22 Describe proposed measures for protection of geographic names at the second and other levels in the applied-for gTLD

Prototypical answer:

The BBC is committed to running .BBC in full compliance with all applicable laws, consensus policies, best practice guidelines, RFCs and the Specifications of the Registry Agreement. The BBC therefore commits that it will follow GAC advice and Specification 5 and block from initial registration (at no cost to governments or other applicable public authorities) those country and territory names contained in the following lists:

1. The short form (in English) of all country and territory names contained on the ISO 3166- 1 list, as updated from time to time, including the European Union; and
2. The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names, Part III Names of Countries of the World; and
3. The list of United Nations member states in 6 official United Nations languages prepared by the Working Group on Country Names of the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

The process for reserving these names, and hence blocking them from registration, will be agreed with our technical service provider Nominet, who has committed to supporting this process.

Because .BBC is a single entity registry, with all domains being held in the ownership of the BBC, and for purposes which serve the BBC’s strategic business aims, the reserved names cannot be offered to Governments or other official bodies for their own use as this would conflict with the Mission and Purpose of the TLD. However, for the same reason, they will not be offered to third parties.

We envisage that over time, there will be demand from brand TLDs leading to the development of a standardised process for requesting GAC review and ICANN approval for the release of country and territory names for registration by the Registry Operator when the registry is a single entity registry. When such a process is in place, the BBC expects to apply for the release of country and territory names within .BBC .At this time the BBC will develop a process to permit government, public authorities or other relevant bodies to challenge any use of a name which they perceive to be abusive.

Similar gTLD applications: (22)