Can World Governments Veto Your Domain Name?

AugstWest writes "There's been talk recently of the Obama administration wanting the right to shoot down possible TLDs, but it looks like things may be going even a step further — According to this article by Laura Stotler, 'the NTIA is asking for the power to object to any proposed Internet address for any reason.' What happens if, say, the government of Germany decides they don't like your domain name? ICANN's had its share of bureaucratic nightmares, what happens when world governments also have a say?"

Not News

[OverlordQ]

Of course they quote this line:

“Any GAC member may raise an objection to a proposed string for any reason.”

Then in order to push their pov they ignore the very next line:

If it is the consensus position of the GAC not to oppose objection raised by a GAC member or members, ICANN shall reject the application.

No single country can veto something, it takes a majority to agree to the veto.

Re:Veto Them All

[pavon]

New TLDs serve no useful purpose, and make things worse for everyone but the registrars. Legitimate organizations will now have to buy even more TLDs to prevent impersonation or typos. Users who are accustomed to everything residing under .com, .org (or .co.XX) will now have to remember the TLD in addition to the domain name. While the total number of available domains will theoretically increase, when you consider that organizations will be buy their name under all of them, this isn't true in practice. The only people who win are the registrars who now get paid more since people have to register more domains.

As far as removing old domains, there are two reason. Removing .biz and all the other crap domains is for the same reason above, to undo damage that has already been done by creating worthless TLDs. Transitioning the .mil, .gov, and .edu domains is mostly just an aesthetic / fairness thing; they are US specific domains, and really ought to reside in the .us TLD, but I could tolerate them remaining for legacy reasons.