Application Comment Details

The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) is the information and communications technology sector (ICT) regulator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (SA).

Amongst its roles and responsibilities include:

• Granting licenses in the ICT sector

• Protection of users’ rights

• Setting service quality standards

• Preparation of policies, regulatory frameworks and studies of ICT sector in SA

• domain name administration in SA

• Increasing the information security awareness level in SA

• Supervision of the National Committee for Information Society in SA

This application is sensitive as the applied-for gTLD string (.bible) has an important religious and cultural meaning to Christians across the world. The books of the Old Testament are related to the 24 texts in the Hebrew bible and they are relevant to other Abrahamic religions including Islam.

There appears to be no common version of the bible. For example, complete bibles vary from containing approximately 66 books in the Protestant canon to approximately 81 books in that approved by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Many Christians consider the text of the Bible to be divinely inspired, and cite passages in the Bible itself as support for this belief. The canonical composition of the Old Testament is under dispute between Christian groups. For example, Protestants do not consider the deuterocanonical books to be canonical which puts them at odds with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

It is clear that with a number of religions, and groups within them, disagreeing over the provenance and content of the bible one group or individual should not be permitted to define what the bible is, or is not, on the world wide web.

To allow this string to be registered would be offensive to many people and societies on religious grounds.

We request that ICANN not accept this application.