cases are individual which does not allow establishing any general rules. That is why the round table discussion was aimed to get opinions from the international Internet community in order to work out further recommendations.

The announcement of possible SU domain liquidation has given rise to a wide discussion in Internet community. Most of the comments on discussion list where ICANN is accepting users proposals regarding the old domains deletion, are devoted to that particular issue. Most of the users are in favor of domain SU. keeping maintained.

Foundation for Internet Development (FID) which was partially empowered in 2001 to administrate SU. domain, sees its obligations in defending SU. domain users’ interests and is considering a possibility to create users Forum which will allow to further discuss on SU domain development. According to the Foundation members during the discussion with ICANN they were trying to base on the users’ interests whose opinion is crucial for taking any decision on further domain SU. faith.

At the beginning of 2006 the Foundation initiated, and in summer 2006 formalized the special project on development of SU. domain (SU-PDP Project), which was aimed to appropriately represent SU. zone users’ interests, as well as to bring into compliance the domain zone management and current ICANN rules and other international norms.

FID considers that it is in users’ interests not to delete domains after the code in ISO-3166 standard disappears. Regarding SU. domain the Foundation representatives said this domain zone contains a lot of business, scientific, educational and nongovernmental initiatives, which are international by nature and cover not only geographic and cultural “territories” of former USSR (if considering them not as nations, but as the people historically related), but spread to the whole international Internet-community.

However it is too early to conclude anything from that public discussion about old domains and their destiny. It is expected that ICANN will return to that question at the nearest Conference which will take place at the end of March 2007 in Lisbon.