To: "Oliver Smoot, President, ISO" <osmoot@itic.org> Date: September 26, 2003.
Mr. Smoot,
In ISO Council document 36/2003, and further in note AIC021-03: "Public availability of country, currency and language codes", there is a proposal for charging of ISO codes from ISO Infrastructure Standards such as ISO 3166 (country codes), ISO 4127 (currency codes), and ISO 639 (language codes).
The IAB also wants to point out the very good cooperation between the IETF and ISO which has made it possible to use the named standards in protocols used on the Internet such as HTTP, SMTP and the domain name system itself where delegations of country codes is done according to ISO 3166.
Having ISO charging for these codes would force the Internet Community not only to change existing protocols, but also start a discussion whether ISO 3166 country codes can be used as a basis for domain names in the future.
It is the view of the IAB that use of such codes must be royalty free.
Best regards,
Leslie Daigle,
Chair, Internet Architecture Board.
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