Daily Wrap: gTLD Roadmap, .GREEN, .ECO, Verisign Registrar Agreement, .CN and Google in Russia

A new roadmap for new generic Top Level Domains will be released by 6 August the board of directors’ New gTLD Program Committee said in a report, Domain Incite reported

A new roadmap for new generic Top Level Domains will be released by 6 August the board of directors’ New gTLD Program Committee said in a report, Domain Incite reported.

The report also provides some more information on how the 1930 gTLD applications will be processed “they’re being grouped by applicant and/or by back-end registry provider, in an attempt to create efficiencies” the Domain Incite report says with evaluators eventually being able to process 300 applications per month.

Meanwhile someone is out to get Donuts with a number of complaints about applications by the applicant for over 300 gTLDs. The comments relate to one of the company’s original directors who Domain Incite reports “seems to own several domain names containing Disney and Olympics trademarks.”

It’s not going to be easy for some of the smaller organisations who are part of a tussle for a gTLD. One is .GREEN with four applications, and one of the applicants, the DotGreen Community, have written to the GAC, and according to another Domain Incite report, “DotGreen does everything but ask outright for the GAC to object to its three competitors’ .GREEN applications.”

Meanwhile in an opinion piece, The Guardian asks if .ECO could be “force for environmental change” and then whether “will .ECO improve corporate sustainability performance or become the digital version of corporate greenwash?”

The article by an expert in CSR says “of the four applicants to run .ECO, one commercial applicant has applied to run a total of 306 domain names and another 91. I think it is safe to say they are in it for the money.” But the author singles out one application as being different – that one is a community bid convened by Vancouver-based Big Room. “The doteco.org community bid has been put together after an exhaustive five-year process of consultation and policy development with stakeholders from the environmental and sustainability community including over 50 international groups such as Greenpeace International and WBCSD.”

There are a number of changes being introduced as part of Verisign’s registry-registrar agreement for .COM which coincide with the new registry agreement Verisign recently signed with ICANN. One of the changes that has raised some concerns among its registrar channel is the requirement for “24/7 support for customers whose .com domains have been hijacked,” Domain Incite reports. The change is of concern to some of the smaller registrars who may not be able to provide such support.

The number of objectors to new gTLD applications have now surpassed applications, Domain Incite notes, with a rundown on who some of the objectors are and why they are objecting. Highlighted are objections by Save the Children (who is objecting to all four .HEALTH applications), International Olympics Committee (objecting to .SPORT applications it does not support) and Lego Juris (who has lodged complaints over about 80 applications).

And in the last Domain Incite report in today’s Daily Wrap, “ICANN director Judith Vasquez applied for a new gTLD but then withdrew the bid at the last minute.”

There were 8.73 million domain names registered in China at the end of June with 3.98 million of these being .CN domains, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said on Monday according to a report in the Global Times.

The report noted that the number of websites using .CN was up 460,000 in the first half of 2012, making this the fastest biannual growth since 2008 according to the CNNIC.

And in Russia Google is disputing the registration of a couple of domain names. “The Moscow Commercial Court has turned down Google Inc’s motion to speed up the review of its complaint against Weblink Ltd regarding its use of Googl.Ru and Gugl.Ru domain names as the expert appraisal currently underway makes this impossible, the court told the Russian Legal Information Agency,” according to a report by the Russian Legal Information Agency.

.SPORT Requests ICANN Banish Individual Sport gTLDs

In a curious letter to ICANN dated 13 May 2010, the .SPORT Policy Advisory Council has requested that ICANN block any applications for any sport-related generic Top Level Domains once they begin taking applications.

In a curious letter to ICANN dated 13 May 2010, the .SPORT Policy Advisory Council has requested that ICANN block any applications for any sport-related generic Top Level Domains once they begin taking applications.In an earlier letter to ICANN dated 20 August 2009 on the same issue, .SPORT say they are “emphatically oppose any diminution of .SPORT and will take all steps necessary to ensure that the top-level domain for our sector is properly protected. We are concerned that ICANN may be prematurely entertaining a process that will allow proliferation of names in sub-categories or individual sports, which will lead to confusion in the marketplace of users. We cannot accept ICANN approving any applications for top-level domains that could diminish the solidarity implied with .SPORT.”.SPORT appears to want to monopolise any sports-related gTLD, in an attempt to maximise their income and minimising their competition.To see the letters from .SPORT to ICANN, go to:
icann.org/correspondence/baumann-to-dengate-thrush-13may10-en.pdf
icann.org/correspondence/baumann-to-dengate-thrush-20aug09-en.pdf