I strongly object to both the process that led to and the outcome of this proposal. There was a very long period of discussion and the development of an aplicant guidebook during which neither the IOC nor the ICRC, so far as I am aware, engaged with ICANN processes. At the last minute before the new gTLD system came into force these two organisations then put pressure on through the GAC for special treatment. This has then been rushed through with too little debate and too much pressure to cave in to pressure exerted through one of the ICANN stakeholders. The resulting proposal is deeply flawed on both the specifics and the general principle and opens up the name space to future claims by a myriad of other organisations. The two organisations are completely different in nature and scope and the limited discussions that have taken place appear to have treated them the same, with no consideration of their differences. The case for the IOC is based upon an international treaty which only protects their graphical trademark and not the words Olympic or Olympics. Indeed, as we can see from the current second level names registered there are huge numbers of commercial and non-commercial (e.g. geographic regions, not least the region from where the name is drawn) who have currently registered variants on the name and who hold trademarks on such names. Privileging the IOC in any way in the gTLD name space is unjustified and expansionary. The case for the ICRC is slightly better, given that the existing international treaties do protect their names from actual use. I believe that these treaties provide sufficient protection against any misuse of their name and thus no added protection is needed. Any group which uses a name in such a way as to create confusion amongst net users would be subject to severe penalties and an application to have such domains blocked would easily be accepted under existing rules. THis proposal is again expansionary in that the current proposal restricts registration of names in languages not covered by the existing international treaty and also includes the concept that names not explicitly mentioend but "similar" should be protected. So, firstly, when the GNSO votes on this matter the two proposals should be separated. Even if one accepts that case for the ICRC, the case for the IOC is far, far weaker. Second, the GNSO votes should include more nuanced considerations of restricting the scope of any protection offered, in particular paying close attention to non-expansionary processes. Finally, if any protections are extended, these should be explicitly stated as exceptions to the rules, apply only to the current round of gTLD expansion and require any future protections to be argued for via ICANN's usual bottom-up policy process and not forced on the community by one stakeholder at the eleventh hour. Such limited and clearly exceptional protections must be clearly constrained to prevent other organisations seeking to bypass the bottom-up processes and force their own restrictions on others' self-identification into the domain name system without proper balance being considered in a measured and true consensus manner. In accepting these proposals, I believe the GNSO would do much more significant harm to ICANN than would follow to anyone by allowing the existing treaties to provide the rules and the existing mechanisms to follow those rules. -- Professor Andrew A Adams [log in to unmask] Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/