France – The ‘Whine’ Capital Of The World!

So it’s not very often that domain name news captures front-page column inches all over the world – this week however has proved a rare exception to the rule. Now, we’re not going to get bogged down with any potentially controversial or offensive stereotypes here…we can leave that up to you…but the good folks in France have set about making a point that when it comes to an important national export, well…let’s just say you better not mess around with your choice of domain names.      To cut a long story short, the ICANN – aka the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – decided that the time had come to put up for sale the domain names of .vin and .wine. Pretty much every other domain name on Earth was fair game, so why exclude these two pretty obvious additions from the mix? But here’s the thing – as far as France is concerned it could end up proving harmful to the country’s wine industry if things are allowed to pan out as they are indeed panning out. And as such, they’re calling on the courts to ensure that domain names are for the sake of trade subject to certain geographical protection.France’s argument centers around the fact that as it stands, EU law states that regional products of certain types can only carry the name of the region if that’s where they were made – prime examples being Champagne and Burgundy. As for their quarrel with the ICANN, it’s a case of anyone with the desire to do so being able to buy a domain…let’s say www.bordeaux.wine for example…and using it to blog about their love for fine Victorian toilet bowls – nothing to do with wine or the region. As these domain names don’t fall under the same EU jurisdiction as the regional naming regulation, wine-related domain names are fair game for anyone…at least for the time being. “These decisions could imperil the current talks on the transatlantic trade partnership by forcing the imposition of a model by the means of technical discussions on internet naming,” read the pleas from a trio of officials from France.“The lack of adequate redress mechanisms and, above all, the lack of accountability demonstrate the need for significant reform of ICANN even before the current debate on the global internet governance system comes to a conclusion.”The long and short of it is that France is trying to get the point across that by failing to in any way apply regional restrictions to domain names, such names are in direct violation of the rather strict policies currently enforced by the EU. As such, the country is calling for greater control of and observation over ICANN by the US government, as recent years have seen authorities stepping further and further back from the ICANN’s affairs.Not that anything’s likely to shift greatly in the near future - .wine is well and truly up for grabs and France’s fight is therefore likely to be anything but a brief one. And exactly how the ICANN will or can possibly make the necessary changes once hundreds of thousands of .wine domains go live remains to be seen.