| gTLD | Full Legal Name | E-mail suffix | Detail | | .saarland | dotSaarland GmbH | thomsentrampedach.com | View |
We have carefully examined (including S.W.O.R.D test) the applied-for string “SAARLAND” and found that deployment of it would not cause adverse operational, rendering, or user-confusion due to any visual similarity with existing TLDs⁄ISO3166 lists⁄ICANN reserved list of names & list of ineligible strings. The string consists entirely of ASCII letters and is a valid host name having at least three and less than 63 characters. The ASCII label is in compliance with the string requirements set forth in the Applicant Guidebook (Applicant Guidebook, section: 2.2.1.3.2 “String Requirements”) and with all technical standards such as but not limited to RFC 1035, RFC 2181, RFC 952, RFC 1123, and RFC 3696.
Although the applied for string is built up by pure ASCII characters, the Applicant is aware of its responsibility to mitigate and resolve inter alia such issues, as discussed during the “TLD Universal Acceptance” session at the Costa Rica ICANN Meeting, 14 March 2012 (http:⁄⁄costarica43.icann.org⁄meetings⁄sanjose2012⁄presentation-tld-universal-acceptance-14mar12-en.pdf):
1. Validity checks of TLDs based on either a hard coded list (may not be updated with all new gTLDs) or on a length check (i.e. maximum three characters)
2. Name conversion in various applications and browsers. Based on wrong definitions or outdated lists of TLDs, some applications may not convert this new gTLD to links
3. User acceptance. Some websites⁄applications may refuse user acceptance of users entering a new gTLD not accepted by the website⁄application
4. Email clients validating on length of TLDs by applying an outdated list of TLDs may also cause problems for this new gTLD, valid email addresses may not be accepted
5. Websites and search engines such as, but not limited to, Google or Yahoo may refuse to offer services like advertising, if they validate email addresses and valid domain names based on outdated definitions of TLDs, or simply refuse to add new gTLDs to their lists
6. Mobile browsers may also not be updating their lists of valid TLDs, as live DNS look ups may be considered costly or inadequate by the providers
Actions to mitigate or solve such issues:
As the TLD is longer than 4 characters, it is understood that some issues concerning usage of the TLD in online forms as used by online service providers today may exist, especially during the launch phases. We will work towards enabling general acceptance for long-string TLDs, not just for .SAARLAND, by consulting with registry operators, service providers and software developers to ensure and encourage a quick adoption of the new TLDs. We will work with well-known content and service providers expecting to use the TLD .SAARLAND and communicate the new TLD stringʹs possibilities. We will work with ICANN in our on-going effort on universal TLD acceptance both for IDN TLDs and ASCII TLDs and may contribute to ICANN awareness campaigns.
For second Level IDN specific issues see answer to Q44.