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Iraq Wants .iq TLD
joelt49 writes "According to this USA Today article, via Yahoo! News, Iraq is seeking its own .iq Top-Level Domain (TLD). The Iraqi chairman of the National Communications & Media Commission, Siyamend Othman, said the .IQ domain name would allow Iraqis to stake a 'virtual flag' in the worldwide Internet community while American administrator Paul Bremer said it 'will signal to potential investors that Iraq is rebuilding for a high-technology future.' ICANN refuses to comment on specific applications, including this one."
I can see problems with this. www.whatsyour.iq
heh....
new blog site: www.darls.iq
http://www.freebsd.org
Google indicates there were at least some .IQ domains it spidered...
:)
IANA lists it as being there, and a little digging shows it hosted out of Texas by InfoComCorp, apparently related to Synaptix somehow.
'course, the nameserver looks rather empty.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Seriously, why should any country, no matter how small or no matter how little of the population have access to the internet (6% in this case, according to the article), not have a TLD? Okay, I know that there will be an increasing number forever, but this is an old 'who can say where the line is drawn?' situation and the solution is the same as always: there should be no line. Every country should have a TLD.
You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
To avoid political controversy, ICANN *specifically* chose to use ISO country codes. This should be specifically a problem for ISO, and if the ISO standard is updated, ICANN can use the new country codes.
May we never see th
Hard to see this as anything but good for Iraq. I like this step, but it'd go a ways further to rebuild their basic infrastructure (approx. 40% of Iraq still lacks potable water, electricity continues to be problematic to maintain, etc) - but with restrictions to basic freedom of information like the Great Firewall of China, I welcome any steps a free Iraq wants to take toward joining the online community.
Truly, a great idea.
ccTLDs are indeed automatic - any nation officially recognized with the two-letter ISO code has the ability to get a TLD, and as you can see, one already exists.
Here's the trouble.
All ccTLDs, by their very nature, are a three-way agreement: a government, who actually owns the TLD; an operator, who operates the TLD, and ICANN, who provides rules and regulations. A previous Iraqi government agreed that the ccTLD operator was going to be the Texan company; however, they are now essentially demanding to be re-provided control. On the other hand, they will have existing contracts with the ccTLD that limit it - and those, if binding enough, could be difficult to break.
Their argument, as always, is that they're a new government. A great many groups, across the world, would indeed love to get their hands on the TLD; so there's legal processes to take control over the TLD and become the official government responsible for it, as well as all of the legal wrangling with said Texan company, which probably has wholly unreasonable contracts with the previous government which are likely to still be legally binding.
Asking ICANN to step in is a bit foolish, IMO - there's nothing that ICANN can really do to strip the Texan company of its ownership of the domain. Governments fought hard in the GAC, under Twomey, the current man at the top of ICANN, but then at the top of the GAC itself, to draw careful lines in the sand over what ICANN could and couldn't involve itself with.
And have no doubt - with the way that the US government has handed out posts in the Iraqi government to contract out the airwaves, telecommunications, and other government contracts, even if we have this battle now, there's no doubt that all of these contracts will eventually get harsh reviews by a truly independent Iraqi government when those posts are relinquished back under the control of the Iraqi government in five years time, the length of control the U.S. will retain over those areas. That's "sovereignty" for ya - 'you can run your country, but we keep control over your resources'; keep the oil, but we keep everything else.
After all, they rebuilt it, right? Doesn't matter if they blew it up first.
-- A mind is a terrible thing.
Right now, the .iq registrar is a Texas company (presumably) chosen by the Saddam regime. The new regime wants control - presumably so they can either run the registry themselves, have it be run by a local (Iraqi) company, or negotiate a better contract with a different country. Any of which would give them a better deal, and maybe even a cash flow to the government or the economy as a whole.