ICANN Board Member Bruce Tonkin gave a good post-Nairobi webinar (signup required) last week. Among other things, he gave his sense of the timeline going forward, which accords with our own estimate, which we publish below.
This is ICANN, so further delays are always possible. If ICANN is able to make the progress it thinks it can on the remaining open issues, however, the timeline below looks reasonable. Also available for download as a PDF.
Until today’s announcement by Canon, no large brand had broken the “thin brand line” by revealing their plan to apply for their own new top-level domain. Now with Canon’s announcement, other major companies have been challenged to either announce their TLD plans or else state that they plan to forgo the chance to brand themselves at the top level of the domain name space.
Until now, in public, large brands have marched in lock step in opposition to new top-level domains, ostensibly because of the high cost of defending and enforcing their marks in multiple new namespaces. The worst-kept secret in the industry, however, is that brands have been making private plans, and brand-service registrars have been prepping their clients for new gTLDs in anticipation of healthy fees for application submission services.
Canon, at least, has decided that the marketing benefits of their own top-level domain outweigh the costs. In the U.S., legal departments, which are good at identifying risk — though not necessarily expert at quantifying it –, exercise a much stronger presence in the corporate boardroom than they do in European and Asian companies.
Could it be that the highly defensive stance of U.S. intellectual property interests, hardened by the file-sharing wars, is not shared by the rest of the world’s brands?
In Japan, Canon has decided to cast its lot with the money-makers instead of the money-hoarders. I predict we will see more brands opt for engagement with the Internet by visibly branding themselves with their own new gTLD, but that the the last ones to do so will come from the United States.
Minds + Machines’ parent company, Top Level Domain Holdings (AIM: TLDH), today sent out a press release summarizing our take on the recent ICANN Nairobi meeting from the TLDH perspective. The full text follows:
On Friday, 12 March 2010, at a meeting in Nairobi of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”), ICANN’s Board of Directors clarified and progressed further the framework for the introduction of generic top level domains (“gTLDs”).
The ICANN Board resolved that there should be no cross-ownership between domain name registries and registrars. This prohibition will prevent existing ICANN-accredited registrars from owning or operating new gTLDs, thus limiting the number of prospective applicants. This continues a trend of increasing the barriers to application for non-experts as ICANN adds additional requirements and restrictions to the framework for the introduction of gTLDs. TLDH is unaffected by this policy and the Board of TLDH therefore expects that TLDH will benefit from this continuing separation between registrars and registries.
The ICANN Board also resolved that ICANN should focus on the full introduction of gTLDs later this year rather than implement an intermediate step by adoption of the Expressions of Interest/Pre-Registrations Proposal. The ground rules for application for new gTLDs are expected to be published by early summer 2010. Accordingly, as ICANN approaches the point where it will be able to proceed with full applications, the Expressions of Interest (“EoI”) program becomes unnecessary. ICANN staff reported during the Nairobi meeting that the next draft of the Draft Applicant Guidebook, expected to be issued in June, will be near final, and subject only to a final comment period.
While we were supportive of the EoI proposal, we welcome ICANN’s focus that the main objective should be to speed up the gTLD process, and the intermediate step of EoIs is unnecessary if ICANN is close to resolving the final details prior to the launch of new gTLDs.
With our substantial cash resources, low operating costs and our significant interests in prospective applicants for .eco, .nyc, .berlin, .bayern and .gay amongst others, and also with the restriction on competition that has been placed on existing registrars, we believe that TLDH is well positioned ahead of the start of the gTLDs application and award process.
Following the ICANN Board meeting, Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s chief executive, provided further details on the gTLD process, which is available on-line at http://bit.ly/buru8z.
I regret that the posts on our blog are getting more and more specialist, but I don’t apologize. As things come to a head for new gTLDs, we are getting through the final details, which have become proxies for the larger battle. So it is with Expressions of Interest.
Here at the ICANN Nairobi meeting, I’ve heard some talk from people in the non-commercial constituency — usually an ally in getting new gTLDs approved — about how Expressions of Interest (EOIs) may be harmful to small registries. To be honest, I have a hard time fathoming the objections, because it seems to me that EOIs are extremely helpful to small registries. In fact, EOIs may be the only way they can survive the ICANN process.
(Expressions of Interest is the process where companies who want to apply for new gTLDs will have to submit their new TLD name, their contact details, and a check for $55,000, which will be counted toward the final $185,000 application fee. The process is mandatory, and the purpose is gather information on the applicant pool so that ICANN (and the technical operators of the Internet) can gather the data they need to take applications and prepare to delegate the new gTLDs. At the end of the process, all the information will be published, and only those who put in an EOI submission will be allowed to apply.)
“Small registries” mean primarily cultural-linguistic communities, for instance the already-announced .BZH (Brittany), .GAL (Galicia), and .EUS (Basque community). (It does not include city TLDs, which are “geographical TLDs” with special rules.) Each of these small registries has a community of several million, which during the first few years of operations will translate into a registry that contains less than 100,000 names. This is based on .CAT (Catalonia), which started several years ago and at present has about 40,000 names in their zone. There is an assumption, which may or may not be warranted but which we can all accept, that there may be others of a similar type. There is also general agreement that these sorts of registries are valuable to the DNS and should be helped wherever possible. Therefore the argument that EOIs would hurt these registries is of special concern.
So what are the arguments being advanced on behalf of these registries against EOIs?
Of these, only the last one has any merit, but even if it’s true (which I don’t believe), it still helps small registries. Let me address the objections and show why they don’t make sense.
1. $55,000 is expensive, to be sure, but that’s a “feature” of the new gTLD program as a whole, not the EOIs. Overall, the $185,000 filing fee has not changed, it’s just that some of it is due earlier. Considering that ICANN had originally contemplated introducing new gTLDs in early 2009, it cannot be considered “early” at all. Furthermore, the real cost to small registries is keeping their operations going while they wait for the seemingly endless ICANN process to finish, not to mention the extremely demoralizing uncertainty about whether it will happen at all. When the EOI process finishes, and small registries know that they have a guaranteed and protected application “slot,” they will be much better off, because they will know that the process is happening and they will have some clarity around milestones and (hopefully) the re-establishment of a timeline.
2. Perhaps we can chalk it up the fact that non-commercial interests almost by definition aren’t experienced in raising money for commercial ventures, but almost any business person will tell you that the less risk you have, the easier it is to raise money. EOIs remove a very significant element of risk. When the EOI results are announced, most of the small registries will be guaranteed that they are the only applicant for their string (it is unlikely that there will be two applications for .GAL, for instance). That makes it *much* easier to raise money. The EOI submission date will also be a deadline – another very helpful element in raising money. Finally, because the entire $185,000 fee is known in advance, they will not need to go back to their funding source with a “surprise” second round, it will be plain to see from the outset.
3. Suppose that the Tamil people wanted to do .TAMIL, and faced the objection of the Sri Lankan government, who have just concluded a terrible and bloody war against Tamil separatists. Because EOIs occur earlier (the argument goes), it would give the objectors more time to prepare their case. This argument flies in the face of reality — and the ICANN process. The objection process (which will occur after the TLD application is submitted) will already take many many months, plenty of time for objectors to marshall their arguments. Whatever additional time is given to objectors, is also given to applicants — to either counter the objection, or to work out an arrangement. Finally, the ICANN process is not set up to put in “hidden” applications: for an application to succeed, it will have to overcome objections, it can’t try to sneak past them.
(I should note that brands who oppose new gTLDs have seized on this last argument and are evincing a a new and touching solicitude for the fate of politically sensitive small registries. Would that have anything to do with the fact that brands themselves don’t want to be forced to show to the world that they are busy planning their new gTLD applications even as they try to wreck the process?)
4. EOIs do add a step in the process, but it shouldn’t take more time, since things are all proceeding concurrently. Even if it does add months to the process, which I doubt, that is more than compensated for by the fact that EOIs add clarity, certainty, and something concrete that applicants can show their investors, their community, and their shareholders.
The proof of the pudding? In the ICANN EOI comment period, small registries supported EOIs. And all applicants, large or small, rich or poor, community-based or entrepreneurial, want this process to be predictable, orderly, and certain. For some small registries, their survival depends on it. EOIs provide all of that and more.
