Kleinwächter joins ICANN board

Internet governance expert Wolfgang Kleinwächter has joined ICANN’s board of directors with immediate effect.
Kleinwächter is the emergency replacement for Judith Vazquez, who quit with no explanation last month. He’ll carry out Vazquez’s duties until her term was due to end, a year from now.
He’s a rare insider appointment from the Nominating Committee, which regularly looks outside of ICANN for its board expertise.
He has been involved with ICANN since almost the beginning, and currently sits on the GNSO Council (a term due to expire this week) as a representative of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency.
He’s a German national and currently employed by the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches on the subjection of internet policy and regulation.
He also has experience in UN-related policy projects such as the World Summit on the Information Society and the Internet Governance Forum.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN

.sexy and 10 more gTLDs now in the root

The third batch of new gTLDs have gone live.
Uniregistry’s .sexy and .tattoo are currently in the DNS root zone, the first two of its portfolio to become active.
The TLDs .bike, .construction, .contractors, .estate, .gallery, .graphics, .land, .plumbing, and .technology from Donuts have also gone live today.
Donuts already had 10 new gTLDs in the root from the first two batches.
There are now 24 live new gTLDs.
The first second-level domains to become available will be nic.tld in each, per the ICANN contract they’ve all signed.
You’ll notice that they’re all ASCII strings, despite the fact that IDNs get priority treatment in the new gTLD program.

3 Comments Tagged: delegation, donuts, ICANN, new gTLDs, uniregistry

Name collisions expert JAS to guest blog on DI

JAS Global Advisors, the consultancy hired by ICANN to provide the final analysis on the risks posed by name collisions in new gTLDs, is to exclusively guest-blog its work here on DI.
ICANN picked JAS to provide a “Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework” earlier this week.
Its job is to basically figure out how new gTLD registries — some of which have been told to block many thousands of potential collisions from their zones — can identify and mitigate the risks, if any, posed by these names.
The framework will help registries reduce the size of their block-lists, in other words.
JAS expects to provide a short series of guest posts over the next few months, explaining the state of the project as it progresses. Reader comments will be read, I’m assured.
JAS CEO Jeff Schmidt said: “The macro intent is to shorten the feedback cycle so folks can see where we are incrementally and comment along the way.”
I’m hoping that the guest posts will provide DI readers with insight into the issue that is as disinterested as DI’s usual coverage, but better informed on the nitty-gritty of the affected technologies.
JAS is a regular consultant for ICANN. It was one of the independent evaluators for the new gTLD program itself.
I’m told that JAS doesn’t have financial relationships with either any new gTLD applicants, which generally think the collision risks have been overstated, or with Verisign, which say they could cause real damage.
JAS isn’t getting paid for the posts; nor is DI getting paid to carry them.
The first post in the series will appear soon, probably Friday.

Comment Tagged: collisions, ICANN, jas global advisors, new gTLDs

1&1 prices first four Donuts gTLDs at $50-$80 a year

The registrar 1&1 Internet has started selling pre-registrations in the first four Donuts new gTLDs for between $50 and $80 a year.
Three gTLDs — .singles, .bike and .clothing — carry a $49.99 price tag at the company’s US site. In the UK, they’re priced at £29.99. A fourth gTLD, .holdings, costs $79.99/£49.99.
Customers are only billed if 1&1 manages to grab the domain when the relevant gTLD launches.
The annual renewal fees appear to be the same as the pre-registration fees, but it’s not yet clear whether they’re the same as the standard reg fee when these gTLDs go to general availability next year.
As we’ve seen already via Go Daddy, some new gTLD registries are choosing to charge higher fees for pre-registered names, due to the more relaxed pricing regulations imposed by ICANN.
1&1 has been widely advertising new gTLDs on TV in the US and Europe for weeks — rumor has it the campaign’s budget is around $80 million — and has amassed four million non-binding pre-registrations to date.
Meanwhile, ICANN today warned internet users about the risks of pre-registering domains.

Comment Tagged: .bike, .clothing, .holdings, .singles, 1&1, donuts, pre-registration

Will ICANN be forced to reject Islamic gTLDs?

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has condemned applications for .islam and .halal gTLDs filed by a Turkish company, despite the applicant recently fighting off an OIC-backed objection.
Claiming to represent the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, the OIC expressed in a November 4 letter to ICANN and its Governmental Advisory Committee:

official opposition of the Member States of the OIC towards probable authorization by the GAC allowing use of these new gTLDs .Islam and .Halal by any entity not representing the collective voice of the Muslim people.

The letter seems to have been sent in response to the GAC’s current stalemate on these two TLDs, which were applied for, uncontested, by Istanbul-based Asia Green IT System.
At the ICANN meeting in Beijing six months ago, the GAC was unable to reach a consensus to object to .islam and .halal, instead merely noting:

Some GAC members have raised sensitivities on the applications that relate to Islamic terms, specifically .islam and .halal. The GAC members concerned have noted that the applications for .islam and .halal lack community involvement and support. It is the view of these GAC members that these applications should not proceed.

As a non-consensus objection, there’s no presumption that the ICANN board of directors should reject the applications.
And it seems that the New gTLD Program Committee, which carries board powers, has been deliberately ignoring the controversy pending the resolution of two formal Community Objections.
The objections were filed by the United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, the UAE’s ccTLD registry operator, with backing (it claimed) from the OIC.
But the TRA lost both objections, partly because the wishy-washy government-speak OIC letter it submitted in evidence failed to convince International Chamber of Commerce adjudicator Bernardo Cremades that it really did have that OIC support.
Whether the OIC really does object to Asia Green’s bids now seems beyond dispute.
In fact, the organization says it intends to pass a formal resolution containing its position on Islamic gTLDs during its Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in early December.
ICANN chair Steve Crocker has now asked the GAC to provide further guidance before it decides whether to accept or reject the two bids.
Given that a single governmental hold-out in the GAC would be enough to kill any chance of consensus, the OIC may be right to presuppose that the GAC will not fully object.
That would leave ICANN in the tricky position, for the first time in this application round, of having to decide the fate of a gTLD without the cover of a uniform international objection.
Would it reject .islam, opening the door for other gTLDs to be killed off by minority government concerns? Or would it approve the controversial strings, potentially pissing off the Muslim world?
I expect there’s at least one NGPC member — Lebanese-born Christian ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade — who would certainly not relish having to cast a vote on such a resolution.

Comment Tagged: .halal, .islam, asia green, gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, oic

RightOfTheDot to manage .club’s premium strategy

.CLUB Domains has selected RightOfTheDot to manage its premium and founders program domains strategy.
The company named “a.club, 888.club, chess.club, poker.club, insurance.club, golf.club country.club, car.club” as examples of “category killer” names that RightOfTheDot will try to find homes for.
.CLUB signed its Registry Agreement with ICANN late last week and plans to go to Sunrise in January.
It’s among the top 30 most popular new gTLDs being pre-registered at 1&1 right now, and recently said it’s hoping to have five million domains under management within five years, an ambitious target.
RightOfTheDot is the new gTLD consultancy founded by domainers Mike Berkens and Monte Cahn.

1 Comment Tagged: .club, .club domains, founders program, premium names, rightofthedot, sunrise

Over half the world’s biggest brands will be blocked in new gTLDs

More than half of the world’s most-famous brand names already stand to benefit from blocks in new gTLDs, due to the name collisions policy introduced by ICANN recently.
That’s the preliminary conclusion of a quick analysis of the 37 block-lists already published.
Using Interbrand’s list of the top 100 most valuable brands, we find that only 32 do not appear anywhere — either as strings or substrings — on the collisions lists we have today.
Fifty-nine brands are to be blocked as exact matches in at least one new gTLD. Five brands are blocked exactly in 10 or more.
Brand owners blocked in collision lists may not have to fork out for as many defensive registrations, but may also face complications when registries finally start whittling down their lists.
We present the full table of results below, for which the following explanations might be needed:

• Brand/String — The brands have been normalized to ASCII strings, removing punctuation not compatible with the DNS protocol and converting accented characters to their unaccented equivalents (for example, “Nescafé” becomes “Nescafe”). For DI PRO subscribers, each string links to a search on the database for that string.
• Exact Matches — The number of gTLDs (currently out of 37) in which this exact-match brand will be blocked.
• Unique Strings — The number of strings containing this brand that appear on block-lists. In some cases this may provide misleading results due to the usual overkill you get when matching substrings. For example, two-character brands such as 3M and HP get a lot of hits, the vast majority of which do not appear to relate to the brand itself, whereas every hit for Google does in fact refer to the brand.

[table id=19 /]
The numbers will of course grow rapidly as ICANN publishes more collisions lists.
If there’s sufficient interest from DI PRO subscribers in this breakdown being kept up to date on an ongoing basis, I’ll bolt it on to to the existing collisions database.

8 Comments Tagged: collisions, ICANN, new gTLDs, sunrise, trademarks

Over 87,000 new gTLD domains now blocked

The total number of domain names to be blocked due to the risk of name collisions has topped 87,000 with the latest batch of block-lists from ICANN, published yesterday.
According to our database, 87,670 domain names, representing 75,208 unique second-level strings, are to be blocked in the 37 new gTLDs that have published collisions lists.
The string “www” is on all 37 lists, followed closely by “com”, “org” and “net”.
The most commonly blocked names include large numbers of single characters and large numbers of two-character strings matching ccTLDs (which were already banned in new gTLDs anyway).
Lots of protocol-related strings, such as “http”, “ftp”, “isatap” and “wpad” can also be found in the top 100 strings.
Gambling-related strings are also hugely, and so far inexplicably, popular blocking candidates.
Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Apple are the most frequently seen brands.
The full consolidated list of blocked strings can be searched at the DI PRO name collisions database.
The gTLD with the biggest block-list so far is .kitchen, with 13,061 strings, over half as big again as the next-longest list, which is .uno’s 8,187 names.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, name collisions, new gTLDs

Over 100 new gTLD contracts now signed

The pace is stepping up as ICANN starts to lift its heels in moving more new gTLDs towards delegation.
The organization signed contracts with registries covering 34 strings over the weekend, including popular favorites such as .wiki and .ninja.
The full list of gTLDs with freshly signed Registry Agreements goes like this:

.education, .institute, .training, .international, .builders, .build, .solar, .marketing, .solutions, .academy, .company, .camp, .systems, .business, .management, .center, .repair, .red, .glass, .house, .farm, .holiday, .kaufen, .ninja, .gal, .social, .moda, .blue, .ceo, .immobilien, .wiki, .florist, .公益 and .政务.

At 34 in a week, it’s an almost 50% increase on the number of new gTLD RAs ICANN has entered into, and dangerously close to the 40-per-week rate that was originally planned.
By our reckoning, there are now 115 new gTLDs with ICANN contracts.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs

ICANN rejects third new gTLD bid

ICANN has formally rejected .thai, only the third new gTLD application to suffer this fate.
It’s been flagged as “Not Approved”, following an objection from a consensus of the Governmental Advisory Committee led by an outcry from Thailand and Thai nationals.
Only DotConnectAfrica’s .africa and GCC’s .gcc have the same designation. Both also were killed off by GAC advice.
Better Living Management Company had applied for .thai, promising to restrict it to people and organizations with a local presence.
Thailand already has the ccTLD .th, of course, as well as the IDN equivalent, .ไทย, which means “Thailand”.
ICANN has not yet rejected any applications that lost crippling objections filed by non-governmental actors.

Comment Tagged: .thai, gac, ICANN, new gTLDs