Weighs in on .wine debate — U.S. Government

U.S. government advises against giving additional protections to second level .wine and .vin domain names.

Lawrence Strickling, Administrator of the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), has sent a letter to ICANN regarding additional protections for .wine and .vin domain names.

Many governments have asked for additional safeguards around these domain names with protection for geographic names at the second level.

Strickling writes that the U.S. government does not believe additional protections, above what the ICANN board has by now approved, are warranted.

…some governments have proposed that a select group of market participants, and potentially ICANN, agree to define bad faith very specifically: by instituting a presumption of bad faith where one country’s geographical indication is registered as a domain name by another country’s nationals. If ICANN were to approve this proposed approach as an additional safeguard, it would be putting itself in the position of creating fresh international precedent that would be inconsistent with many national legal regimes.

He notes that the U.S. government supports delegation of .wine and .vin without additional safeguards beyond the GAC advice by now accepted by ICANN.

ICANN’s contract to manage the root zone of domain names (through Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) is managed by the NTIA.

Three firms applied for .wine and one for .vin.