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.radio’s new owners might have a fight on their hands

Kevin Murphy, April 9, 2026, 10:50:46 (UTC), Domain Registries

Should gTLD registries that avoid costly auctions by promising to serve special limited communities be allowed to later change their business models to improve sales?

That’s the question being asked of .radio, which recently was taken over by a new owner and might be on track to liberalize its registration policies in the near future.

.radio is what is called a “Community” or “Spec 12” gTLD, meaning it has Specification 12 — which imposes eligibility and content rules on registered domains — in its ICANN registry contract.

Four organizations applied for .radio in 2012, but the European Broadcasting Union prevailed, avoiding a potentially expensive auction, by filing a Community application and winning a Community Priority Evaluation.

Afilias, Donuts and BRS Media — all commercial, non-Community applicants — lost out on their chances to run .radio, or make money losing a private auction, because of this successful CPE.

While .radio launched in 2017, it’s never had more than about 3,000 domains under management and earlier this year the EBU sold its contract to Digity, an emerging registry operator with ties to Sav.com.

The suspicion is that Digity is planning to abandon .radio’s community roots and make it more of a mass-market proposition.

That concern was recently expressed by Craig Schwartz, president of fTLD Registry Services, which runs the Spec 12 gTLDs .bank and .insurance, in a letter (pdf) to ICANN’s chair.

Schwartz noted that Digity, unlike the EBU, “appears to have no existing relationship with the originally stated radio community” and said that registries should not be allowed “to game ICANN by preferentially acquiring these assets under one premise and then blindsiding Registrants at a later date.”

ICANN should audit Spec 12 registries for community compliance and open to public comment any attempt to transfer ownership of the contracts, he wrote.

Schwartz reiterated these concerns during a call of the ICANN At-Large community yesterday, adding that ICANN should come up with a way to “wind down” failing Spec 12 gTLDs, rather than transferring them to a liberalizing successor.

He — saying he is supported by other community registries — appears concerned that if ICANN allows registries to play fast and loose with their original commitments, it could not only enable gaming but also tarnish the reputation of other Spec 12s such as .bank.

Consultant Michael Palage, on the same At-Large call, said the the “cheat code” for registries is to get their Spec 12 removed during bilateral negotiations with ICANN Org at the time of contract renewal. He pointed to the liberalization of GoDaddy’s .xxx as an example.

Probably not coincidentally, the current 10-year .radio Registry Agreement is due to expire this July and is currently up for renewal.

ICANN has yet to publicly respond to Schwartz’s letter.

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