Request for Reconsideration
Request 99-3
Date: September 4, 1999

======== Begin Request ========

To: <reconsider@icann.org>
Date: Saturday, September 4, 2:10pm
Re:
From: [Redacted at the request of sender]

I have tried to register ?.com and ~.com I was informed that ICANN has blocked these registrations. Just as pure numerics, such as 411.com and 911.com were previously unregisterable, but now can be registered. Please reconsider. You are preventing me from realizing my dream.

I will now respond to information you desire:

- name, address, and contact information for the requesting party, including postal and email addresses;

[Redacted at the request of sender]

- the specific action of ICANN for which review or reconsideration is sought;

the ? and ~ symbols currently cannot be registered. Please let me register ?.com and ~.com

- the date of the action;

I was informed in August 1999

- the manner by which the requesting party will be affected by the action;

My company will go under if much more time goes by and we cannot bring our ?.com and ~.com products to market. Expenditures without revenue will kill us. ICANN is the roadblock.

- whether a temporary stay of the action is requested;

Please immediately allow me to register these two domains. If the approval process will be protracted then please let me start using the names now on an experimental/probationary basis while the issue is further reviewed by your board.

- what specific steps the requesting party asks ICANN to take - i.e., whether and how the action should be reversed, cancelled, or modified;

Please immediately allow me to register these two domain names.

- the grounds on which the action should be reversed, cancelled, or modified; and

Just as 411.com and 911.com were eventually allowed, there is no valid reason to hold ?.com and ~.com hostage. The blocking of ~.com in particular is considered racist by many Hispanics and I wish to provide a free (advertiser supported) Spanish language based search engine at this domain using the beautiful and proud ~.

To: [Redacted]
Cc: Hans Kraaijenbrink; Amadeu Abril i Abril; Ken Fockler
Subject: Reconsideration Request 99-3

Dear [Redacted]:

In response to your reconsideration request [99-3] (posted at <http://www.icann.org/committees/reconsideration/recon-committee.htm>), the Reconsideration Committee of the ICANN Board has made the following recommendation:

[RC 99-3] The Reconsideration Committee recommends that the Board deny Reconsideration Request 99-3. The request asks the Board to reconsider its decision to block registration of ?.com and ~.com. Because the ICANN Board has made no decisions relating to whether or not those domain names can be registered, there is no decision that can be reconsidered.

Since the implementation of the Internet domain-name system in the 1980s, the specifications published and implemented by the Internet community have not permitted labels making up domain names to have characters other than letters, numbers, and internal hyphens. Througout this period, the specifications for the format of domain names have been well-known throughout the Internet technical community. They have been set forth in several RFCs, including RFC 1035 (published in 1987) <ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1035.txt> and RFC 1123 (published in 1989) <ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1123.txt>. The commonly accepted specifications are reflected in the functional specification for the Shared Registry System, through which competitive registrar services were introduced in the .com/.net/.org top-level domains last year, which requires that labels contain letters, digits, or internal hyphens.  The use of domain names in a noncompliant format presents interoperability problems. Among other things, domain names that violate this format have the potential of causing software written in reliance on these formats to malfunction, and several instances of actual malfunctions have been identified.

The Reconsideration Committee finds the domain names identified in Reconsideration Request 99-3 to be incompatible with the functional specifications contained in the Shared Registry System.  Any proposed change in those specifications should be advanced through the appropriate Internet standards-development organization, in this case the IETF.

This recommendation will be forwarded to the ICANN Board and will be considered at the next ICANN Board meeting.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Andrew McLaughlin
ICANN

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