Details of new gTLD batching process revealed

Some details about how ICANN will prioritize new generic top-level domain applications into batches have emerged.
The Applicant Guidebook states that gTLD applications will be processed in batches of 500, but all it says about the batching process is that it will not be random. Rather, some form of “secondary timestamp” is proposed.
The batching process is important mainly to commercial, open registries, which stand to make much more money by hitting the market early, before new gTLD fatigue sets in.
Some tantalizing hints about how batches will be created can be found in the minutes of the ICANN board of directors December 8 meeting, which were recently published.
From the minutes we learn the following:

• Applicants are not going to find out how batching will work until after April 12, when all the applications have already been received.
• The timestamp could be created by an email sent by the applicant to a specific address at a specific time, or some function within the TLD Application System.
• The system will not be biased towards specific geographic regions – ICANN will cycle through the fastest responses from each region when it creates the batches.
• There will be an opt-out for applicants for whom time is not a factor.
• Contested gTLDs will be batched with the fastest applicant.

The minutes represent ICANN’s staff’s thinking two months ago – and the conversation confused several directors – so the batching method finally selected could obviously differ.
However, if time-to-market is important for your gTLD, it might be a good idea to think about renting a server as few hops from ICANN as possible.
This is what the minutes say:

The third, and remaining option, is a secondary timestamp. This would occur after the time of the application window closing in order to provide privacy. Applicants will not be advised of the exact method until after the applications are received, which will ensure further fairness. It could be an email response to a mailbox, or the re-registration of an application, or another method. The method used will be decentralized, so that the region rom which the secondary timestamp is submitted is irrelevant. The timestamp will cycle through the regions of the world, awarding a batching preference to the top-rated application from one region, then the succeeding four regions, and continue the cycle again. In the case of contending applications, the applications will be grouped in the earliest batch where any of the contending applications are placed. There will also be an opt-out mechanism, included at the community’s request. Applicants may request to be evaluated at the end, if they prefer to be evaluated and delegated later.

Thick .com Whois policy delayed

ICANN’s GNSO Council has deferred a decision on whether Verisign should have to thicken up the Whois database for .com and its other gTLDs.
A motion to begin an official Policy Development Process on thick Whois was kicked down the road by councilors this afternoon at the request of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency.
It will now be discussed at the Council’s face-to-face meeting in Costa Rica in March. But there were also calls from registries to delay a decision for up to a year, calling the PDP a “distraction”.
Verisign’s .com registry contract and the standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement are currently being renegotiated by ICANN, both of which could address Whois in some way.
Today, all contracted gTLD registries have to operate a thick Whois, except Verisign with its .com, .net, .jobs, etc, where the registrars manage the bulk of the Whois data.

AFL to apply for dot-brand gTLD

The Australian Football League has just added its name to the short but growing list of companies announcing plans to apply to ICANN for a new “dot-brand” top-level domain.
The AFL is the governing body of Aussie rules football, a bastardization of the original sport even more violent and less internationally popular than the unwatchable American version.
Like recently revealed dot-brand applicant StarHub, the league has hired Melbourne IT to handle its application and registry back-end provider ARI Registry Services to run the infrastructure.
The Aussie AFL explained its decision to apply for .afl in a press release:

A dot AFL domain has the potential to:
— Make it easier for fans to find relevant online content
— Improve the protection of AFL, club and player environments online
— Support the growth of club and AFL media channels
— Better support the promotion and education for grass roots and community football
— Simplify marketing call to actions
— Provide opportunities for sponsors to promote their association with the AFL and clubs

The AFL may have a clear shot at goal here.
While several other organizations currently use the same acronym, none of them jump out as obvious dot-brand applicants, though some may of course choose to file objections.
The announcement is pretty good news for Melbourne IT and ARI — given Aussie rules’ popularity in their native Australia, I can see this deal getting a lot of local press today.

ICM and YouPorn in antitrust settlement talks

It’s Valentine’s Day, so perhaps it’s appropriate that ICM Registry has just revealed that it’s in talks to settle the .xxx antitrust lawsuit filed by one of the world’s biggest porn networks.
ICM and Manwin Licensing may soon resolve the case, which Manwin filed in November over the “extortion” it saw in the launch of the .xxx top-level domain, according to court documents.
In a joint filing, Manwin and ICM, along with ICANN and Digital Playground – the fellow plaintiff that Manwin has since acquired – said:

in recent days, Plaintiffs and ICM have engaged in discussions aimed at resolving the disputes that are the subject of this litigation.
The parties believe that additional time would potentially allow the parties to resolve all or some portion of their disputes.

The filing stipulates that Manwin has until this Friday to file an amended complaint and that ICANN and ICM should have 60 days after that to file their responses to the complaint.
That’s assuming that the suit isn’t completely settled in the meantime, of course.
The ICANN and ICM motions to dismiss filed in January have been taken off-calendar until Manwin amends its complaint.
I understand that ICANN also has secured a 60-day extension to its deadline to respond to the separate Manwin Independent Review Panel proceeding.
Manwin, which runs Brazzers, YouPorn and the Playboy-branded web sites, claimed in its complaint that the approval of .xxx in the absence of a competitive tender and its subsequent launch policies and pricing violated US antitrust laws.
ICANN and ICM claimed in their responses last month that the company was just scared of a little competition.

ICANN has 100 new gTLD applicants

One hundred companies have registered to apply for generic top-level domains, according to ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz.
ICANN has decided not to provide a running commentary about how many applications have been received, but it did say that 25 companies registered in the first week the program was open.
“That number is now up to 100,” Pritz said today at the The Top Level conference in London.
He was referring to companies paying their $5,000 to sign up for ICANN’s TLD Application System, which is likely to be much smaller than the actual number of gTLD applications. Each TAS account can store up to 50 applications, Pritz said.
There are only 45 days left on the clock to register for a TAS account. After March 29, you’re in for a wait of at least three years (my estimate) before the opportunity comes around again.
Pritz’s revelation was one of the more interesting things to emerge during today’s half-day gathering at the offices of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which attracted about 40 attendees.
The other big surprise was that Scandinavian Airlines System Group, the dot-brand applicant that was due to give a presentation on its plans for .sas, was a no-show.
I gather that somebody more senior at SAS found out about the conference and decided that revealing all was not such a great business strategy after all.
Most dot-brand applicants are playing their hands close to their chest, even if they’re not heading into a contested gTLD scenario (which SAS may well be if the software firm SAS Institute also applies for .sas).
I also found it notable that there’s still substantial confusion about the program among some potential dot-brand applicants, several of which did show up as general attendees.
I talked to one poor soul who had read the latest revision of the 349-page Applicant Guidebook back-to-back after it was published January 11, trying to figure out what had changed.
He was apparently unaware that ICANN had simultaneously published a summary of the changes, which were very minimal anyway, in a separate document.
These are the types of applicant – people unfamiliar not only with ICANN’s processes but also even with its web site – that are being asked to hack the Guidebook to make the rules compatible with a dot-brand business model, remember.
One potential applicant used a Q&A session during the conference to bemoan the fact that ICANN seems intent to continue to move the goal-posts, even as it solicits applications (and fees).
Pritz and Olof Nordling, manager of ICANN’s Brussels office, reiterated briefly during their presentation today that the current public comment period on “defensive” applications could lead to changes to the program’s trademark protection mechanisms.
But this comment period ends March 20, just nine days before the TAS registration deadline. That’s simply not enough time for ICANN to do anything concrete to deter defensive applications.
If any big changes are coming down the pipe, ICANN is going to need to extend the application window. Material changes made after the applications are already in are going to cause a world of hurt.

Did Kazakhstan just screw up somebody’s new gTLD plans?

ICANN has approved a new country-code top-level domain for the nation of Kazakhstan.
The new .қаз, which is “kaz” is Cyrillic, will be delegated to the “Association of IT companies of Kazakhstan”, according to a resolution passed by ICANN’s board of directors this week.
But did this move just cause problems for a new gTLD applicant?
One cultural/geographic gTLD that was proposed back in 2009 is .kab, for the Kabylia region of Algeria and the Kabyle language and people.
It’s easy to see how kab/KAB and .қаз could be considered confusing during a string similarity review, though ICANN’s laughable Sword tool only gives them a visual similarity score of 49%.
The .kab application currently has a dead web site, so it’s quite possibly one of the many new gTLD projects that fizzled out during ICANN’s repeated delays launching the program.

M+M adds $14m to new gTLDs war chest

Top Level Domain Holdings has raised £9 million ($14.2 million) with a share sale, boosting its ability to apply for new generic top-level domains.
TLDH, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market in London, owns registry provider Minds + Machines and has interests in a number of new gTLD joint ventures.
The shares were sold to “institutional and other investors” for 8.25p each, the company said.
TLDH now has a cash pile of about $25 million, CEO Antony Van Couvering said in a press release. Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush added:

TLDH management believes that the increased capital will allow it to increase significantly the number of applications it is able to make, allowing it to develop a wider, more diversified portfolio of names in multiple languages and scripts

The current cash balance would allow it to apply for 135 gTLDs, if it blew the whole lot on application fees.
I expect its actual number of applications to be more like 30, which would leave TLDH with about $20 million in reserve for fighting contested applications and start-up costs.
It could also try to raise some more money from the markets when some of its gTLD applications start being approved, of course.
Being the only public company entirely devoted to new gTLDs may leave TLDH in an interesting tactical position a few months from now — competing applicants are going to have a relatively good insight into the strength of its hand if any of its applications go to auction.

ICANN promises a second new gTLD round

Seeking to reduce the perceived need for defensive new gTLD applications, ICANN has repeated its promise to accept a second round of applications after the first is over.
“ICANN is committed to opening a second application window for the New gTLD Program as expeditiously as possible,” its board of directors resolved earlier this week.
No date has been revealed, but the resolution calls on ICANN staff to draft a “work plan” describing the things that need to happen before the second round begins.
Those include two or three reviews of the impact of the first round that ICANN has promised to its Governmental Advisory Committee and the US Department of Commerce.
It also depends to great extent on how many applications are submitted in the first round – which ICANN won’t know until April 12 – and how long they take to process.
The lack of a second round date is one of the big uncertainties hanging over the program, blamed in part for an expected influx of “defensive” dot-brand gTLD applications from companies with no interest in running a domain name registry.
ICANN’s commitment to a second round has never been in question – running the new gTLD program in rounds has been part of the policy from the outset, as the Applicant Guidebook explains. The only question is when it happens.
This week’s board resolution does not change that position, nor has it yet added clarity to the timing question.
But with ICANN increasingly worried about defensive dot-brands – which I think are one of the biggest PR risks to the program – some kind of statement was needed.
ICANN chair Steve Crocker said in a press release:

The important thing here is that the Board has erased any doubt that there will be a second application window for new generic Top-Level Domains. It’s not yet possible to set a definitive date for the next application period, but that will be determined after the current window closes.

Copenhagen gTLD scuppered by government

Plans afoot to apply for a city top-level domain for Copenhagen have been killed off after the Danish government saw little public support for the initiative.
Peter Larsen, CEO of the would-be applicant and local registrar Larsen Data (GratisDNS), said that the application is effectively over.
In order to get a city gTLD, applicants need a letter of support or non-objection from the relevant government(s). But for Copenhagen, that letter will now not be forthcoming.
The Danish Ministry of Business and Growth proposed an amendment to the country’s domain name law in November that would have enabled it to give consent to the .cph bid, Larsen said.
But due to a “lack of interest” from the public, the amendment has been shelved.
“We have nowhere to ask for the letter of non-objection, and that is killing the .cph project very effective,” Larsen said in an email.
The governments of other European capitals, including Paris, London and Berlin, are in favor of city gTLDs and are backing applications.

First ICANN CEO candidate revealed

Former ICANN director Njeri Rionge has emerged as a possible candidate for the soon-to-be-vacated CEO’s job.
Rionge is a Kenyan national, described last year by Forbes.com as “one of Kenya’s most successful and revered serial entrepreneurs”.
She founded Wananchi Online, a successful ISP in East Africa, and the business consultancy Ignite Consulting.
Her candidature was revealed in an open letter posted today by Sophia Bekele, CEO of DotConnectAfrica, a likely applicant for the .africa generic top-level domain.
DCA and Rionge have severed ties due to her new CEO aspirations, according to Bekele:

At the end of 2011, Ms. Njeri Rionge had expressed to DCA Executive Director, a direct interest in competing for the soon to be vacant ICANN CEO position, and for this reason, was kindly requested by DCA to submit her resignation from the DCA Strategic Advisory Board for ethical/conflict of interest reasons.
This was done after due internal consultations with concerned parties. Accordingly, Njeri Rionge is no longer involved in DCA and DCA Registry Ltd either as a Board Member or shareholder and will not represent neither would she be affiliated with DCA in any capacity, now or in the near future.

Rionge served on the ICANN board of directors as a Nominating Committee appointee for two terms between 2003 and 2008.
While there’s a ban on current directors applying for the CEO position, I don’t believe there’s any such prohibition on former directors.
ICANN is currently interviewing would-be replacements for Rod Beckstrom, who intends to leave the organization in July after a three-year term.
No other candidates have been revealed to date.
The only other name being circulated in the rumor mill is Lesley Cowley, CEO of .uk registry Nominet and current chair of ICANN’s ccNSO, but I’ve no idea if she’s even interested.