[HELP] - Operational best practices regarding the attribution of ccTLD domain names

[Mueller, Milton L]

Emmanuel:
Rigid name categorization policies are bad for users and bad for the business of domain name registration.
It is not clear what they really accomplish, either. People and their activities on the internet do not fit into neat categories, and you find out what is on a website or who is behind an email address by looking at the website or communicating with the email address, not by looking at the domain.

The .FR top level domain used to have such rigid categories, and its growth was stunted for many years. I don’t have time to do it now, but if you look at historical statistics of the FR domain, you will see how it lagged behind other TLDs for years until these rigid categories were changed. One thing they learned is that people in France registered in .com and other TLDs with more liberal policies instead of FR. That is probably happening in Togo, too.

There are other domains that have gone through similar debates, usually they are resolved in a more liberal direction, as user demand calls for more flexibility and openness it is only monopolies and bureaucrats who try to impose categorization schemes on users.


Dr. Milton L Mueller
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Public Policy
[IGP_logo_gold block]



From: NCSG-Discuss <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> On Behalf Of Emmanuel Vitus
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2020 6:42 PM
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [HELP] - Operational best practices regarding the attribution of ccTLD domain names

Dear listers,
I hope you are staying safe and healthy through these unusual times! I have a few questions that I was hoping you might be able to help me with.
There is currently a conversation going on within the Togolese ecosystem regarding the attribution of the Country code top-level domain (. TG). According to article 4 of the national charter in Togo, the domain names ending with the extension. TG can only be assigned if the domain name does not correspond to the naming zones retained by the charter (see list at the end of the email).

For example, as a natural person, I cannot have a domain name with my name (Emmanuel Vitus) directly like emmanuelvitus.tg<http://emmanuelvitus.tg>. The charter indicates that such name must be assigned with the following extension: emmanuelvitus.nom.tg<http://emmanuelvitus.nom.tg> (.nom which means name in french must be included in the domain name to indicate that I am an individual) and for natural persons, the documents requested are  a national ID and a family council report (which means the family must agree and give you an authorization note before you get the domain name). Otherwise, you will not have the domain name.

Before I address the issue in the local community, I would like to hear from you as experts and as a users.

1- Do you find that this practice encouraging enough the popularization of the ccTLD (.TG)?
2- What are the best practices and examples in your country/region regarding this?
Below are the naming zones selected for the “. tg ”

  1.   admin.tg<http://admin.tg> for public administrations;
  2.   asso.tg<http://asso.tg> for associations;
  3.   edu.tg<http://edu.tg> for the education sector;
  4.  gouv.tg<http://gouv.tg> for government structures;
  5.  nom.tg<http://nom.tg> for individuals;
  6.  org.tg<http://org.tg> for international organizations and NGOs;
  7.   tm.tg<http://tm.tg> for trademarks;
  8.  com.tg<http://com.tg> for entities carrying out an activity of an industrial or commercial nature, or any other income-generating activity;
  9.   mairie.tg<http://mairie.tg> for municipalities (eg: lome.mairie.tg<http://lome.mairie.tg>);
  10.  prefecture.tg<http://prefecture.tg> for the prefectures (ex: yoto.prefecture.tg<http://yoto.prefecture.tg>);
  11. ville.tg<http://ville.tg> for cities (ex: kara.ville.tg<http://kara.ville.tg>);
  12. canton.tg<http://canton.tg> for the county towns (eg: amoutive.canton.tg<http://amoutive.canton.tg>);
  13. Info.tg for activities relating to the publication of information;
  14. Net.tg for network and internet service providers;
  15. village.tg<http://village.tg> for villages (eg: edzi.village.tg<http://edzi.village.tg>).
Only domain names for which the applicant does not correspond to any of the categories linked to descriptive extensions above, can be created under the extension “. tg ”. The creation of such domain names is expressly authorized by the administrative manager.

Thanks in advance!
Best regards,
Emmanuel

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-discuss/attachments/20201208/36aa6f54/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 19242 bytes
Desc: image002.png
URL: <http://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-discuss/attachments/20201208/36aa6f54/attachment.png>