The ICANNblog

Community Responsibility

By Chuck Kisselburg
ICANNWiki.org

While at the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle last month I was listening to someone from Canada talk about ccTLDs and how the .ca extension has grown in adoption over the years. While ccTLDs have been most heavily adopted in the UK and Germany, this gentleman was pleased to see how .ca was being adopted within his country. The main reason for such adoption is due to the amount of marketing that went into .ca awareness.

What does that really mean? Community? Why is it important and why we (the collective “we”) have responsibility for our communities.

Last week I was in Whistler for a week. Being an American, when I use the net I rarely see .us used anywhere. Instead I am personally used to using .com, .net, .org, .gov and .fm. So, while on this trip to the north I thought this would be a good opportunity to “notice” and be “aware” of .ca.

The social networking enthusiast that I am, I am not one who is shy when talking with people. Yes, Whistler caters to a world-wide clientele of all economic strata. In order to get a feel for .ca awareness I talked with only those who were local to the village. I talked with six people, all of which were from various backgrounds and ages. Three were in the 20-30 year age range while the other three where in the 40-60 age range.

What I found were those in the older age range pretty much relied on .com for all of their needs, except for one individual whose visits to the Internet were primarily sports related. If sports related, it was all .ca for this person. Else, everyone within the older age group felt that if they landed on a .ca site it was because the .com for that domain name had been taken by some other organization.

As for the younger age group, the message was consistent. If they were looking for something they knew was a Canadian company they would always start with .ca, even if they were searching for the URL. If an organization they were looking for were more global in nature, they knew to look for .com. All voiced that similar opinion very matter-of-factly, as if, “Why would it be anything else?”.

When looking around I found the following:

When watching a baseball game between Baltimore and Toronto, hosted in Toronto, I saw advertisements for Expeidia.ca and Toyota.ca. Yet on one of the signs in Toronto’s Rogers Centre ballpark was www.bluejays.com. When going to that site the URL actually resolves to http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=tor. Just as I thought, the “Blue Jays” team is a franchise of the Major League Baseball; an American organization.

Other sites I noticed were:

www.vancouver-2010.com (saw printed on material, but while still under construction, www.vancouver-2010.ca works well.)
www.whistler.com (for visitors)
www.whistler.ca (for locals)
www.vancouver.com (for visitors)
www.vancouver.ca (for locals)
www.Translink.bc.ca (local Vancouver transit network)
www.BCFerries.com (local BC ferry system, however when using my trusty browser I see they also have www.BCFerries.ca.)
www.shaw.ca (Canadian cable provider. I found it interesting they use ONLY the .ca extension.)

I would also see “.ca” this and “.com” that on various delivery trucks. From my perspective, as a casual viewer, there was no rhyme or reason. As this world continues to shrink, think of what people face as they trot the globe!

My favorite coffee house in the village is, what I thought was a Canadian enterprise only. True, they are headquartered in Canada, but they also have franchises in the UAE, China and Japan. Perfect for localization of sites, right? Nope. .com all the way.

Being in Whistler I thought I would head to Panasonic’s site as they are one of the sponsors for the 2010 Olympics that are to be held in Vancouver and Whistler. Here you have this huge, global company, but sure enough I found site localization for MANY countries. My favorites inclue:
Panasonic-Canada (http://panasonic.ca/)
Panasonic-Middle East (http://panasonic.ae/PMM/english/home.aspx)
Panasonic-China (http://panasonic.cn/)
Panasonic-Australia (http://panasonic.com.au/)

In talking with a person from the UK who’s job used to include localizing various sites for his organization’s international audience, commented that some people who were savvy about the site localization would understand that such localized sites would sell products based on their target country’s currency system. What this meant is they were finding some people would go to the localized site that offered the best exchange rate when purchasing their goods, such as computer systems. Talk about savvy bargain hunting! Companies, however, are becoming savvy to this practice and are focusing the purchase price based on the currency to either where the product is being shipped or the billing location of your credit card.

What I thought was nice, however, is when I would open up my browser, my Google home page allowed for searching in Canada only, if I so desired. When going to Google directly, it was no longer “Google” but “Google Canada”. Personally I thought that was a nice touch. I felt that it catered to me, giving me options I did not have previously. Somehow I felt like part of the Canadian “clique”.  Eh?

Thinking back to my conversation with the person from Canada at the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle, saying that .ca has grown due to a rather large advertising effort, I couldn’t help but wonder who such advertisement was targeted towards, locals or organizations?

So, what does all of this mean? To me localization is, and will continue to be a mixed bag for locals and visitors alike. However, such localization helps foster community. Within every community you will find people who, on one side think of “What’s in it for me” while those on the other side will make decisions based on what’s right for the community; hence community responsibility.

When talking with the Whistler locals, especially those in the younger age group who were very familiar with .ca, you could tell there was a sense of pride in how they talked. From my perspective I would look at this as an opportunity to gain a better sense of the country I was visiting. I also found I had a greater appreciation for organizations that take that extra step to do what they didn’t have to do and that was to spend the time and money for site localization for the countries they serve.

Community responsibility. How do you foster community responsibility? Developing and growing communities is never easy. However, making a sustained effort is necessary. DotAsia will soon be launching the .asia TLD. Through their Pioneer Domains Program, they are working to have organizations come together with their proposals for how they will develop domain names under the .asia TLD, thus helping to form the .asia community. We should all carefully watch how the .asia community unfolds as we may find ourselves watching the creation of the mold for launching new communities in the future.

Add comment September 21st, 2007

Get Ready for the Vote!

As seen from an earlier post titled, “DotAsia Partners with ICANNWiki to Harness Online Community Participation for Pioneer Domains Program - Extends Program Deadline to 10 September“, the deadline for submitting a proposal for a .asia domain has ended. However, now the fun begins for others of the ICANN community! Soon you will be able to add your voice to the Pioneer Domains Program process, offered by DotAsia, by voting on what you feel is the best proposal. Check back soon to view the proposals and VOTE!

Add comment September 13th, 2007

Birthing a New TLD!

As we move forward with all of the stresses and commotion of our everyday lives, we need to be reminded that a new TLD will be available soon, that being “.asia”.

Change is always interesting and this will be no different. It will be interesting to see what impact .asia has not only within the domainers community, but within industry itself.

With respect to the process, I wanted to take a quick moment to look at the beginnings of .asia. While the official signing ceremony was held on 6 December, 2006 between ICANN and DotAsia a couple of events had to take place prior. Prior to the signing of the .asia Registry Agreement. DotAsia had to obtain support, file an application, that was reviewed by a non-ICANN review panel over a period of six sessions, a time for public comment and then the process where comments were addressed regarding the application for the .Asia gTLD. As you can see, “Compared to hundreds of emails articulating anxiety with regards to .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ registry agreements, there were only two emails expressing issues with the .asia contract from the public comments forum.”

When you think about the process, a lot of work goes into the “birthing” of a new TLD.

What are your thoughts on .asia?

Check back again when I post on how I see this community becoming a social networking goldmine!

Add comment August 27th, 2007

DotAsia Partners with ICANNWiki to Harness Online Community Participation for Pioneer Domains Program - Extends Program Deadline to 10 September

Great news!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Hong Kong, 24 August, 2007 — DotAsia, the registry operator of the “.Asia” Internet domain, today announced a landmark partnership with ICANNWiki, a grassroots domain collaborative website and industry resource for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) stakeholders, that will leverage the Web 2.0 web-based communities to expand online community participation for DotAsia’s .Asia Pioneer Domains Program.

This initiative marks the first time in the history of the Internet that the online public, including ICANN stakeholders from both inside and outside of ICANN, will play a major role in deciding who will be awarded the best cyber real estate in a domain, in this case, the new .Asia domain name. ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of Internet domain names and addresses, including the introduction of new generic top-level domains.

At the same time, DotAsia said it will extend the application period for the Pioneer Domains Program to September 10, 2007.

“The partnership between the team at ICANNWiki and DotAsia enables greater participation from the overall community in the launch of .Asia. With this, DotAsia is again setting a new benchmark for community participation by managing the entire process in a more Web 2.0 way then a typical new domain registry,” said Dan Mendell, the Executive Director of ICANNwiki and the CEO of Neutral Space, Inc., the organization that maintains the Wiki for the ICANN community.

“A great promise of the Internet is the enablement of mass participation.  The partnership with ICANNwiki enables us to engage the community to express their thoughts on voting for the best creative ideas for the best .Asia domains,” said Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia.

“This sort of democratization has never been done before when there has been so much still on the table.” said Dan Mendell CEO of Neutral Space, Inc. “Edmon and his team are true believers in the .Asia domains and this sort of balanced commitment to the process shows that they really mean it.”

The online polling will be global through the ICANNWiki website www.ICANNWiki.org. Results will be maintained online and will provide input to the Pioneers Commission — the evaluation committee — in the consideration of Pioneer applications.

The posting of the Pioneer applications on the ICANNWiki website will also assist in the challenge process, enhancing the procedures for the allocation of domain names. In an announcement earlier, DotAsia has partnered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Organisation a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to the maintenance of a balanced and effective international intellectual property system, to be the Challenge Resolution Provider for the Pioneer Domains Program.

The .Asia Pioneer Domains Program offers the ultimate first-mover advantage for brand development and e-commerce in Asia. Applicants are invited to submit a brief proposal for the domain of their choice and measures are in place to protect the rights of others and curb abusive registrations. This concept marks a departure from the conventional first-come-first-served allocation model to directly motivate the adoption and positive usage of the domain names. The best ideas win the right to operate the best .Asia domains. “This is the overall key to any rollout in business,” said Dan Mendell. “Anything you can do to kick off usage, verses encourage long term holding of the domain, is good for the registrar’s branding and good for it’s supporting community.”

After the deadline for the Pioneer Domains’ Program, the DotAsia organisation will launch the Sunrise (i.e. priority registration period for prior rights holders) registration of names for the .Asia domain on October 9, 2007.

To summarize some of the advantages of the Pioneer Domains Program over the Sunrise:

1. Before the Sunrise begins, Pioneer applicants may propose the best .Asia domain names
2. The Sunrise process requires evidential proof of rights in the form of Trademark registrations.  The Domain name applied for must match with the trademark. For the Pioneer Domains Program, applicants can apply for additional domain names such as common typos of a brand or variants that are commonly used but not trademarked. Brand owners can apply to use an abbreviation or variation of their brand as the chosen domain name, and the name thus applied for is not required to have a registered trademark.
3. The .Asia sunrise process requires for a trademark to be applied for before certain cut-off dates.  For the Pioneer Domains Program, there is no such requirement, especially for common words and phrases.
4. Applying for .Asia domains under the Pioneer Domains Program is free of charge. Trademark verification fees, which are required for Sunrise applications, will be waived by the DotAsia Organisation for the Pioneer Domains Program. Applicants under the Pioner Domains Program are however required to place a Marketing Commitment Deposit of US$10,000, and will be promptly refunded for marketing of the proposed businesses upon documented proof.
5. DotAsia will work with Pioneers on co-marketing and other joint promotional activities, highlighting the commitment to the Asia community.

About DotAsia
The DotAsia Organisation is a not-for-profit community-based organisation incorporated in Hong Kong with a focused mission to operate the .Asia Registry.  It is the sponsoring organization and registry operator for the .Asia sponsored generic top level domain. The DotAsia Organisation has a purposeful mandate to direct surplus proceeds to initiatives that benefit the community in the region, such as projects to bridge the digital divide and regional research development projects.
About ICANNwiki.org
This fabulous resource was put together by ICANNWIKI Volunteers suach as Ray King amd Dan Mendell, with the belief that a public facing wiki could be a real benefit to the ICANN community At Large.  A wiki is a medium for “peer production”, where the act of building and using the site as a community will create a valuable common asset.  This “lasting work” made up of our industry’s collective intelligence can then be used to further the common mission of making the Internet a better place to live and work.  This site and all proceeds collected by the site are used to further these important goals

All DotAsia media queries please contact:
Amanda de Silva or Cherry Velarde at Upstream Asia, Tel: (852) 2973 0222.
Email: amanda.desilva@upstreamasia.com / cherry.velarde@upstreamasia.com

All  ICANNwiki.org media queries please contact:
Chuck Kisselburg (ICANNwiki Director) Tel: (503) 869-9025
Email: Chuck@ICANNwiki.org

Add comment August 27th, 2007

Practical Implications Regarding ICANN’s IDN TLD Evaluation Deployment in the Root Zone

In my blog post, titled, “Evaluation Deployment in the Root Zone” I discussed ICANN’s program to enable routine introduction of TLDs (Top Level Domain) within IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) labels that utilize non-ASCII code sets. While some may be VERY familiar with the ASCII code set, others may not be aware that ASCII even exists. “Hey, a letter is a letter, right?” So, whether we know it or not we are used to using the ASCII character set. ICANN’s program, however, looks at utilizing non-ASCII code sets.

Since my last post on this topic I have had a chance to talk with a couple of people from non-English speaking countries to examine the practicality of the program’s end result.

In one instance I was told by one person how difficult it is for his wife, who is Chinese, to communicate current URLs to her friends in China when talking on the phone. For example, when talking about URLs, simple communication moves to translation, where possible, of each letter found in a URL. So in this example, utilizing non-ASCII sets within IDNs would be extremely helpful.

But as another person stated, “I thought the Internet was to be global!” In other words, if we start including non-ASCII character sets to allow for multiple languages, might we loose the global aspect the Internet represents today? Would people start thinking more regionally instead of globally? Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? I am interested in your thoughts.

However, let’s take this discussion out of the high level to a more practical view.

I had a detailed chat session over this topic with a friend of mine who lives in Sweden. Even if, or when IDNs are in place, will applications, other than browsers, be able to support non-ASCII character sets? For several years the “.SE” country code has been recognized. Great! You would then think that with an internationalized, or in this case the Swedish, version of Microsoft Office that all would be well and that Swedes could now begin using simple characters such as å ä ö. This may work well in Word, for creating documents, but when it came time to entering www.göteborg.se, the browser would not recognize the “ö”. It was only after IE 7.0 was introduced that “ö” was even recognized. But by this time, everyone was used to entering www.goteborg.se (with an “o”) instead of www.göteborg.se (with an “ö”). In other words, people are used to using the English-based character set instead of their native Swedish-based character set. Well, you say, “If now supported in IE 7.0, well all is good then, right?” Perhaps not. Let me answer a question with a question, “Do you suppose EVERYONE has upgraded to IE 7.0?” My take on this would be “no”.

To take this a step further, is it only the browser we need to be concerned with? No. Let me explain, as my Swedish friend and I were chatting over Yahoo! Instant Messenger, we were tossing URLs around. What he pointed out, which is common for his fellow Instant Messaging (IM) Swedes is when you enter a URL via your IM chat session, Yahoo! will underline the URL. You know, like what we are used to seeing, such as www.goteborg.se. However, when we used the letter “ö”, in the URL, such as www.göteborg.se, the underlining stops at the “ö”, thus displaying www.göteborg.se.

OK, so you say, “That’s Yahoo!’s problem!” Are you sure? Is this oddity limited to Yahoo! Instant Messenger? Test this out with other IM packages and let us know.

OK, so you now say, “Could this be a Microsoft issue?” Well not exactly as we tested Linux as well. To be specific we used a Linux-based system only to find that when sending an e-mail to someone whose e-mail address included a normal Swedish character, such as “ö” or “å”, the e-mail would result in an error message to the sender. For the purpose of example, I am changing my name from Chuck Kisselburg to Chuck Kåsselburg. My “NEW”, fictitional e-mail would now be chuck.kåsselburg@icannwiki.org. When sending an e-mail to myself the error message I would receive would be, Syntax error in mailbox address chuck.k?sselburg@icannwiki.org (non-printable character). So, this is another example where people will be forced to deviate from their native language, to continue using the English-based ASCII character set.

So, while my Swedish friend said, “While this may work well from the TLD perspective, everything needs to catch up.”

Someone also told me that when the Country Codes, managed by IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authroity) came out, some organizations moved to secure their “.com” equivalent with their respective country code, or country codes. Still, a couple of years after acquiring their respective URLs with their respective country code extensions, they were not really able to use them because, while defined, had not yet been fully implemented. Some felt this was a way for money to be made without providing the associated value. Also, what was discovered was as the country codes came out, many businesses did not realize this, so other people purchased an organization’s .com country code equivalent, placing that organization either at risk or facing a potentially expensive alternative to purchase back their country code specific URL. Some did not bother to acquire their .com equivalent.

True, some people would say talking with a couple of people does not represent a proper scientific, statistical sample. This by no means exhausts all of the issues surrounding ICANN’s IDN TLD program, but it does raise issues to think about.

What are your thoughts? Have you had similar experiences? Let us know!

1 comment August 16th, 2007

Thoughts on ICANN’s IDN TLD Evaluation Deployment in the Root Zone

I just wanted to take a moment to look at the effort underway by ICANN regarding the program that enables the routine introduction of TLDs (Top Level Domain) with IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) labels.

I find this effort to be both ground-breaking as well as monumental in its overall concept. What this means is this program will pave the way for domain names to be internationalized, containing non-ASCII character sets. To me this speaks of the fact that domain names will contain character sets that may not be recognizable to other users on the net. From a pure social networking perspective, this can yield to a much more localized experience for Internet users; an experience that can possibly help foster cultural heritage.

True, the effort underway today is to test how DNS (Domain Name System) will accommodate such a change. The test will be to use the TLD of “.test” and localize “.test” in eleven different languages to see what effects this may have on the whole DNS structure. Through the use of “scripts”, words will be translated to their respective languages. One of the purposes of this test is to develop the process for quickly removing such IDN-based TLDs should the DNS structure become unstable. The scope of the immediate task at hand is well defined, manageable and will utilize a non-production DNS structure.

However, when examining the overall goal, think how monumental this task can be! Think of languages in general. How many languages will this effort eventually be able to support? Doing a quick scan of languages, I found one page that lists the “official” languages of India. As you can see, the list is as follows:

Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kasmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Meitei, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

However, another page lists the languages in India that are spoken by more than 1 million people of India. Those languages include:

Assamese, Awadhi, Bagri, Bengali, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi, Deccan, Dogri-Kangri, Garhwali, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Hindi, Ho, Kanauji, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khandesi, Konkani, Konkani(Gaonese), Kumaoni, Kurux, Lamani, Magahi, Maithili, Malayalam, Malvi, Marathi, Marwari, Meithei, Mundari, Nepali, Nimadi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sadri, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Urdu

Hmmmmm…… So how many other languages of India are there that are spoken by less than 1 million people? Who will decide which language, or languages, to include for a specific country?

What about language nuances? While vacationing in Austria we ran across a German-Austrian dictionary. While to some that may appear perfectly fine, the astounding thing is both countries speak German! Although small it was amazing to see that there is enough of a difference between how either country uses German that there should be a German-Austrian dictionary.

Getting back to IDNs, it will be interesting to see what challenges arise when dealing with languages whose character sets contain non-ASCII characters.

One avenue to help maintain a stable DNS structure is to handle IDN-based TLDs through browsers utilizing scripts to translate the information into the structure we use today, instead of having DNS handle the translation. But getting back to the shear complexity of this simple statement, think of languages that are written from right to left. Think of languages that have difficulty with any character set translation. One item that came to mind were languages that use clicking sounds within their vocabularies, such as the ever popular . Imagine talking with someone over the phone and telling them to write down this URL! As stated in the draft proposal titled, IDN Application Evaluation Facilities, the “IDNA currently requires that a string of characters in a script written right-to-left neither begins nor ends with a combining mark. (A string of left-to-right characters may not begin with a combining mark either, but it may end with one.) The clearest example of resulting difficulty that has thus far been noted is with Dhivehi, the official language of Maldives. This is written in the Thaana script (in the Unicode range U+0780…U+07BF), which requires the addition of a combining mark to every base character. A vowel following a consonant is indicated with a combining mark, and special combinations are used to indicate consonants and double vowels in syllable final position.”

Also, what about the length of the word? Right now the longest TLD is six characters in length, that being .museum and .travel. While this has been extended to support larger words, we may find that language localization, especially if official country names are used, “… stored strings of up to the maximum of 63 characters require evaluation”. Can anyone recite the longest word in the English language? Does anyone KNOW the longest word in the English language? Well, here it is – all 1185 characters! Based on the context of this discussion I found it humorously ironic that the first message on that page is, “The correct title of this article is too long. Article title lengths must be less than 256 characters because of technical restrictions.” Hmmmmm… A shadow of things to come, perhaps?

The other monumental challenge I see is proper translation. First of all, type out a single paragraph, find a site that will do a free, on-the-spot translation for you. Next take the translated text and translate it back. Do you find the exact same paragraph/context that you originally typed? The other aspect is how organizations deliberately misspell words to appear “edgier”. Might this signal a move away from the deliberately misspelled words back to proper-spelled words? If so, imagine what impact this might have within the domainer’s world!

Yes, while this concept will start with the use of the mere word, “.test”, I feel the challenges and implications are nothing short of ground-breaking.

Check back as I will have another posting on the practical implications from the user’s perspective; a perspective from non-English speaking countries.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please chime in as this is an open community. Discussion is healthy and we want to hear your opinions.

Add comment August 9th, 2007

Greetings! I thought you all may find the below news from Sedo of interest.
Sedo Brokers Sale of Chinese.com for $1 Million

Cambridge, Mass., July 23, 2007 – Sedo, the leading online marketplace for the buying and selling of domain names, today announced that it recently brokered the sale of the domain Chinese.com for $1 million. The deal marks Sedo’s first seven figure sale in 2007.

“Domain name sale prices often follow trends in the marketplace, and Chinese.com certainly indicated the massive economic interest in China,” said Matt Bentley, chief strategy officer, Sedo. “Additionally, the transaction further demonstrates Sedo’s expertise in the premium domain name market.”

Sedo is currently auctioning several premium domains – including Chinese.net – through its GreatDomains.com brand as part of a seven day auction. Other names for sale during the auction, which ends on Thursday, July 26, include StockQuotes.com, Accessoires.com, Shrimp.com, Whisky.com, Debit.com, Markets.com, Sweatpants.com, Albinos.com, Cantonese.com, Dads.com, Yoyos.com, MedicalRecord.com and Subscription.com.
About Sedo Sedo, an acronym for “Search Engine for Domain Offers,” is the leading online marketplace for buying and selling domain names and websites. Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Sedo has assembled the world’s largest database of domain names for sale, with more than seven million listings. The success of Sedo’s model has attracted a global membership base of more than 350,000 domain professionals. Sedo is majority-owned by AdLINK Group (ISIN DE0005490155 / German WKN: 549015), which is part of the German United Internet AG (ISIN DE0005089031/ WKN 508903). Sedo offers regional versions of its site for the UK (Sedo.co.uk), France (Sedo.fr), Germany (Sedo.de), and Spain (Sedo.com). For additional information, please visit www.sedo.com.

Press Contact: Mike Kaplan fama PR 617-758-4156 sedo@famapr.com

Add comment July 26th, 2007

Call for Participation: New gTLDs Consensus

The volunteers at ICANNwiki would like to invite you to join us in a new grassroots effort. We’ve created a space and a process to help the community coalesce consensus around the New gTLDs policy issue. Our first target is modest: We are seeking 10 forward thinking ICANN people with a diversity of affiliations to help us frame a consensus statement of exactly what the “New gTLDs Policy Issue” is. You can  participate in this important process by visiting Consensus:New gTLDs and adding your name to the list.

The New gTLDs Consensus will be bootstrapped by succeeding at a series of three consensus polls. Each stage builds on the preceding stage, adding additional sections to the consensus document and increasing the breadth of participation.

Consensus Polling is about winning together or refusing to play the game. It is only really appropriate when a group of individuals desire to collectively solve a problem that affects them all. It seeks to avoid voting for candidate options when such a vote would generate winners and losers and thus divide the community that must support the result of the collective decision.

Rather than a menu of candidates to choose from, the entire process is controlled by an evolving YES/NOT YET barometer or acceptance meter. The acceptance meter reflects the suitability of a single community-owned community-developed collaborative solution. All participants are free to change their status at any time. A YES status says “I believe the current articulation of our solution is good enough.” A Not Yet status says “I have concerns that haven’t been adequately addressed by the current solution.” Only when the YES number passes some high, pre-specified threshold (e.g., 90%) can the solution proposed be considered to reflect the consensus of the community.

If you are interested in playing a role in this important process please visit Consensus:New gTLDs and participate.

For more information about what’s going on in the domain name and ICANN community, go to http://www.ICANNwiki.org and participate.

Add comment November 15th, 2006

Five Days in Domain Name Heaven – Tastes Good to Some Folks

What has been buzzing around the Internet lately is that the top-level domain name registrar agreements provide for a mandatory five-day grace period before the registrars have to pay the registries for the domain names. This policy was put in place by ICANN to protect clients who may have made a mistake in a registration (or a spelling error), allowing them to get a total refund for the domain name. However, domainers, those that wheel and deal in buying and selling domains (many of them multi-registrars) have taken advantage of this business opportunity by registering many thousands of the expiring domains that are released every day and using the grace period to see if a domain generates traffic and revenue over the base registration fee. If it appears that a domain doesn’t generate enough real traffic to warrant a monetization process, the domain is returned to the registries within the five-day grace period for the refund. If the domain does appear to attract traffic, it’s linked to pay-per-click advertising from one of the prominent providers typically seen at a conference like TRAFFIC.The operators of the registries are spending time and effort to process these temporary registrations, and they aren’t complaining as they benefit from access to the increased credit deposits they hold on behalf of their many registrar clients that are participating as domain tasters. If it weren’t for a high degree of automation, this business technique would not work.

As usual, the trademark owners are the primary critics of the current system, as they complain that it creates a unfair secondary market for marks that might otherwise be available and registered to them. They feel this propagates cyber and typo-squatting, an ongoing yet important issue to be resolved. It has been proposed that a restocking charge might curtail the behavior. I think there is a “neutral space” where a minor fee might slow the tasting down, and yet the domainers can still profit from what some people call a valid opportunity.

For more information about what’s going on in the domain name and ICANN community, go to http://www.ICANNwiki.org and participate.

2 comments November 7th, 2006