Donuts wins .doctor
Donuts has emerged the victor of the .doctor gTLD contention set.
Competing applicants Radix and The Medical Registry both withdrew their applications last week.
The string wasn’t due to head to its ICANN last-resort auction until May 25, indicating that the contention set was settled privately.
.doctor has been the subject of some controversy.
ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee had insisted that .doctor should be reserved purely for licensed medical doctors.
Donuts had complained that this would rule out use by any of the myriad other types of doctor, as well as registrants using “doctor” in a fanciful sense (like “rug doctor” or “PC doctor”).
ICANN initially accepted the GAC advice, but changed its mind this February, declining to impose such restrictive language on .doctor’s contractual Public Interest Commitments.
So it seems that .doctor will be generally unrestricted.
Donuts will have to sign up to the standard “Category 1” PICs, which require the registry to work with relevant regulatory bodies, however.
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Now that sounds like an extension that may fetch higher registration and renewal fee’s. I wouldn’t be surprised to see prices that exceed the .Mom’s $3k+ costs. You figure, if a registry can charge house wives $3k+ for a domain, they can surly charge a doctor a lot more.