With competition hotting up between new generic Top Level Domain applicants, and a three month application period to open on 12 January 2012 following ICANN’s approval of their Applicant Guidebook in Singapore last week, it is likely there will be a number of competing applications for the same gTLD.Likely gTLDs to receive more than one application include .AFRICA, .GAY and now .SCOT. For .GAY, Domain Name Wire reports a “Washington man has filed an intent-to-use trademark application for ‘.gay’ with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.”.AFRICA has seen competing applications from two groups, with the African Union Commission has stated categorically it is not supporting any application for the generic Top Level Domain .AFRICA despite claims from a potential applicant it has their support.”And now a gTLD for Scotland with .SCOT and .SCO being proposed by competing groups. The .SCO proposal website has not been updated since February 2009, but it appears there are also two .SCOT proposals.In an article in The Scotsman today, Joan McAlpine, an SNP MSP for the south of Scotland, writes “it is important that everyone in Scotland gets behind this officially approved bid which can be found at www.dotscot.net. This is the group that has government and cross-party backing, because it is run as a not for profit organisation.”A for profit body is behind a second .SCOT proposal. The organisation is called Scotnom. However writes McAlpine a “.SCOT TLD should be a community-based public resource rather than a private asset.””It is important that there is no confusion of the two organisations – remember dotscot.net and dotscot.org is the place to sign up if you want the bid to benefit the wider community.”To read the article by Joan McAlpine in The Scotsman in full, see:
news.scotsman.com/politics/Joan-McAlpine-Dotting-the-i39s.6792156.jp