.sx denies .sex gTLD objection rumor
The CEO of SX Registry has denied rumors that the company already plans to object to the two .sex new gTLD applications, but has not yet ruled out such a move.
The company runs Sint Maarten’s new ccTLD, .sx, and gossip at the ICANN meeting in Prague last month suggested that an objection or two against .sex might be made on confusing similarity grounds.
The rumors were fueled in part by SX Registry’s sexy launch marketing.
But in a recent email to DI, Normand Fortier wrote:
At this time SX Registry is still reviewing the impact of various gTLD applications and contrary to some published rumors, has not taken any official position or decision regarding a future course of action.
Existing ccTLD operators are allowed to file String Confusion Objections against gTLD applications, if they feel there’s a risk of confusion if the gTLD is approved.
And .sx/.sex is far from a unique case.
In fact, of the 375 applications for three-letter gTLDs in the first round, 304 have only one character variance with one or more existing ccTLDs, according to DI PRO’s string similarity analysis.
ICANN’s Sword algorithm, which compares the visual similarity of strings, gives .sex a score of 57% against .sx.
I’ve checked every three-character gTLD application against every existing ccTLD and found dozens of proposed gTLDs with much higher similarity scores when compared to ccTLD strings.
The full results are available to DI PRO subscribers over here.
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They realized they can let the GAC scare ICM Registry instead of spending with the objections…