Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Who voted against three Arabic ccTLDs and why?

Kevin Murphy, August 17, 2010, 20:11:31 (UTC), Domain Registries

Two ICANN board members voted against the recent resolution to grant Arabic top-level domains to Palestine, Jordan and Tunisia, it has emerged.
ICANN has published the preliminary report for its August 5 board meeting, which breaks down the votes for each of the 27 resolutions and provides a minuscule amount of color about the discussions.
While the resolutions approving internationalized domain names for Singapore and Thailand were carried unanimously and without discussion, the three Arabic-script IDNs were discussed and received two negative votes and three abstentions.
So which two board members voted against these ccTLDs and why?
Beats me. The IDN ccTLD fast track process is one area where ICANN is quite secretive, and the report does not break down the substance of the discussion or the identities of the directors.
Strangely, two resolutions I would consider much more controversial faced less opposition.
The report shows that the resolution passing ICM Registry’s .xxx domain to the next stage of approval was carried unanimously, and that only one director voted against the .jobs amendment.
ERE.net has more on the .jobs story.

Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments (4)

  1. Interesting. Thanks for the post ;).

  2. just guessing but it may be because some of these IDN ccTLD applicants refuse to pay ICANN or contract with ICANN?
    Cant really think of any other reasons

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      Palestine has an MoU with ICANN.
      Many of the previously approved IDN ccTLDs, such as China and Saudi Arabia, do not. They were all unanimous votes.

  3. 2-Letter ASCII TLD is not the same as IDN ccTLD

Add Your Comment