ICANN Seoul summary
2nd November 2009
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The ICANN Seoul meeting is now over, and our team came with some good news and no so good ones.
The not so good news is that the ICANN staff does not commit to any timeline for the introduction of new top level domains. The previous information saying that applications for new top level domains like .sport could be submitted in Q1 2010 is now obsolete. We hear there will be a fourth draft of the Applicant’s Guidebook before the final version is published.
There are still major issues that prevent the ICANN staff and board to go ahead with accepting applications. A major one being how the trademarks will be dealt with by the new top level domain operators. The good news is that we notice a willingness from all parties to sort out this issue and resolve differences. We are optimistic that this will finally be out of the way in the near future.
This is not all that bad, actually. Unlike many prospective applicants for new top level domains, we think it is important that ICANN comes up with a request for proposals that has no grey areas. Some of the things still being discussed could have a real impact on the business model of the new TLDs. For example, some small community-based TLDs could be de facto prevented from going ahead if they see that they will need to hire extra staff to handle trademark disputes.
However, we also understand the concerns of some prospective applicants that have been working within the ICANN community for several years, and are becoming impatient. Many of them have shareholders or communities that are asking for a return for their support. Telling them that the process is once again delayed is not what they want to hear. This is why we welcome the ICANN board’s decision to ask the staff to investigate a proposal made by Mind+Machines. This would allow prospective new TLD applicants to formally submit an “expression of interest” to ICANN, along with a deposit. There are several advantages:
- it allows ICANN to have a feeling of the number of potential applications there will be, allowing them to size their operations accordingly
- it allows prospective applicants to show they are serious, and use this process to gain the support of additional partners.
If this materializes, we should be able to file an expression of interest for .sport in Q1 2010.
On the .sport front, we are happy to see that our project is gaining momentum and interest within the community, and had some very interesting exchanges with potential partners. Obviously, it is too early to tell, but will keep you updated as we go forward.
Unrelated to the above, but a major breakthough in itself, we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate ICANN to have started the process of adding new top level domains in non-latin scripts. These are called IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) . They are domain names written in scripts like Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Cyrillic, Hindi, etc. This will allow millions of people who do not yet use the Internet because of the language barrier to join in. We are looking forward to the next billion Internet users coming online.
