Dear all
if you are interested / your library is interested also on behalf of local communities in the development of public global and local policies and to contribute with your ideas about the protection of
geographic names within the next round of the new generic Top Level Domains processes (auctions, registrations, dispute resolutions and so on) there is an open call for comments that has been
extended to 31 Dec 2014 on the website of the Governmental Advisory Committee at
<https://gacweb.icann.org/display/gacweb/Community+Input+-+The+protection+of+Geographic+Names+in+the+New+gTLDs+process>
My comment with date 16 October was actually sent the day before 15 October through the chat within the platform used for remote attendance of Icann 51 Meeting in Los Angeles, hence the very
colloquial tone of my words and the reference to the speakers (who where talking at the same time).
During such conference session the speakers were talking of various historical, societal, anthropological etc etc reasons why a local group or community called - say - Tesco, somewhere in the world,
should have granted the right to block the use of a brand name within the new gTLD. That seemed simply absurd.
I see now that my invitation to pragmatism and focussed rules on how to make names belonging to diverse cultural and business sectors and traditions compatible on a global scale has been
enormously endorsed since then by other stakeholders from the business world - possibly even beyond my intention to favour a balanced and technical approach. So that there is no remaining voice
from the non commercial communities that simply seem disappeared, in spite of the fact they seemed so instrumentally talkative before my invitation.
Now, whilst it is true that there is a strong element of misunderstanding of international law and cooperation and exploitation of some instrumental localisms to create obstructionism in the new gTLDs
processes, that does not mean denying the possibility that local communities all around the world - especially through consolidated consultation mechanisms and references to their own local
history sources, local libraries and archives etc - can express and see recognised valid reasons why a specific geographic name must be protected for cultural and social identity reasons.
Best wishes
Brunella Longo
Information Management Adviser
Open Data Assurance
http://www.brunellalongo.co.uk
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