90 passes and 2 failures in this week’s gTLD results

ICANN has just delivered this week’s batch of Initial Evaluation results, with 90 passes and two failures to report.
The two applications that failed to achieve passing scores are Commercial Connect’s .shop and .supersport, a dot-brand filed by a South African television company. Both are eligible for extended evaluation.
Commercial Connect is the first applicant to fail to achieve a passing score on its technical evaluation.
I believe the company, which was among the unsuccessful applicants in the 2000 round of new gTLDs, is one of the few applicants this time around proposing to self-host its registry back-end.
It did, however, pass the financial component of the evaluation.
SuperSport failed, like nine others before it, on its financial evaluation, having scored a 0 on its “Financial Statements” question.
These are the passing applications this week:

.shop .viking .nagoya .osaka .shop .cruise .baidu .motorcycles .bananarepublic .allfinanzberatung .shiksha .top .bio .republican .aol .mail .navy .fyi .jcb .photos .wine .app .diy .law .data .foo .film .corp .ibm .physio .htc .pohl .chanel .gdn .ubs .secure .woodside .ultrabook .gold .show .soccer .map .web .coffee .apple .compare .markets .schule .fitness .courses .hotel .discover .spreadbetting .ngo .cbs .immo .home .drive .williamhill .racing .movie .store .barefoot .kaufen .memorial .abb .bbva .cpa .unicom .voto .skype .vet .doctor .tennis .space .nab .web .bet .scor .food .fail .konami .day .games .garden .book .hosting .ollo .montblanc .click

There are now 909 passing applications and 11 eligible for extended evaluation.

Plural gTLDs not confusing, says ICANN (and two gotchas proving it wrong)

Dozens of new gTLD applicants will be breathing a sigh of relief this morning as ICANN said it will allow single and plural versions of the same gTLD to co-exist after all.
The decision, made Tuesday by ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee, affects at least 98 applications. It said:

NGPC has determined that no changes are needed to the existing mechanisms in the Applicant Guidebook to address potential consumer confusion resulting from allowing singular and plural versions of the same string.

It was in response to the Governmental Advisory Committee, which had advised ICANN to “reconsider its decision to allow singular and plural versions of the same strings.”
Because of the wording of the advice, ICANN is able to disagree with the the GAC’s opinion that “singular and plural versions of the string as a TLD could lead to potential consumer confusion” without triggering its bylaws provision that forces it into time-consuming GAC negotiations.
By “reconsidering” plural/singular coexistence and not doing anything, it has stuck to the letter of the advice.
In its reconsideration it reconsiderated whether it should overturn the findings of its independent String Similarity Panel, which did not believe any plural/singular pairs were confusingly visually similar.
It also used the coexistence of second-level plural and singular domains, registered to different people, as evidence that users would not find similar coexistence at the top level confusing.
The decision has potentially far-reaching consequences on the new gTLD program.
First, it could mean that some plural/singular pairs will be allowed to exist while others will not.
There are a handful of formal String Confusion Objections filed by applicants for gTLDs that have singular or plural competitors in the current round.
These string pairs are not currently in contention sets, but if the objectors prevail only one of the strings will survive to delegation.
Other string pairs have no objections and will be allowed to coexist. This may be fair in a sense, but it’s not uniform nor predictable.
(One wonders if the String Confusion Objection arbitration panels will use ICANN’s ruling this week in their own decision-making process, which could open a can of worms.)
Second, I think the decision might encourage bad business practices by registries.
My beef with coexistence
I don’t think coexistence is a wholly terrible idea, but I do think it will have some negative effects, as I’ve expressed in the past.
First, I think it’s going to lead to millions of unnecessary defensive registrations.
And by “defensive” I’m not talking about companies protecting their trademarks. Whether you think they’re adequate or not, trademark owners already have protections in new gTLDs.
I’m talking about regular domain registrants, small businesses, entrepreneurs and so on. These people are going to find themselves buying two domains when they only need one.
Let’s say you’re Mad John’s Autos, and you’re registering madjohn.auto. You get to the checkout and Go Daddy offers you the matching .autos domain. Assuming similar pricing, you’d definitely register it, right?
You’ve always got to assume a certain subset of users will get confused and either wind up at a dead URL or a competitor’s site. It’s simpler just to defensively register both.
What if one was priced a little higher than the other? Maybe you’d still register it. How big would the price differential have to be before you decided not to buy the plural duplicate?
Buying two domains instead of one may not be a huge financial burden to individual registrants, but it’s going to lead to situations where gTLDs exist in symbiotic — or parasitic — pairs.
If you run the .auto registry, you may find that your plural competitor is spending so much on marketing .autos that you don’t need to lift a finger in order to sell millions of domain names.
Just make sure you’re partnered with the same registrars and bingo: you’re up-sell.
Attractive business plan, right? You may disagree, but when ICANN opens the floodgates for the second round of new gTLD applications in a couple years, we’ll find out for sure.
Two gotchas
Defenses of plural/singular gTLD coexistence often come from, unsurprisingly, the portfolio applicants that have applied for them and, presumably, may apply for them in future rounds.
“Singulars and plurals live together now on the [second-level domain] side,” Uniregistry said. “They create healthy competition and do not unduly confuse consumers to the point of annoyance.”
I wouldn’t disagree with that statement. Plural/singular coexistence may not confuse internet users to the point of danger or annoyance. But, I would argue, they do make people buy more domain names than they need to.
If you were buying autos.com today you’d definitely definitely buy auto.com as well and redirect it to autos.com. You’d be an idiot not too.
When I put this to Uniregistry execs privately several weeks ago, they disagreed with me. Nobody would bother with such duplicative/defensive domains, they said.
In response, I asked, cheekily: so why do you own uniregistries.com, redirecting it to uniregistry.com?
Another portfolio applicant, Donuts, also didn’t like the idea of plurals and singulars being mutually exclusive, according to this CircleID article. It doesn’t think they’re confusingly similar.
Yet a press release put out by the company last month accidentally said it planned to put its application for .apartment to auction.
The problem is that Donuts hasn’t applied for .apartment, it has applied for .apartments.
I feel rotten for highlighting a simple typo by a fellow media professional (I make enough of those) but isn’t that what we’re often talking about when discussing confusing similarity? Typos?
If the registry can get confused by its own applied-for strings, doesn’t that mean internet users will as well?
Oh, I’m a cybersquatter
Interestingly, ICANN’s belief that plurals are not confusing appears to be institutional.
At least, I discovered this morning that icanns.org, the plural of its primary domain, was available for registration.
So I bought it.
Let’s see how much traffic it gets.
If I get hit by a UDRP, that could be interesting too.

ICANN freezes “closed generic” gTLD bids

ICANN has temporarily banned “closed generic” gTLDs in response to Governmental Advisory Committee demands.
The ban, which may be lifted, affects at least 73 applications (probably dozens more) for dictionary-word strings that had been put forward with “single registrant” business models.
ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee on Tuesday voted to prevent any applicant for a closed generic gTLD from signing a registry contract, pending further talks with the GAC.
In order to sign a registry agreement, applicants will have to agree to the following Public Interest Commitments:

1. Registry Operator will operate the TLD in a transparent manner consistent with general principles of openness and non-discrimination by establishing, publishing and adhering to clear registration policies.
2. Registry Operator of a “Generic String” TLD may not impose eligibility criteria for registering names in the TLD that limit registrations exclusively to a single person or entity and/or that person’s or entity’s “Affiliates” (as defined in Section 2.9(c) of the Registry Agreement). “Generic String” means a string consisting of a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things, as opposed to distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others.

The effect of this is that applications for closed generics are on hold until ICANN has figured out what exactly the GAC is trying to achieve with its advice, which emerged in its Beijing communique (pdf).
Closed generics have not to date been a specific category of gTLD. They’re basically bids like Symantec’s .antivirus, L’Oreal’s .beauty and Amazon’s .cloud, where the gTLD is not a “dot-brand” but every second-level domain would belong to the registry anyway.
The two main reasons the new gTLD program has allowed them so far are a) ICANN decided that coming up with definitions for categories of gTLD was too hard and prone to abuse, and b) ICANN didn’t want to overly restrict registries’ business models.
Apparently all it needed was a nudge from the GAC and a change of senior management to change its mind.
ICANN now has a definition of “generic”, which I believe is a first. To reiterate, it’s:

a string consisting of a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things, as opposed to distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others

If the proposed PIC stands after ICANN’s talks with the GAC, nobody will be able to operate a generic string as a single-registrant gTLD.
But there may be one massive loophole.
Let’s say Volkswagen had applied for .golf (it didn’t) as a single-registrant dot-brand gTLD.
In that context, “golf” is a word used to label one model of car, “distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others”.
But the word “golf” is also indisputably “a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things”.
So which use case would trump the other? Would Volkswagen be banned from using .golf as a dot-brand?
It’s not just hypothetical. There are live examples in the current round of single-registrant applications that are both generic terms in one industry and brands in others.
Apple’s application for .apple is the obvious one. While it’s hard to imagine apple farmers wanting a gTLD, we don’t yet know how crazy the gTLD landrush is going to get in future rounds.
What of Bond University’s application for .bond? It’s a brand in terms of further education, but a generic term for debt instruments in finance.
Boots’ application for .boots? A brand in the high street pharmacy game, a generic if you sell shoes. Google’s application for .chrome is a brand in browsers but a generic in metallurgy.
None of the examples given here (and there are many more) are on the GAC’s list of problematic closed generics, but as far as I can see they would all be affected by ICANN’s proposed PIC.
The affected applications are not dead yet, of course. ICANN could change its view and drop the new PIC requirement a few months from now after talking to the GAC.
But the applications do appear to be in limbo for now.

Afternic picked to handle .buzz premium names

Afternic and NameJet have been selected by the applicant for .buzz, dotStrategy, to manage premium domain name allocation in the new gTLD.
Afternic will build the .buzz reserved names list and sell them through its marketplace, while NameJet will exclusively handle sunrise, landrush and premium name auctions, the company said in a press release.
Arkansas-based dotStrategy, which is also in a contention set for .fun, thinks .buzz will be a memorable gTLD for marketing campaigns, among other purposes.
Its .buzz application has already passed Initial Evaluation with ICANN, is uncontested and has no objections or GAC worries. The company reckons it could go to sunrise by October.

TLDH and Famous Four ink new gTLD revenue sharing deal

New gTLD portfolio applicants Top Level Domain Holdings and Famous Four Media did in fact make a deal to resolve three contention sets, as suspected.
TLDH has just confirmed that it withdrew its applications for .science and .review in exchange for Famous Four withdrawing its application for .fit.
But the deal also includes a revenue-sharing component — TLDH will get a cut of whatever revenue Famous Four makes selling .review domain names after it goes live.
All three of the gTLDs in question were in two-way contention sets between the two companies, as we reported yesterday.
TLDH gave the following update:

TLDH now has interests in 23 uncontested applications, including 15 wholly/majority owned applications, 6 where it is acting as the registry service provider for client applications, 1 equal joint venture, and 1 where it will receive a minority revenue share. Of the remaining 63 applications which TLDH either wholly-owns, is a joint-venture partner, or is acting as the registry service provider, 7 are in contention with a single other applicant, 17 with two other applicants and 39 are in contention with three or more applicants.

While the dollar amounts concerned were not disclosed, I can’t help but feel TLDH got a good deal with .review.
For the cost of an ICANN application fee*, much of which was recouped in refunds, it seems to be getting an ongoing revenue stream with no ongoing costs and little future risk.
* Of course, in TLDH’s case it has also been burning cash for the best part of five years waiting for new gTLDs to come to life, but you get the point.

Famous Four wins two new gTLD contention sets

Four new gTLD applications were withdrawn overnight, resolving three contention sets.
Top Level Domain holdings has pulled its bids for .review and .science, in both cases leaving subsidiaries of portfolio applicant Famous Four Media as the only remaining applicant.
Meanwhile, Famous Four withdrew its .fit application, leaving TLDH as the only remaining applicant.
Buyouts? It seems possible. The .review application passed its Initial Evaluation a month ago, so the ICANN refund due to TLDH will have been dramatically reduced.
As a publicly traded company, TLDH is likely to issue a statement at some point explaining the current state of its applications.
But one of the side effects of ICANN’s preference for private deals is that we won’t always know when two or more companies privately resolve their contention sets.
There are at least two other contention sets where I have very good reasons to believe that deals have already been done, partially resolving the set, but nothing has yet been disclosed.
Also overnight, L’Oreal’s application for .garnier, a dot-brand, was withdrawn. It’s the fifth, and probably not the last, of L’Oreal’s 14 original new gTLD application to be dropped.
Governmental Advisory Committee advice has been leveled against .fit and .review, but not .science.
UPDATE: The original version of this story erroneously reported that TLDH, rather than Famous Four, had withdrawn its .fit application. This has now been corrected. Apologies for the error.

New .org contract could make registrars sign up to 2013 RAA

Registrars risk losing their right to sell .org domain names unless they sign up to the new 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
The change is among several proposed to Public Interest Registry’s .org Registry Agreement with ICANN, which was published for public comment over the weekend.
Amendments to the .org RA, which came to the end of its six-year term in April, are very similar to those put forward for the .info and .biz contracts last month.
But .org is a far larger and more popular TLD, putting more pressure on more registrars to sign up to the 2013 RAA, with its new Whois verification and privacy service obligations.
For registrars on the 2009 and 2001 RAAs, the clock would start ticking the day that registrars representing two thirds of all .org registrations sign the 2013 RAA.
That threshold could be met in .org if the top eight or nine registrars make the switch.
PIR would then get 60 days to tell its remaining registrars that they have 270 days to move to the new RAA. Any registrar that failed to adopt it in that time would lose its right to sell .org domain names.
As with the .info and .biz contracts, the provisions related to the 2013 RAA would only kick in if Verisign asks for the same changes for its .com and .net agreements, which may never happen.
Other changes proposed for the .org contract include:

• Cross-ownership restrictions. PIR will be able to own a registrar under the new deal, lifting the long-standing ban on gTLD registries selling domains in their own TLD.
• Price increases. PIR will be able to raise its .org registry fee by 10% per year, from its current level of $8.25.
• Code of Conduct. PIR will have to abide by the same registry Code of Conduct as new gTLD operators, which contains provisions mainly related to equal registrar access.

The propose .org contract is open for public comment until August 12.

ICANN has 99 gTLD passes but .payu ain’t one

ICANN has delivered another 100 new gTLD Initial Evaluation results this evening, with 99 passes and one failure.
The failure is the application for .payu, a dot-brand filed by a Dutch e-payments company. It’s eligible for extended evaluation, having scored a 0 on its “financial statements” question.
These are the successful applications, many of which are receiving their results well after their original due dates:

.dnp .otsuka .okinawa .media .extraspace .tickets .bradesco .mtpc .infiniti .ooo .lilly .everbank .mom .latrobe .maif .town .free .tube .wales .ist .ong .auto .shopyourway .golf .viajes .doosan .tatar .yoga .mail .chk .pru .one .medical .limo .ovh .storage .infy .desi .secure .domains .computer .racing .zara .target .pictet .music .nba .bank .goodhands .ing .sling .meme .giving .jewelry .deals .nadex .credit .one .here .luxury .cern .salon .ninja .zip .vana .lancome .tires .recipes .film .teva .auto .istanbul .grocery .web .diet .baby .support .hotel .infosys .lol .beats .vons .moscow .inc .guge .car .forsale .hsbc .energy .man .team .book .family .green .aetna .movie .politie .home .group

There are now 819 passes, 9 failures and 1,019 applications still in Initial Evaluation. Next week, we’ll pass the halfway mark, with IE due to be completed in August.

PuntCAT cross-ownership ban lifted

PuntCAT has become the first gTLD registry operator to have a ban on owning an affiliated registrar lifted.
The change means the company will be able to directly market its .cat domain names to registrants via a registrar that it owns.
An amendment to its ICANN contract posted yesterday deletes the clause that prevents the company owning more than 15% of an ICANN-accredited registrar. The change follows a December request.
PuntCAT is the first to take advantage of ICANN’s liberalization of rules on registry-registrar cross ownership.
Afilias and Neustar will benefit from the same changes, but their respective .info and .biz registry agreements are currently in public comment periods and not yet signed.

Two more new gTLD bids dropped

Uniregistry and LʹOréal, two of the highest profile new gTLD applicants, both withdrew applications today.
Uniregistry has pulled out of the .marketing race, leaving it a two-way battle between Tucows and Donuts. It’s the first application withdrawn by the company, which has applied for 54 gTLDs.
Its .marketing bid was due to get its Initial Evaluation results today. By withdrawing before this happens, the company gets a much bigger refund from ICANN.
LʹOréal, meanwhile, has withdrawn is fourth dot-brand, .maybelline, which is due its IE results next week. The company has 10 applications, a mixture of brands and closed generics, outstanding.