Germany plans new gTLD: .gesellschaftmitbeschränkterhaftung

The German Department of Commerce has announced plans to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD, .gesellschaftmitbeschränkterhaftung, to represent German companies on the web.
It’s believed to be the first public announcement of a new gTLD by a government agency anywhere in the world.
“For far too many years German companies have had to rely on dot-com domain names to conduct their affairs online,” German business minister Hans Vottisyornäm said in a statement.
“Dot-com has no meaning in the German language, confusing German internet users,” he added. “As soon as ICANN approves our plan, we believe dot-gesellschaftmitbeschränkterhaftung will quickly become the TLD of choice for German businesses on the international stage.”
Gesellschaftmitbeschränkterhaftung, which roughly translates as “com”, will have prices starting at $149 per year, but registrants will receive a free .aktiengesellschaft name with every purchase, if they can present the correct paperwork.
Go Daddy has already backed the TLD, and is planning a multi-million-euro TV ad campaign starring David Hasselhoff and a horde of busty Bavarian beer wenches.
“This could be the biggest thing since .tel,” Bob Parsons said in a statement.

Nominet seeks new chair

Bob Gilbert has stepped aside as chairman of .uk registry Nominet, to be replaced temporarily by deputy chair Gordon Dick.
The news comes as Nominet seeks to draw a line under a tumultuous few years that have seen the non-profit company attempt to fight off domainers on the one hand and a power grab by the UK government on the other.
These efforts have been hit and miss.
While Nominet has successfully reformed its corporate governance to make it less vulnerable to capture by special interests, the government will still shortly enact the Digital Economy Bill, which gives the business secretary unprecedented reserve powers to appoint a new .uk registry manager.
“Having successfully updated Nominet’s constitution, a time consuming exercise for all involved, it is now time for the company to move into its next phase of development under new leadership,” Gilbert, who joined Nominet in 2005, said in a statement.

WIPO wants tougher cybersquatting rules on new gTLDs

The World Intellectual Property Organization reckons ICANN should toughen its stance against new gTLD registries that allow cybersquatting.
The “trademark post-delegation dispute resolution procedure” or Trademark PDDRP would let trademark holders try to suspend new TLDs and receive compensation when a registry allows cybersquatting.
WIPO wants the burden of proof on trademark holders relaxed, making it much easier to file complaints.
Currently, the draft process would require complainants to show registries’ “specific bad faith intent” to profit from cybersquatting.
WIPO thinks this should be broadened to include deliberate recklessness.
“In seeking to give meaning to ‘intent,’ the criteria should, without as such imposing or implying any sweeping registry policing duty, also encompass instances of willful blindness,” WIPO wrote.
The comments came in response to ICANN’s public comment period on the process, which closes on Thursday.

ICM says ICANN’s options for .xxx are ‘unacceptable’

ICM Registry has issued a speedy response to ICANN’s .xxx approval options paper, calling it “unacceptable” and urging the ICANN board to put the issue to bed ASAP.
Late Friday, ICANN published a flowchart outlining the possible ways the board could handle .xxx in the light of February’s Independent Review Panel decision, which found ICANN acted unfairly when it rejected the TLD in 2007.
ICM president Stuart Lawley said in a letter to ICANN today that most of the paths through the flowcharts “are in many respects substantively and procedurally inconsistent with the IRP declaration”.
The company believes the IRP decision resets the approval process to prior to the 2007 decision, when the two parties were in contract talks for an already-approved TLD.
The letter claims that “it would be inappropriate, illegal and inconsistent with ICANN’s core values and model of self governance for ICANN to set up an evaluative process that is lacking in objectivity and that does not affirmatively give effect to the underlying IRP declaration”.
There are presumably few people involved with ICANN in any doubt that ICM intends to take its case to the ‘proper’ courts if needs be, which is probably why its powers-that-be have been unwilling to meet with the company.
As I reported Friday, the options paper creates the possibility of re-evaluating the .xxx application under the Draft Applicant Guidebook v4 for new gTLDs, which is not yet completed.
It also suggests that ICANN will have to ask its Governmental Advisory Committee for its current opinion on the application, a move likely to stretch out a decision for months.
It also has an option to expedite the approval based on the “sponsored” TLD process under which ICM, and others such as .post and .asia, originally applied.
ICM’s latest letter is here. ICANN’s options paper can be found here. The public comment period is open here. Unlike many ICANN comments periods, it has comments.

ICANN may kick .xxx into new gTLD round

ICANN has chosen to deal with the controversial .xxx TLD application by leaving essentially all options, including urging it into the next gTLD round, wide open.
ICM Registry had pushed for a speedy resolution to its long-running application, following the Independent Review Panel decision that went in its favour last month, but it hasn’t got one.
In Nairobi, ICANN’s board asked ICANN’s staff to tell it what its options were for dealing with the ruling, and staff today responded with this flowchart. Oh, and this flowchart.
It seems that these options are still on the table: (continue reading)

The most confusing new gTLDs (allegedly)

I don’t know how I missed it until today, but I’ve discovered ICANN has a web-based tool that will be used to determine whether new gTLDs could be confused with existing strings.
The Sword Group algorithm compares applied-for strings with a list of existing TLDs and reserved words such as “icann” and “ripe”.
It looks for “visual similarity”, which means not only common sequences of characters but also the pixel-by-pixel similarities of each character.
Numerical scores are assigned. Any match scoring below 30 is not considered worthy of reporting.
As an experiment, I ran each of the strings on newTLDs.tv’s list of publicly announced TLD hopefuls through the available “pre-production” algorithm.
Here are my findings.
1. The algorithm is pretty much worthless. (continue reading)

Nominet bill set for UK law

The UK government is set to pass a controversial law that will create powers to regulate domain names more or less arbitrarily and even seize control of the .uk registry.
The Digital Economy Bill is best known for its Draconian anti-piracy provisions, but it also gives the relevant Secretary of State the power to replace Nominet as the .uk registry manager.
To oust Nominet, the secretary of state would have to decide that certain fairly broad criteria had been met. Quoting from the bill’s explanatory notes:

The registry itself, its end-users (that is, owners of or applicants for domain names) or registrars (that is, agents of end-users) have been engaging in practices prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State which are unfair or which involve the misuse of internet domain names; or
The registry’s arrangements for dealing with complaints in connection with domain names do not comply with requirements prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State.

The practices in question are expected to include: cybersquatting, drop-catching, “pressure sales tactics”, phishing, distributing malware, spamming or “intentionally misleading the public into believing there is a connection between the domain name owner and other organisations”.
Basically, the daily background noise of the internet. (continue reading)

Pornographers still hate .xxx

The Free Speech Coalition, a trade group for the porn industry, has condemned the proposed .xxx top-level domain as “untenable” and “detrimental”.
In a letter to ICANN, FSC executive director Diane Duke challenged ICANN’s board to “settle the issue once and for all by going to the actual community to test the application’s true level of support”.
The FSC is concerned that the introduction of .xxx, as proposed and pursued by ICM Registry for the last 10 years, will inevitably lead to government regulation of the online porn industry.
Duke wrote: “a proposal for a ‘Sponsored’ top-level domain by a company that is not of the industry, with the added intent to ‘regulate’ an industry it knows nothing about, is simply untenable”.
The FSC has an even bigger problem with IFFOR, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility, the group set up by ICM to act as its sponsoring organisation
IFFOR – a bit of a hack to get around the fact that ICM was essentially applying for a gTLD during a “sponsored” TLD round – was loosely modelled on ICANN’s own bottoms-up structure, with four supporting organisations creating policy for .xxx domains.
Judging by this flowchart, which is open to interpretation, the adult industry would control less than half the votes.
“Our resolute position is that no self-respecting industry would ever agree to have a minority voice on a board tasked with setting critical policies for its members,” Duke wrote.
While ICANN ultimately rejected .xxx due to the lack of community support, ICM did manage to get some support from other areas of the adult community back in 2005.
ICANN was found at fault when it rejected .xxx. The question now is whether ICANN decides to stand by its first decision, to approve .xxx, or its second, to reject it.
Bottom line: It can’t win either way.

Colombians not keen on .co grandfathering

Uptake of .co domains among existing .com.co registrants under the current “grandfathering” process has been quite low, according to .CO Internet chief executive Juan Diego Calle.
The formerly restrictive Colombian ccTLD is opening for global registrations soon, but the domain’s roughly 27,000 third-level registrants have already been given the chance to re-register their brands at the second level.
Calle told me earlier that only about 10% to 20% of .com.co registrants have chosen to do so. Grandfathering opened on March 1 and ends next Tuesday.
“Third-level domains are very well recognised in Colombia as a way to show you have a Colombian presence,” Calle said.
The sunrise period for trademark holders begins on April 1. Companies with trademarks registered in Colombia will be given priority, regardless of where the company is based.
I’ll be writing more about the .co launch tomorrow, to be published in a slightly more respectable venue.

Dot-XXX lights fire under ICANN’s feet

ICM Registry has urged ICANN to stop messing around and finalise the contract that would add .xxx to the domain name system.
“There is no legitimate obstacle to the approval of ICM’s registry agreement,” ICM chair Stuart Lawley said in a letter to ICANN yesterday. “We can see no reason for further delay in the process of approving ICM’s registry agreement”.
At its Nairobi meeting earlier this month, ICANN’s board decided to hand the problem of how to handle .xxx to its staff, saying it “wishes to create a transparent set of process options which can be published for public comment.”
ICM now claims that no such process options are necessary. The .post application, Lawley said, was approved last December, six years after it was made, without the need for any new processes.
There are some differences between .post and .xxx, of course. While the .xxx application has previously been approved, it has also previously been rejected.
It is back on the table following an Independent Review Panel decision that ICANN broke its fairness rules by singling out ICM for special treatment.
Lawley reminds ICANN of as much several times in his latest letter, which can be found here.
ICANN’s staff is expected to deliver its process options next week. There will be a period of public comment, and the board will have to make a call by its June meeting in Brussels.