New gTLD typo policy coming today?

ICANN’s board-level new gTLD program committee may vote today on a policy for enabling new gTLD applicants to correct errors in their applications.
Many of the 1,930 applications contain mistakes of varying degrees.
Some are obvious, such as typos in the applied-for string — .dotafrica springs to mind — and copy-paste errors made by large portfolio applicants that reference strings in the wrong application.
The trick for ICANN is figuring out which change requests are genuine while excluding attempts to game the system in light of new competitive information emerging post-Reveal Day.
According to an update issued last night, ICANN staff have come up with a set of seven criteria to decide whether any of the dozens of changes that have been requested should be permitted.
The criteria, which have not yet been revealed, are subject to approval, ICANN said.
But the ICANN board of directors is due to meet today, and it seems likely that its new gTLD program committee — made up of non-conflicted directors — will also have a session.
It’s quite possible that the criteria will be rubber-stamped today and published later this week.
ICANN also said last night that it plans to overhaul its new gTLD microsite shortly to make information easier to find, which will be welcomed by many applicants and observers.
The Clarifying Questions pilot, a test-run for a more formal process later this year, has also started. I understand the 50 selected applications received their questions late last week.
Another webinar for applicants has also been scheduled for next week.

Why domain names need punctuation

ICANN wants to know whether it should formally ban “dotless” domain names in the gTLDs for which it oversees policy.
While the Applicant Guidebook essentially prohibits registries using their new gTLDs without dots, there’s not yet a hard ban in the template Registry Agreement.
But that could change following a new ICANN public comment period.
A dotless domain might appear in a browser address bar as http://tld or, with more modern browsers, more likely just tld. A small number of ccTLDs already have this functionality.
To make it work, TLDs need to place an A record (or AAAA record for IPv6) in the root zone. This is known as an apex A record, which the Applicant Guidebook says ICANN will not permit.
The result, IANA root zone manager Kim Davies told us in July 2011, is a “default prohibition on dotless domains”.
Davies could not rule out apex A/AAAA records entirely, however. Specific requests for such functionality might be entertained, but would likely trigger an Extended Evaluation.
ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee is of the opinion that dotless gTLDs should not be permitted on various security grounds, including the fact that lots of software out there currently assumes a domain without a dot is a trusted host on the local network.
You can read the SSAC report here.
Dotless domains would also mess up browsers such as Chrome, which have integrated address/search bars; when you type “loreal” do you intend to search for the brand or visit its TLD’s web site?
But a far more intuitive, non-technical argument against dotless domains, as CentralNic’s Joe Alagna noted in his blog over the weekend, is that they do not pass the cocktail party test.
It’s hard enough trying to communicate the address “domainincite.com” across a noisy cocktail party as it is, but at least the dot immediately informs the listener that it’s a domain name.
Without dots, are we even talking about domain names any more?
The first phase of the new comment period runs until September 23. We understand that, depending on responses, a new ban on dotless domains could be introduced to the standard new gTLD registry agreement and possibly even added to legacy registry agreements in future.

Half of registrars “not sure” about new gTLDs – survey

About half of domain name registrars are still not sold on the idea of new generic top-level domains, according to the results of a small Nic.at report.
The Austrian ccTLD registry commissioned a survey of 220 Austrian companies, 32 .at registrars and 32 creative agencies about the possible impact of new gTLDs.
Nic.at said:

Overall, the industry is approaching the topic of the incoming top level domains with muted enthusiasm: at present around half of registrars are not sure whether they are going to offer their customers the new extensions.

A quarter of the surveyed marketing agencies reckoned internet users will take to new gTLDs, but only 12% of registrars were as confident, according to the report.
The agencies seemed to be more interested in domains than social media, however. Only 12% said that their social media focus made them unaware of the gTLD expansion.
Read the full report in PDF format here.
As well as managing .at, Nic.at is acting as the named registry back-end for 12 new gTLD applications, mostly German.

Delinquent top 20 registrar not delinquent after all

China’s largest domain name registrar isn’t shirking its ICANN fees, despite previous allegations to the contrary.
Xin Net, which has over 1.6 million gTLD domains under management, received a breach notice from ICANN last month which stated that the company was $2,000 in arrears with its payments.
The company was given until August 22 to correct the problem or risk losing its accreditation.
But in a subsequent compliance notice ICANN admitted that “due to an error the registrar’s account reflected a delinquent balance”.
The admission was buried deep in the notice and not immediately obvious to anyone browsing ICANN’s compliance pages.
The original notice also alleged a breach of the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy with respect to the domain names rongzhu.net, qsns.net and zuixincn.com, which was not an error.
ICANN posts breach notices to its web site fairly regularly — 84 of them since mid-2008 — and more often than not they allege failure to pay fees in addition to other problems.

Refunds uncertain as .nxt says sorry for cancelation

It’s not yet clear whether people who paid for tickets for the .nxt conference will get full refunds.
In an apologetic email sent to attendees last night, organizer Kieren McCarthy said that .nxt is “trying to recoup” money already paid to the conference venue. The email states in part:

For a number of reasons – the most significant being the fact that the ICANN process is still in flux – we were not able to get the number of attendees or sponsors needed.
Having communicated with a large number of people that the conference was directly aimed at, the conclusion would appear to be: right idea, wrong time. The conference was designed as a meeting place for a new industry to meet and interact. It is now clear that that effort was premature.
Unfortunately that does not resolve the fact that you are currently out of pocket, whether through a conference ticket, hotel room or flight to London.
.Nxt is currently trying to recoup money we have paid to the hotel venue so we are in a position to reimburse at least some of those costs. We will keep in touch with any developments.

Fewer than 100 people were registered for the $950-a-ticket three-day event, .nxt said. The first two conferences, held in San Francisco last year, attracted closer to double that number.
The company plans to offer some of its planned sessions online instead, according to the email and a statement on the conference web site.
McCarthy is currently calling would-be attendees to explain the situation. Many have been understanding, according to the email.
Some attendees have told us they want full refunds for their tickets and hotel rooms, when the hotel was booked via .nxt. Recouping money spent on airfare is a different matter, of course.
The conference, which also left some attendees out of pocket when it was postponed in June, is unlikely to return.

Fight breaks out over .kiwi

New Zealand country-code manager InternetNZ has approved the creation of .kiwi.nz, setting the stage for a battle over the proposed new gTLD .kiwi.
InternetNZ announced the new second-level domain today. It’s designed to “increase choice” for New Zealanders who want to register their personal names as domain names.
But it stands to clash with .kiwi, a new gTLD applied for by Dot Kiwi Ltd, a New Zealand subsidiary of a Canadian company, which has partnered with Minds + Machines on the bid.
Dot Kiwi, which had objected to the .kiwi.nz domain, has branded InternetNZ’s move “dissappointing and lacking in common sense”, and suggested it is an attempt to capitalize on .kiwi’s advertising.
The applicant said in a statement:

Our opposition to InternetNZ’s confusing introduction of .kiwi.nzis well documented in repeated submissions we have made to them. Those submissions have been ignored. There will now be widespread confusion with the .kiwi.nz domain and the well-advertised forthcoming launch of the .kiwi domain.

But InternetNZ president Frank March said in a press release that the policy used to approve .kiwi.nz does not consider the possibility of confusion with proposed new gTLDs:

The policy for evaluating a new second-level domain takes into account existing second-level domains in .nz but not possible future changes, such as direct registration under .nz (which is currently being consulted on) or new generic Top Level Domains that may or may not be introduced at some point in the future.

The creation of the new second-level domain does not appear to give InternetNZ leverage to object to .kiwi, under a strict reading of the ICANN Applicant Guidebook.
For ccTLDs to file a String Confusion Objection against a new gTLD application, they must assert confusion with the TLD; the objection does not appear to cover 2LDs.
To date, there has been only one public comment filed with ICANN about .kiwi on confusion grounds.
Kiwis will get an opportunity to vote with their wallets, it seems.
Registrations under .kiwi.nz are expected to open September 11, but under InternetNZ policy .kiwi.nz will not actually go live until a minimum threshold of 500 domains has been passed, the company said.

Confirmed: .nxt conference canceled

The .nxt conference on new gTLDs has indeed been canceled, according to organizer Kieren McCarthy.
The show was expected to run next week, August 29-31, in London, following two successful events in San Francisco last year.
It was originally expected to run in June, but was postponed in May due to ICANN-related program delays.
I had planned to hold off posting the news until I had the full details, but I’ve received several emails this morning from people wondering what was going on so I thought I’d share what I know.
McCarthy is currently phoning attendees individually to explain the situation, so if you’re already a paid-up delegate I expect you’ll be getting a call soon. An announcement is expected later today.
ARI Registry Services tweeted this morning that .nxt is not offering refunds, but I cannot confirm that at this time.
More when we get it…

What’s wrong with Melbourne IT’s new anti-cybersquatting plan?

Genuine question.
Melbourne IT, the Aussie registrar with the increasingly vocal brand-protection focus, has come up with a new scheme for protecting super-famous brands after new gTLDs start to launch.
It draws on elements of the abandoned Globally Protected Marks List, ICM Registry’s Sunrise B policy, .CO Internet’s launch program, and various recent demands from the intellectual property community.
It’s called the paper Minimizing HARM (pdf), where HARM stands for High At-Risk Marks.
The title may set off grammatical alarm bells, but the rest reads like the least-unreasonable proposition for protecting big brands from cybersquatters that I’ve come across in a long time.
What I like about it is that it’s actually contemplating ways to prevent gaming from the outset, which is something the IP lobby hardly ever seems to do when it demands stronger rights protection mechanisms.
The idea calls for the forthcoming Trademark Clearinghouse to flag a narrow subset of the trademarks in its database as High At-Risk Marks that deserve special treatment.
Melbourne IT has organizations such as PayPal and the Red Cross in mind, but getting on the list would not be easy, even for famous brands.
First, companies would have to prove they’ve had trademark protection for the brand in three of ICANN’s five geographic regions for at least five years — already quite a high bar.
Implemented today, that provision could well rule out brands such as Twitter, which is an obvious high-risk cybersquatting target but might be too young to meet the criteria.
Dictionary words found in any of UN’s six official languages would also be banned, regardless of how famous the brand is. As the paper notes, that would be bad news for Apple and Gap.
Companies would also have to show that their marks are particularly at risk from phishing and cybersquatting.
Five successful UDRP complaints or suspensions of infringing domains by a “top ten registrar” would be enough to demonstrate this risk.
But that’s not all. The paper adds:

In addition to meeting the minimum criteria above, the High At-Risk Mark will need to obtain a minimum total points score of 100, where one point is awarded for each legal protection in a jurisdiction, and one point is awarded for each successful UDRP, court action, or domain registrar suspension undertaken in relation to the mark.

That appears to be setting the bar for inclusion high enough that an Olympic^TM pole-vaulter would have difficulty.
Once a brand made it onto the HARM list, it would receive special protections not available to other brands.
It would qualify for a “Once-off Registration Fee”, pretty much the same as ICM’s .xxx Sunrise B, where you pay once to block your exact-match domain and don’t get pinged for renewal fees every year.
Any third parties attempting to register an available exact-match would also have to have two forms of contact information verified by the gTLD registry before their names resolved.
The Trademark Claims service – which alerts mark owners when somebody registers one of their brands – would run forever for HARM-listed trademarks, rather than just for the first 60 days after a gTLD goes into general availability.
The always controversial Uniform Rapid Suspension service would also get tweaked for HARM trademarks.
Unless the alleged cybersquatter paid the equivalent of a URS filing fee (to be refunded if they prevail) their domains would get suspended 48 hours after the complaint was filed.
I’m quite fond of some of the ideas in this paper.
If ICANN is to ever adopt a specially protected marks list, which it has so far resisted, the idea of using favorable UDRP decisions as a benchmark for inclusion – which I believe Marque also suggested to ICANN back in February – is attractive to me.
Sure, there are plenty of dumb UDRP decisions, but the vast majority are sensible. Requiring a sufficiently high number of UDRP wins – perhaps with an extra requirement for different panelists in each case – seems like a neat way of weeding out trademark gamers.
The major problem with Melbourne IT’s paper appears to be that the system it proposes is just so complicated, and would protect so few companies, that I’m not sure it would be very easy to find consensus around it in the ICANN community.
I can imagine some registries and registrars might not be too enthusiastic when they figure out that some of the proposals could add cost and friction to the sales process.
Some IP owners might also sniff at the some of the ideas, just as soon as they realize their own trademarks wouldn’t meet the high criteria for inclusion on the HARM list.
Is Melbourne IT’s proposal just too damn sensible to pass through ICANN? Or is it riddled with obvious holes that I’ve somehow manged to miss?
Discuss.

More than half of new gTLD apps have comments

Over half of ICANN’s 1,930 new generic top-level domain applications have received comments, two days after the original deadline for having them considered expired.
There are 6,176 comments right now, according to the ICANN web site, and the DI PRO database tells me that they’ve been filed against 1,043 distinct applications covering 649 unique strings.
It looks like .sex is in the lead, with 275 comments — I’m guessing all negative — followed by its ICM Registry stablemates .porn (245) and .adult (254), due to the Morality in Media campaign.
The controversial dot-brand bid for .patagonia, which matches a region of Latin America, has been objected to 205 times.
Some that you might expect to have created more controversy — such as .gay (86) and .islam (21) — are so far not generating as many comments as you might expect.
Donuts has received the most comments out of the portfolio applicants, as you might expect with its 307 applications, with 685 to date.
Famous Four Media’s applications have attracted 416 and Top Level Domain Holdings 399.
Despite applying for .sexy, Uniregistry has a relatively modest 64 comments. That’s largely due to it managing to avoid being whacked by as many duplicate trademark-related comments as its rivals.
There have been 1,385 unique commenters (trusting everybody is being forthright about their identity) with as many as 486 affiliations (including “self” and variants thereof).

Afilias exec returns to ICANN board

Afilias chief technology officer Ram Mohan has been reappointed to ICANN’s board of directors for a fourth year.
He’s the Security and Stability Advisory Committee’s non-voting liaison, joining the board in 2009.
According to a notice (pdf) posted on ICANN’s web site yesterday, he’s been picked to continue in the role for another year.
Board liaisons, who are unpaid, serve annual terms and there are no limits on the number of years they can serve.
As arguably the most-conflicted person on the ICANN board in relation to new gTLDs, Mohan does not sit in on discussions of the program.