New gTLD use cases not much use

ICANN has come in for periodic criticism over the last decade or so for not being sufficiently enthusiastic in public about its new gTLD program, but this time around it’s trying to do something about it.

New gTLD program participants have said that ICANN should have thrown more of its substantial resources into marketing the program, raising the profile of both the application period and the availability of new gTLDs when they go live.

But, under community guidance for the 2026 application window, Org started promoting the program earlier this year, with the publication of a “Next Round Champion’s Toolkit” web site containing ready-made marketing materials that consultants and gTLD service providers are free to use to reach out to their respective communities or sales prospects.

The latest component of this effort is a batch of 13 “use case” documents, each covering a specific gTLD from the 2012 round, compiled by ICANN, “each providing a compelling example of how different types of organizations use gTLDs”.

ICANN was wise to avoid calling them “case studies”. They’re pretty lightweight, with not [m]any particularly useful insights or actionable nuggets of advice. A cynic might summarize the 13 documents thus:

Hey, did you know .CEO/.SECURITY/.BANK exists? It really does! Here’s barely 500 words of elevator-pitch fluff from the registry’s PR folk, presented in the format of one of those glossy, double-sided, one-page inserts you find in a conference schwag bag and toss into your hotel room trash can unread when trying to reduce the weight of your carry-on.

Six out of the 13 use cases are generics run by XYZ Registry. Five are big-C “Community” gTLDs (including the geographic/linguistic niche offerings .gal, .lat and .bzh). Microsoft is the only dot-brand registry represented.

Notably, given how much emphasis ICANN has been putting on its goal to expand outreach efforts in under-served regions (op-eds and press releases have started popping up in places like India and Nigeria recently), there are no IDN gTLD use cases yet. And all the use cases are in English.

Still, I expect the use cases could be useful to Next Round “Champions” in some scenarios, certainly not as later-stage decision support but rather as part of an arsenal of foot-in-the-door introductory materials aimed at prospects utterly unaware that new gTLDs exist.

ICANN confirms two bans on new gTLD gaming

ICANN’s board of directors has just voted to approve two bans on practices in the new gTLD program that could be considered “gaming”.

It’s banned applicants for the same string from privately paying each other to drop out of contention, such as via private auctions, and has banned singular and plural versions of the same string from coexisting.

The plurals ban means that if, for example, one company applies for .podcast and another applies for .podcasts, they will go into the same contention set and only one will ultimately go live.

It also means that you can’t apply for the single/plural equivalent of an already-existing gTLD. So if you were planning to apply for, oh I dunno, .farms for example, you’re out of luck.

The move should mean that lazy applicants won’t be able to rely on piggybacking on the marketing spend of their plural/singular rivals, or on purely defensive registrations. I will also reduce end-user confusion.

The ban on private contention resolution means that contention sets will largely be resolved via an ICANN-run “auction of last resort”, in which ICANN gets all the money.

In the 2012 application round, private resolution was encouraged, and some companies made tens of millions of dollars from their rivals by losing auctions and withdrawing their applications.

Both bans had been encouraged by ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and received the unanimous support of the board (excluding conflict-related abstentions) at the Org’s AGM in Turkiye this afternoon.

Chinese say internet not ready for single-letter gTLDs

Several major Chinese tech organizations have urged ICANN not to lift its ban on single-character gTLDs, saying the risk of confusion is too great.

Allowing single-character gTLDs in Han script was the most objected-to part of the draft Applicant Guidebook in ICANN’s just-closed public comment period, with the objections all coming from China.

Han script is used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. A single character can convey the same semantic impact as a whole multi-character word in European languages.

But the commenters warned that a single character can have multiple meanings, increasing the risk of confusion.

Rui Zhong of the Internet Society of China said for example that the Han character “新” can mean “new” but is also the abbreviation for the Chinese province of Xinjiang and the nation of Singapore.

Lang Wang of CNNIC warned: “the similarities in pronunciation, form, and meaning of Han script single-character gTLD could lead to the risks of phishing, homophone attacks, intellectual property disputes, etc”.

It seems the issue may be a bit more complex than visually identical words having multiple definitions in other languages, with multiple commenters saying that single-character words do not reflect the reality of modern Chinese usage.

Unloved INTA slams ICANN over new gTLDs

The new gTLD program is an existential threat to ICANN if it continues to ignore the concerns of IP interests, according to the International Trademark Association.

Trademark owners are becoming disillusioned with the ICANN process and “instead have opted to pursue more balanced outcomes through regulators, legislatures, and courts”, INTA said in comments on draft new gTLD program rules yesterday.

INTA warned that there has been “a decline in interest in the work of ICANN as otherwise engaged members have determined that there is very little return on the thousands of hours of time that they have devoted to ICANN’s continuous improvement”. It said:

The ICANN Board, Org and review team members would do well to consider the consequences of continuing to ignore the input of non-contracted parties especially when it comes to addressing ongoing harms within the domain name system. At a time when governments are vying to assume more policy oversight over the DNS, ICANN is well positioned to double down on the multistakeholder model by giving serious consideration and adjusting proposed policies in a balanced manner.

ICANN’s refusal to take on board the IP lobby’s suggestions when it added new DNS abuse requirements to its registry and registrar contracts earlier this year seems to be at the root of the outburst.

INTA said that it is “opposed to new [gTLD application] rounds” until “substantial reforms are made to ICANN’s approach to domain abuse and contract compliance”.

The comments were by far the angriest filed in response to the ICANN public comment period, just closed, that sought input on several draft sections of the new gTLD program’s Applicant Guidebook.

Pre-rant, INTA substantively said that the AGB needs to give brand owners and potential dot-brand applicants more clarity on when subsequent application rounds will launch.

Currently, ICANN expects the Next Round’s first wave to kick off in the second quarter of 2026, but subsequent application windows are subject to a checklist of triggering events that on the face of it is a little confusing.

Threats of government intervention undermining the legitimacy of the ICANN multistakeholder model are of course far from new. I’ve been writing about them for 20 years or more.

But the latest INTA threat may ring a little hollow given that ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee also filed comments on exactly the same issues, so we know exactly what governments think: they’re totally cool with how the AGB is being drafted, and just seem happy to be involved.

Second-shot gTLD bid rules revealed

ICANN has published the first, early draft of rules for new gTLD applicants that want to change their applied-for strings at the thirteenth hour.

In a shock move last month, ICANN’s board of directors said that applicants would be able to nominate a second-choice gTLD, as a means to reduce the number of contention sets and potentially increase the number of approved TLDs.

The decision, which has yet to be formally approved by the board, arguably raised more questions than it answered, and has been criticized for being a top-down imposition and introducing much more complexity into the application process.

But the poor Org staffers tasked with turning the idea into reality have now published a first draft of the proposed rules, which could eventually make it into the final Applicant Guidebook, that may answer some of those questions.

But I’m not convinced the idea has been sufficiently thought through yet. Here’s my take.

There’s going to be two Reveal Days

In 2012, Reveal Day was the day ICANN published the applicant names and applied-for strings of all 1,930 new gTLD applications. It was a simple one-time info dump, letting all applicants know who they were competing against.

As host of a Reveal Day panel discussion, I’d been given a hard copy of the spreadsheet in advance and virtually had to fight off applicants wanting a sneak peek with a dirty stick, despite the reveal being mere minutes away.

This time around, giving applicants the option of a pre-selected back-up string complicates matters, so there would be two reveals: Preliminary Reveal Day and Final Reveal Day.

On Preliminary Reveal Day, ICANN would publish the list of applicants along with their primary and secondary desired strings. Applicants would instantly know whether they were in contention, and get a rough idea of of what their second-chance options were.

They would then have a Replacement Period, currently penciled in at [14 days] to decide whether to stick to their first choice or switch their entire application over to their back-up.

If you’re a tiny podcast aggregator who suddenly finds your .podcasts application facing a contention resolution auction against Amazon, Spotify and Joe Rogan, you might want to switch to .knittingpodcasts or something.

Pick a crappy string

I present the example of .knittingpodcasts only half jokingly — the way the rules are currently drafted appears to actively encourage the selection of crappy back-up strings.

ICANN staffers told community members at two implementation meetings this month that applicants should pick second-choice strings “unlikely to be picked up by somebody else as their alternate”.

The whole point of allowing replacement strings is to reduce the number of contention sets. Applicants will not be allowed to switch to a string that is another applicant’s primary or secondary string. The draft text reads:

Applicants must be aware that they will be prevented from using their replacement string in cases where a designated replacement string is identical to another replacement string or applied-for primary string, as this would increase the risk of new instances of contention being created or existing instances being increased.

So, unless you’re hoping to get very lucky indeed, you’d be mad to apply for .crypto and nominate .blockchain as your back-up, as you’d be prevented from switching to your second-choice, which is very likely to be already contested.

Your best chance of avoiding contention would be to pick a string just crappy enough that nobody else is likely to apply for it, but not crappy enough that it doesn’t make business sense to apply for.

Avoid plurals, dummy

It now seems incredibly likely that ICANN is going to ban single/plural equivalents from coexisting, so choosing the plural of your primary string as your back-up (or vice-versa) would probably be an exercise in futility.

If the ban is approved, plural/singular matches will be placed in the same contention set anyway, so picking .podcasts as your alternate for .podcast will in most cases not avoid contention. There are some edge cases here, which I’ll get to below.

There’s no going back

Once you’ve opted to switch to your secondary string, you can’t later change your mind and switch back, even if all your original competitors have dropped out of the race and you’d have a free run at your primary.

The draft rules currently state: “Applicants who opt for their replacement string will be unable to revert to their original primary string at any stage during the program.”

They later state: “Applicants should note that if all applicants for a given string opt for their respective replacement strings, it is possible that there may be no remaining active application for the primary applied-for string.”

War-gaming undesirable consequences

I think we can all agree that .podcast is a more desirable gTLD than .podcasts.

Spotify says there are something like six million podcasts in its library. Selling a .podcast domain to a fraction of those podcasters could be a very lucrative business and provide millions of registrants with cool domains.

But how many entities would feel a .podcasts domain is more appropriate for their businesses? A handful of podcast aggregators, maybe? Certainly a substantially smaller number. The .podcasts registry would have to sell at a huge premium price to make up for the loss of volume.

So, let’s say Company A and Company B both apply for .podcast as their primary string. Company A selects .knittingpodcast as its back-up, while Company B selects .fishingpodcast.

After Preliminary Reveal Day, both applicants become afraid that their rival is better-funded and more committed to their application, so to avoid an auction decide to switch to their secondary string.

Remember, ICANN is bent on banning private resolution of contention sets, and while language has yet to be published or finalized, the current thinking is that private resolution would also be banned during the Replacement Period. The rules might even go so far as to ban non-monetary resolution, or communication between competing applicants.

So Company A and Company B, both fearful of the other’s financial clout, switch to their back-ups and a year or two down the line the internet has a .fishingpodcast gTLD and a .knittingpodcast gTLD, but no .podcast gTLD.

Let’s say instead that Company B ignored ICANN advice and named the plural .podcasts as its back-up, and both applicants switched. Now, not only would the more desirable singular .podcast not get delegated, but the single/plural ban would mean it would never be delegated.

Is that a desirable outcome? Populating the DNS with second-choice gTLDs nobody wants? (.com fanboys feel free to leave a comment below).

I can’t help but feel that a lot of this stuff is going to need much more intensive war-gaming, possibly involving top psychologists and game theorists, before the rules are finalized and approved.

Twitter now up-to-date on linkification

Twitter appears to have dragged itself into the 2020s with the linkification function of its service, after years of complaints.

On the web version of its service at least, Twitter now correctly makes domains in all the newest TLDs into clickable links automatically, with no http:// prefix required.

This means users are able to share clickable domains in .spa, .kids and .music, the three gTLDs delegated after Twitter’s previous delegation cut-off point of around April 2020.

It’s not clear to me when the change was made, or whether the fix also applies to the Twitter app on Android or iOS devices.

It’s equally not clear whether the change is due to Twitter’s own engineering, or whether a third-party library somewhere in its software stack was updated independently.

Regardless, it’s good news for the registries and registrants concerned, particularly DotMusic, whose .music gTLD goes on sale today.

Twitter came in for criticism from an ICANN engineer earlier this year for ignoring outreach efforts on Universal Acceptance, the program that aims to get all TLDs functioning properly across all software platforms.

Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, is understood to have been far more responsive, following complaints last year from the .tube registry operator.

Moment of truth as .music domains finally go on sale

After a wait of over 15 years, startup registry DotMusic is bringing .music domains to general availability today.

A week-long Early Access Period is due to start this afternoon, with prices initially measured in the thousands of dollars, before regular GA with standard pricing — around $60 retail — kicks off October 8.

Participating registrar 101domain has published an EAP price list and timetable, showing prices starting at $11,999 today, dropping to $6,299, $1,999, $799, $199, $169, and $139 over the following six days. The prices drop at 1600 UTC each day.

While .music is certainly among the strongest strings to emerge from the new gTLD program to date, there are substantial, self-imposed barriers to broad adoption.

.music is a rare example of a “Community” gTLD, with additional restrictions — built into its ICANN registry contract — on who can register names and what kind of content they can publish.

DotMusic’s published policies say that registrants must verify their identities and connection to the music industry and obtain a special code called a Music ID within 90 days of registration.

Newly registered domains will be on Registry Server Hold Status until this code is obtained, meaning they won’t be included in the .music zone file and won’t resolve on the internet.

Failure to obtain the Music ID within 90 days means DotMusic can delete or suspend the domain with no refunds. After a registrant has a .music ID, it can be reused to activate subsequent registrations.

A sister company of DotMusic called ID.music will be responsible for verifying the identity of registrants and their “nexus” to the music industry. It announced last week it’s partnered with a company called Shufti to verify IDs.

DotMusic is building additional services around the Music ID. A Music Hub is expected to feature services designed to help artists connect with and cultivate their fan base.

The launch so far appears to be a bit messy, with not much hype and some confusion about certain details, which is worrying given how long .music has been under development.

Domains being promoted for Music Hub services supposedly available at launch, such as search.music and channels.music, do not appear in the latest .music zone file and do not resolve.

It’s also not entirely clear what the official registry web site is. IANA lists nic.music, but music.us and get.music have also been used and registry.music appears to be the most up-to-date.

CentralNic is also being touted as .music’s back-end registry services provider both on the registry’s registrar-onboarding web site and by some participating registrars, but I’m pretty certain DotMusic switched to Tucows a few months ago.

gTLDs with onerous registration restrictions historically have not fared particularly well in the market, where registrars are not keen on products that cause shopping cart friction or risk spawning support calls.

DotMusic seems to done itself a favor by making registrant verification a post-registration hoop to jump through, moving most of the complexity to the registry.

.music had 213 domains in its zone file yesterday but, due to the restrictions, it’s going to be difficult to use this metric to judge the success of the launch in future.

ICANN fixes embarrassing “What is a Domain Name?” mistake

Good news, everyone! ICANN knows what a domain name is!

The Org has quietly corrected a slide deck, designed as a high-level introduction to the new gTLD program’s Next Round, that seemed to mislabel the components of a domain name.

When it was first published in early September, the offending slide looked like this:

When I saw it, for a few moments I was genuinely worried I’d had another stroke or, worse, been wrong for a quarter century. Surely ICANN, the organization that oversees the global DNS, knew more about this stuff than I do?

Rather than call an ambulance immediately, I tweeted a screengrab on Twitter to get the reassurance of the four people still on that platform that I had not lost my mind.

Now, in the same ICANN deck (pdf), apparently updated September 19, the slide looks like this:

The deck is part of a “Champions Toolkit”, a bunch of freebie marketing materials made available for people who want to market the Next Round, particularly in under-served regions, on ICANN’s behalf.

Plurals ban policy handed to ICANN board

The GNSO Council has approved a blanket ban on singular and plural versions of the same word being delegated as gTLDs in future and passed it to the ICANN board of directors for final consideration.

The proposed policy would prevent anyone applying for the singular/plural equivalent of an existing gTLD, and would put future applications for single/plural clashes into contention sets where only one would survive.

The ban would prevent a future .kitchens, for example, because there’s already a .kitchen, and there could be no .motorcycle gTLD because there’s already a .motorcycles.

It would also mean that if there are future applications in the same round for .podcast and .podcasts, for example, they would be placed in the same contention set, likely go to auction, and only one would be delegated.

Applicants would also be banned from applying for singular/plural variants of the few dozen strings found on a “limited blocked name list” that comprises mainly the names of internet policy organizations including ICANN, the IETF and the GNSO.

That list also includes dictionary words such as “onion”, “invalid”, “test”, “internal” and “local”, so there could never be a .onions or .locals gTLD under the policy.

ICANN would decide whether two strings are “the singular or plural version of the same word in the same language” by reference to a dictionary.

The idea behind the ban is mitigating abusive registrations that could be used in, for example, phishing attacks, as well as lazy gTLD applicants that might hope to piggyback on the success of their single/plural rival.

The policy recommendation was written by a “Small Team Plus” of 15 community volunteers after the ICANN board last year rejected the GNSO’s original singular/plural policy, which would have made exceptions to the ban based on the applicant’s “intended use” of the gTLD.

An example given was that if one applicant applied for .spring to represent the meteorological season and another applied for .springs to represent flexible coils of metal, the latter would not be judged a plural of the former.

But the board was worried that if ICANN had to make a call on “intended use”, ICANN would also have to monitor and enforce the use of the gTLD in future, breaking its bylaws promise not to regulate internet content.

Under the revised policy recommendation, .spring and .springs would be ruled as singular/plural equivalents of each other, regardless of how they were going to be marketed.

While the Small Team was not unanimous in its consensus recommendation, the GNSO Council was unanimous in approving it at its monthly meeting last week. The language will now be sent to the ICANN board for approval or rejection.

ICANN confirms new gTLD application fee

It’s $227,000. That’s the minimum ICANN expects to charge for each new gTLD application in the Next Round.

The Org confirmed the price, which is $42,000 more than it charged in 2012, in a blog post this afternoon.

It’s toward the low end of the $208,000 to $293,000 range discussed in June, but up on the $220,000 number being circulated a few weeks ago.

ICANN is able to put a tentative price on applications now because its board has now squared away all the outstanding policy items that could have substantially affected its evaluation costs.

That includes its new process for evaluating potential name collisions, which I wrote about just a few hours ago.

The fee is based on an estimate that ICANN will receive 1,500 applications, where $227,000 will allow it to recover its development, implementation, and operations costs. It may issue rebates if there are more applications.

The $227,000 fee is just a baseline. Applicants will be expected to pay more for extra services, such as if they want a Community Priority Evaluation or want to operate a dot-brand, ICANN said.

ICANN has previously said that most of the price increase over 2012 is due to inflation. But this hasn’t stopped grumbling that the fee is too high, given efficiencies such as technical back-end operations being evaluated separately.

Less well-financed wannabe applicants from certain countries — mostly outside Europe and North America — will have the chance to apply for a fee subsidy under the Applicant Support Program.