Hank Nussbacher <hank@mail.iucc.ac.il> wrote:
like ibm.eu or ripe.eu or even tonyblair.eu. Up till now, most countries employed a hierarchical structure such as ac.xx or co.xx or org.xx.
a quick scan showed that at least 1/4 of the 248 ccTLDs (some of them aren't open for registration at all) allow for registration of 2LDs. Within Europe, the percentage is higher and has been increasing, i.e. TLDs have changed their policies from 'structured' to 'flat' in the past.
Are there any limitations to what a 2nd level domain name can be (not referring to trademarks)? I.e. would a single digit or letter be allowed? Would co.sg be allowed (up till now com.sg was the main commercial 2nd level domain)?
The problem described in RFC 1535 is still present (I've just coincidentally looked at "new" TLDs recently), so I'd always recommend to block all existing TLDs plus all 2-character SLDs (since most of them might become a country code). Part of that was already realized in EU Regulation 733/2002 (number 19) and still can be found in the COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 874/2004 of 28 April 2004 http://europe.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&LANGUAGE=en&SERVICE=eurlex&COLLECTION=oj&DOCID=2004l162p00400050 where - amongst other names - the 2 character codes of existing countries (article 8) are blocked, although very likely for different reasons than those motivated by RFC 1535. -Peter