Patagonia is not a province of Argentina. If it had been, it would have been included on the list of reserved geographic terms in the Applicant Guidebook.

I've never quite understood the idea that TLDs are equivalent to second-level .com domains. Second-level domains can coexist. Top-level domains cannot. The clothing maker can own patagonia.us, Argentina could own patagonia.ar and Chile could own patagonia.cl. I often chalk this misunderstanding down to the ignorance of those people who believe .com is the only TLD. But I know you're not one of those people, Milton, so I scratch my head whenever you roll out the "a .com domain is the same as a TLD". There's only one .patagonia, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me that ICANN should have some mechanisms in place to make sure, to the greatest extent feasible, that it goes to the "best" candidate or does not infringe upon the rights of others. Had somebody else applied for .patagonia, the clothing company would have been well within its rights to file a Legal Rights Objection and, if it won, block the TLD from being delegated. As it happens, GAC objections are only reviewed by the ICANN board rather than one of WIPO's legion of retired judges. Reasonable people can disagree about whether that's too political a mechanism, but to argue that getting a TLD should be as easy as paying your $10 for a .com domain strikes me as silly.

You make some good points but I don't think you fully understand my perspective, which is both more carefully thought out, more sensible and more radical than you may be accustomed to in the ICANN environment. First, you make the valid point that Patagonia or Amazon at the 2nd level allows many uses in different levels. What his perfectly sensible point ignores, however, is that all the people claiming exclusive rights in geographic terms (or trademarks) DON'T CARE which level it is in. Governments wanted - and in some cases got - reservations at the second level, didn't they? If the GAC were given veto power or "early warning" power or objection power over 2nd, 3rd, or 4th level names they would do exactly what they are doing now. What this tells me is that they are claiming exclusive rights to the string, wherever it occurs. So the reason I throw ".com" examples at these people is simply to show them that good, socially productive uses of strings have come about in the absence of their vetos and regulations; and also that the parade of horribles that they project (e.g., taking over the market for books by registering .book) have NOT come about. And in fact, while .com is not the only TLD it does have a privileged status in most browsers and searches, a kind of default assumption that you will find what you want there for any genericword.com. Indeed, in the mid-late 1990s 80% of the world's domains were in fact registered under .com. So when I show that Amazon.com didn't hurt or violate any rights of Brazil or Brazilians, I think it provides a pretty good prima facie case that a .Amazon wouldn't either. Now sadly, you've shown that you've bought into the madness that afflicts so much of domain name policy by putting forward the literally crazy idea that for any exclusive string XYZ, there is a "best" person who should get it. This is perhaps a divinely ordained legitimate user, who miraculously holds some globally applicable pre-emptive right to certain character stirngs in the domain name system. Disabuse yourself of that notion, which I insist is a path of madness, and you will finally "get" what I am saying about these issues. Just try on for a moment the idea that generic words and most other strings are not owned by anyone, are subject to dozens if not thousands of legitimate concurrent uses, and thus should be available for registration by anyone and everyone. No, this does not mean we don't respect Trademark rights - trademark violations occur through USAGE not through registration (in particular, uses that confuse or deceive) but there is nothing in the registration of a string itself that violates any rights. Contention can be resolved through auctions, trades, etc. One of the interesting things that people steeped in the irrationality of ICANN and the DNS never seem to notice is that there are dozens of name spaces where none of the rules and restrictions we assume are needed in the domain name space exist. Let's take Twitter, for example. I could create a @patagonia twitter handle in a few seconds, assuming no one else has it, and tweet about whatever I wanted. No advance permissions needed, no 700-page applicant guidebook, no $185,000 application fee, no lawyers. Of course if I defraud people with that handle, e.g., pretend to be the company, use it sell sports equipment, etc. it would be legally actionable, and shut down quickly. But if I use the handle because my friends refer to me as "patagonia" or because I just bloody like the word, and my uses are based on that, no problem. Ex post application of law works perfectly fine. We don't need ex ante divinations as to who "deserves" the name more than someone else. In short, there is no "best" person to make use of an open name in a unique-string environment, there are only thousands of possible uses. Maybe there is a role for pre-emptive reservation of a few fanciful trademarks and terms that might have technical implications. so yes, I'd go with some protections for rights and technical stability. But ICANN has no business trying to decide for society which use of a string is better than any other as long as no rights are violated. And it's attempt to do so is rather obviously backfiring and creating an over-regulated, restrictive environment that makes the whole domain name industry 5 times as costly and complicated as it needs to be.

There's a porn star called India. No last name. Just India. According to Wikipedia she's been in over 200 porn videos, has won half a dozen AVN awards and in 2011 was inducted into the Urban X Hall of Fame. She's been performing in porn since 1998 and has her own branded line of sex toys. She also performs as a rap artist. I can't pretend to have heard of her before, but it sounds like she's had quite a successful career. She's definitely got a legitimate right to the gTLD .india, right? If she applies for it first, the Indian government, which would no doubt be horrified, shouldn't have a say in the matter, right? I'm churlishly using a porn star as an example to be provocative, but that is a potential outcome of the state of affairs you're proposing, isn't it? If I'm continuing to misunderstand, please correct me. It's not deliberate. India is a hypothetical example of course, because the names of countries are specifically banned by the Applicant Guidebook. The ban also extends, to a lesser extent, to provinces, cities and other types of administrative division within nations. Any string that is on certain ISO lists. There's no way Ms India could get .india as a gTLD, in other words. The reason Patagonia the clothing company had a shot at .patagonia is that it is a geographic descriptor than did not make it to the ISO lists. It's arguably a loophole/oversight/edge case, because like The Rockies it's cross-border and does not match an administrative division. But if we can agree that the geographic ban in the Guidebook is appropriate, because it stops uses such as Ms India getting .india, then I see little reason why it cannot be extended by GAC decree/recommendation, on a case-by-case basis, to cover bloody big areas of the world. If a tiny village in Morocco can have ICANN protection, Patagonia certainly can. Let's not forget, Patagonia is not a word plucked from the dictionary by the clothing company. It chose to name itself after a geographic area, using one of that geographic area's mountain ranges in its logo, in order to associate itself with that geographic area.

;-) don't have time to respond in full, but your argument does not scare me in the least. Yes, as a logical implication of my ideas, the porn star has the same right to a .india TLD as the government. And if you think that's crazy, then tell me why and how she got and uses the name India for her, um, trade now? Why is the DNS some kind of holy place?