Uniregistry is too .sexy for new gTLD objection

.SX Registry has asked for its formal objection to Uniregistry’s .sexy gTLD application to be withdrawn, we understand.
It’s believed to be among the four objections, according to ICANN, that have been dismissed by the dispute resolution providers following withdrawal requests from the objectors.
The ccTLD registry had filed String Confusion Objections to .sexy and to one of the two applications for .sex. The .sex objection appears to be still pending.
While there’s an interesting decision to be had in the .sex case — how audibly similar are “sex” and “ess-sex”? — I’m not sure the same could be said for the extra-syllabled .sexy.
Resolution providers are currently in the process of picking panelists for all new gTLD objections, so decisions are not expected for months.
Note: this is the second and last time DI will use a Right Said Fred allusion in a headline related to .sexy. We reserve the right to mock others who use similar headlines in future.

China pushes .pw to over 250,000 names

Directi’s .PW Registry has taken over 250,000 domain registrations in the two and a half months since it launched, largely thanks to growth in China.
According to recent DomainTools research, Chinese registrars such as DNSPod and Xin Net lead .pw sales, and .PW business head Sandeep Ramchandani told DI today that this trend is now even more noticeable.
The frankly surprising volume seems to be due largely to its low pricing and some aggressive registrar promotion. Xin Net, for example, sells .pw names for about $6 each, compared to $9 for .com.
While Chinese-script domains are available, most registrations are for Latin strings, Ramchandani said.
The 250,000 number excludes domains that have been deleted for abuse, of which there have been quite a lot.
Ramchandani said that the registry’s abuse department is staffed around the clock.
Directi is using NameSentry from Architelos to track abusive names and has made deals with the most-abused registrars to take down names at the registry level when they pop up, he said.

Watch .club win its new gTLD for $[censored]

As we reported earlier in the week, .CLUB Domains was one of the first companies to win its new gTLD auction and now the company has published a short video of the moment the auction closed.

The first reaction of CEO Colin Campbell is to put out a press release announcing the win, followed by calling the lawyers, which I think we can all agree is the Natural Order for all things.
Sadly, because winning bids are supposed to be confidential, the company has bleeped out references to the amount it paid and blurred a laptop screen in shot, lest CSI:Miami’s cyberpunks are watching.

Big week for new gTLDs as 114 apps pass

ICANN has just released this week’s Initial Evaluation results and it’s the biggest dump to date, with 114 applications getting through to the next stage of the process.
We’re now up to 628 passes, which is roughly one third of the original 1,930 applications.
Applications for these strings achieved passing scores (links to DI PRO):

.help .hosting .property .fashion .warman .love .yoga .winners .bnl .sexy .bauhaus .mnet .health .gratis .save .cfd .inc .tjmaxx .homegoods .tjx .deal .restaurant .spa .link .tech .airbus .city .dealer .bnpparibas .tvs .latino .boo .makeup .website .tips .amp .jpmorgan .kyknet .dad .vivo .kerryproperties .sucks .emerson .sas .lancaster .vin .lotto .homes .rodeo .goldpoint .movie .next .bloomberg .moda .tennis .song .nrw .alfaromeo .web .press .london .hot .futbol .windows .webjet .green .sarl .home .video .apartments .bingo .hotel .allstate .software .lanxess .mango .ferrari .coupon .broadway .drive .gea .law .engineering .epost .swiftcover .country .army .weber .broadway .marshalls .style .theater .samsung .firmdale .design .booking .tatamotors .komatsu .mls .abudhabi .vip .game .alibaba .like .store .lgbt .team .boats .tax .nikon .sony .you .citic .trade

No applications failed this week. We’re up to 700 in the prioritization queue.

Six private new gTLD auctions raise $9m

We now know (roughly) how much a new gTLD is worth.
The new gTLD contention sets for .club, .college, .luxury, .photography, .red, and .vote have been settled in a series of auctions this week that raised over $9 million.
That’s an average price of $1.5 million per string.
Writing on CircleID, Innovative Auctions project director Sheel Mohnot confirmed that the withdrawal of Donuts’ application for .vote was a result of losing the auction.
We also already know that .CLUB Domains won its auction.
But Mohnot did not reveal the winners of the other four auctions, each of which was a two-way fight between Donuts and one rival. ICANN’s web site does not yet reflect any other withdrawals.
His article does, however, quote Top Level Design and Luxury Holdings, which applied for .photography and .luxury respectively, as saying they were happy with the outcome.
Assuming they won too (which is of course not certain) that would mean Donuts lost at least four of the six auctions.
Donuts had originally submitted 63 strings to auction, but they could of course only go ahead if all of its competitors agreed to participate.
One wonders if the company submitted its lowest-value strings first in order to build up its war chest for future auctions. A good chunk of the $9 million raised will have flowed straight into its coffers.

Private auction settles .club fight

.CLUB Domains has won the right to launch the .club gTLD at a private auction against two other applicants, according to an announcement from the company.
The company, chiefed by Tucows and Hostopia founder Colin Campbell, also said it has raised $7 million to bring the TLD to market.
Its two rivals for the string were portfolio applicants Donuts and Merchant Law Group. The auction was designed by Cramton Associates and managed by Innovative Auctions of Hong Kong.
Neither competing applicant has had their withdrawals, assuming they’ve been submitted, processed by ICANN yet.
None of the applications were subject to formal objections or Governmental Advisory Committee meddling, giving the successful bidder a relatively clear run at delegation and launch.
.CLUB Domains said in a press release:

Domains like www.golf.club, www.poker.club, and www.book.club should hit the market in late 2013 or early 2014. In addition to acting as the worldwide .CLUB registry, the company has plans to offer .CLUB domain name registrants a web and mobile social platform designed specifically for member engagement and management, making it easy for clubs of any kind to establish themselves on the internet.

According to its application, the registry plans to target:

1. Social Clubs, 2. Sporting Clubs 3. Special Interest/Hobby Clubs, 4. Country Clubs 5. Buying Clubs, 6. Fraternities and Sororities, 7. Personal Clubs, 8. Professional Clubs, 9.School Clubs, 10. Service Clubs, and 11. Night Clubs.

That said, .CLUB does not plan to implement any registration restrictions; .club will be completely open.
The applicant has chosen Neustar to provide its back-end registry.

L’Oreal’s dot-brand bites the dust

Beauty products maker L’Oreal has withdrawn its new gTLD application for .loreal.
I did not see this one coming.
L’Oreal is among the most prolific applicants for new gTLDs from the offline world, applying for 14 strings in total.
One of its marketing executives even spoke at the Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress in New York this March.
Its primary dot-brand is its first third application to be dropped.
The company has also applied for dot-brands including .maybelline, .garnier and .lancome, and generics such as .salon, .makeup, .skin and .hair, all of which still appear to be active bids.
Is this indicative of a changing gTLD strategy — perhaps the company has decided to focus on its product brands rather than its company name — or is .loreal merely the first latest of many withdrawals?

Plural gTLDs could be a casualty as ICANN accepts big chunk of GAC advice

ICANN has accepted nine pieces of Governmental Advisory Committee advice pertaining to new gTLDs, essentially killing off two applications and putting question marks over many more.
Notably, the question of whether plural and singular versions of the same string should be allowed to coexist has been reopened for debate, affecting as many as 98 applications.
ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee, which carries board powers but does not include directors with conflicts of interest, this week passed a resolution that addresses a good chunk of the GAC’s Beijing communique.
It does not discuss any of the amorphous “safeguard” advice from the document, which was subject to a recently closed public comment period and is likely to take much longer to resolve.
By far the line item with the broadest immediate impact is this:

The NGPC accepts this advice and will consider whether to allow singular and plural versions of the same string.

That’s right folks, singular and plural gTLDs (eg, .car and .cars) may not be allowed to coexist after all.
Using a broad interpretation (that treats .new and .news as clashes, for example), 98 applications could be affected by this decision.
Singular vs plural is a contentious issue with some strongly held religious views. Whether you come down on one side or the other depends largely on how you see new gTLDs being used in future.
Proponents of coexistence see a future of 30,000 gTLDs being used as direct navigation and search tools, while opponents worry about the risk of freeloading plural registries making a killing from unnecessary defensive registrations.
The NGPC did not say how the debate would be moved forward, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t involved the broader community through public comments or meetings in Durban next month.
Ding dong…?
Two line items appear to put the final nails in the coffins of two new gTLD applications: DotConnectAfrica’s .africa and GCCIX WLL’s .gcc.
Both clash with the names of geographic regions (.gcc is for Gulf Cooperation Council, a name often associated with nations in the Arabian/Persian Gulf) and received the GAC’s strongest possible form of objection.
In both cases, the NGPC said the applications “will not be approved” and invited the applicants to withdraw.
However, it gave both applicants the right to appeal using “ICANN’s accountability mechanisms”.
Islamic strings on life support
Some governments in the GAC had taken issue with the applications for strings such as .islam and .halal, and the NGPC said it “stands ready to enter into dialogue with the GAC on this matter”.
That’s the Applicant Guidebook-mandated response when the GAC cannot reach a consensus that an application should be killed off.
Amazon among geo strings delayed
As expected, the NGPC decided to work with the GAC’s extended timetable for the consideration of 19 applications whose chosen strings clash with geographic names such as .thai and .persiangulf.
Basically, the GAC asked for more time to discuss them.
In response, ICANN will not delay Initial Evaluation for these applications, but it will not sign contracts with the applicants until the GAC has issued its final advice.
The list includes two big trademarks: retail giant Amazon and the clothing brand Patagonia.
Both will have to wait until at least Durban to discover their fate.
The list also includes .wine and .vin, because some in the wine industry have been kicking up a stink about the protection of special geographic identifiers (eg Champagne, Bordeaux) at the second-level.
Weasel words on community objections
There’s one piece of advice that the NGPC said it has “accepted” but which it clearly has not.
The GAC had said this:

The GAC advises the Board that in those cases where a community, which is clearly impacted by a set of new gTLD applications in contention, has expressed a collective and clear opinion on those applications, such opinion should be duly taken into account, together with all other relevant information.

I think any reasonable interpretation of this item would require ICANN or somebody else to make a subjective judgement call on which applications should win certain contention sets.
To my mind, the advice captures contested strings such as .book (where publishers hate the idea of Amazon running it as a closed generic) and .music (where the music industry favors a restricted registration policy).
But ICANN, always reluctant to have to pick winners and losers, seems to have chosen to interpret the advice somewhat differently. In its response, it states:

The NGPC accepts this advice. Criterion 4 for the Community Priority Evaluation process takes into account “community support and/or opposition to the application” in determining whether to award priority to a community application in a contention set. (Note however that if a contention set is not resolved by the applicants or through a community priority evaluation then ICANN will utilize an auction as the objective method for resolving the contention.)

I don’t think this covers the GAC’s advice at all, and I think the NGPC knows it.
As the parenthetical comment says, communities’ views are only taken into account if an applicant has filed a formal “Community” bid and chooses to resolve its contention set with a Community Priority Evaluation.
To return to the above examples, this may well capture .music, where at least one applicant intends to go the CPE route, but it does not capture .book, where there are no Community applications.
There are 33 remaining Community applications in 29 contention sets.
Will the GAC accept the NGPC’s response as a proper implementation of its advice? If it’s paying attention and feels strongly enough about the issue, my guess is probably not.
More special favors for the Olympics
The International Olympic Committee holds extraordinary power over governments, which has resulted in the GAC repeatedly humiliating itself by acting an Olympic lobbyist before the ICANN board.
In the Beijing communique, it asked ICANN to make sure that the temporary temporary protections granted to Olympics and Red Cross are made permanent in the Applicant Guidebook.
Prior to April, the Registry Agreement in the Guidebook said that the protected strings “shall be initially reserved”, but this language has been removed in the current version of the RA.
The NGPC said that this was due to the GAC’s advice. Box ticked.
But here’s the kicker: the protections will still be subject to a Generic Names Supporting Organization Policy Development Process.
In other words, the discussion is not over. The rest of the ICANN community will get their say and ICANN will try to reconcile what the GNSO decides with what the GAC wants at a later date.
While “accepting” the GAC’s advice, it’s actually proposing something of a compromise. The NGPC said:

Until such time as the GNSO approves recommendations in the PDP and the Board adopts them, the NGPC’s resolutions protecting IOC/RCRC names will remain in place. Should the GNSO submit any recommendations on this topic, the NGPC will confer with the GAC prior to taking action on any such recommendations.

New gTLD registries will not be able to argue in future that their contracts only require them to “initially” protect the Olympic and Red Cross strings, but at the same time the GNSO as a whole gets a say in whether permanent protections are warranted.
It seems like a pretty nice compromise proposal from ICANN — particularly given the problems it’s been having with the GNSO recently — but I doubt the GAC will see it that way.
Other stuff
There were two other items:

• The GAC had advised that no new gTLD contracts should be approved until the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement is finalized. ICANN agreed. It’s already built into the timetable.
• The GAC wanted its existing views taken into account in the current, ongoing, formative discussions about a replacement service for Whois. That’s already happening.

In summary…
…it’s a pretty sensible response from the NGPC, with the exception of the weaselly response to the “community views” advice.
Taken as a whole, it’s notable for its respect for other stakeholders and processes, which is admirable.
Even in the case of .africa and .gcc, which I firmly believed would be dead today, it’s given the applicants the opportunity to go through the appropriate appeals channels.
The GAC, it seems, doesn’t even get the last word with its kiss of death.

Donuts withdraws its .vote bid, raising questions about new gTLD auctions

One down, only 306 to go! Donuts has withdrawn its application for the .vote new gTLD, leaving an Afilias joint venture as the sole remaining applicant, it emerged today.
It’s reasonable to assume that this is the first result of the private string auctions, designed by Cramton Associates, that are being run by Innovative Auctions this week.
Donuts had submitted .vote to this auction and has previously said that auctions were its preferred method of resolving contention sets.
Either way, the winner of the contention set is Monolith Registry, a joint venture of .info registry Afilias and two individual investors based in Utah.
Monolith is also the only applicant for the Spanish translation, .voto.
It’s the first example of a contention set between competing business models being resolved.
The result tells us a lot about how money talks in the new gTLD program and how it does not evaluate applications based on criteria such as inclusiveness or innovation.
Donuts had proposed a .vote with an open registration policy and no special purpose. People would have been able to register domains there for essentially any reason.
Afilias, on the other hand, intends to tightly restrict its .vote to “official and verified governments and office seekers” in only the United States.
Remarkably, it has the same US-only policy for the Spanish-language .voto, though both applications suggest that eligibility will be expanded to other countries in future.
Cybersquatting is not infrequent in electioneering, so .vote could give voters a way to trust that the web site they visit really does contain the opinions of the candidate.
Pricing is expected to be set at $60 “for the first year” ($100 for .voto), and Afilias reckons there are upwards of one million elected officials and candidates that would qualify for the names in the US alone.
It’s a potentially lucrative business, in other words.
But did the program produce an ideal result here?
Is it better that .vote carries a high price and will be restricted to American politicians? Is it right that other, non-governmental types of voting will be excluded from the TLD?
Or does the result show that the program can produce innovative uses of TLDs? With a couple of restricted namespaces, where voters and politicians can trust the authenticity of the contents (insert politicians-are-liars joke here) is Afilias adding value to the internet?
These types of questions are going to be asked over and over again as more contention set results emerge.

Today’s new gTLD withdrawals: .play and .design

Two new gTLD applications have been withdrawn today: Directi’s .play and Starting Dot’s .design.
They’re the second application to be withdrawn by Directi after .movie, which it pulled last month for undisclosed reasons, and the first of Starting Dot’s five bids to die.
Starting Dot said that it has bowed out of the .design fight because there were “simply too many” other applicants in the contention set: eight including itself.
“It is now setting its focus and energy supporting and helping to grow its four other domains, and especially the two which are single applicant, .ARCHI and .BIO,” the company said.
I don’t believe either string was the subject of the private auctions that are happening this week. At least, they weren’t on the lists published by Demand Media or Donuts.
Directi’s .play bid, the first of the four-way contention set to be withdrawn, faces competition from Amazon and Google — both with “closed generic” models — as well as Famous Four Media.
The gTLD deadpool now comprises 71 withdrawals.