Re: [DNSOP] on private use TLDS

[Jaap Akkerhuis <[e-mail]>]

 Doug Barton writes:

 > I don't doubt Jaap.

Thank you.

 > What I doubt is that any organization as political 
 > as ISO (or ICANN) will hold preferences stable in the absence of a 
 > controlling policy.

Here are some more facts from the trivia corner.

The ISO was started from 1947. The first edition of the 3166 standard
is from 1974 and defined the User assigned codes as:

	The series of letters AA, XA to XZ, and ZZ, and the series AAA to AAZ, XAA
	to XZZ and ZZA to ZZZ respectively, are available for private use, and for
	provisional codes which should be recorded as soon as possible by the
	maintenance agency. An existing alpha-1 code which is in agreement with
	the first letter of the alpha-2 code may be used for an appropriate time
	to be fixed by the agency.

The second edition (1981) said:

	The series of letters AA, OM to QZ,XA to XZ, and ZZ,and the
	series AAA to AAZ, QMA to QZZ, XAA to XZZ, and ZZA to ZZZ
	respectively and the series of numbers 900 to 999, are
	available for individual use.

so it did add the ranges starting with a Q. 

The later editions are all defining the same name space (with sometimes
different wording).

A similar exercise can be done for ICANN en TLD name space but I
leave that up to the reader(s).

However, I cannot help noticing that for years I hear from various
ICANN stakeholders that ICANN should start to use alpha-2 codes as
well. Most recently in the meetings of the GNSO newgtld working
group, subgroup wt-5. The motivation is that then Volkswagen can
have its TLD ".vw" and the Bank of America (why not bank of Albania?)
".ba".

	jaap

PS. [Apparently proponents of ba for a bank don't realize that it
    is assigned to Bosnia and Herzegovina].