Blog: ICANN Sydney

Minds + Machines client Dot Eco LLC released a short film today at the ICANN meeting in Sydney, featuring well-known environmental advocates who support the new .ECO top-level domain.

Included are cameos from former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore; Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club; Jim Moriarty, CEO of Surfrider; Jim Dufour of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography; Davis Guggenheim, director of the film An Inconvenient Truth; Richard Muller, popular author and Professor of Physics at University of California Berkeley; Roz Savage, the British transocean rower; and Sir Roger Moore, actor and Unicef Goodwill Ambassador.

The film comes in a short and a long version, available in high quality from Vimeo.

Here’s the press release from Dot Eco:

Dot Eco LLC Debuts Short Film In Support of .eco Web Address Featuring: Former Former Vice President Al Gore, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, & Other Leaders in the Environmental Community

Sydney, Australia, June 20 – On the opening day of the ICANN Conference, Dot Eco LLC –- the organization dedicated to promoting the acceptance and implementation of the .eco top-level domain -– debuted a short film that features environmental leaders endorsing Dot Eco’s application to operate the .eco web address. Examples of other top-level domains include .com, .biz, .org and .edu.

The Dot Eco LLC film features former U.S. Vice President Al Gore stating: “For more than three decades I have been trying to raise awareness about the very real and growing threat of the climate crisis. Today, as part of this effort, I am here to propose a new top-level domain called “dot eco” for corporate, non-governmental, and individual environmental websites.”

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope states: “We’re delighted to put our support and endorsement behind Dot Eco… Your customers, your friends, and your colleagues will know that you’re putting your address where your values are – at Dot Eco.”

The film also features avid endorsements from Jim Moriarty, CEO of Surfrider Foundation; Davis Guggenheim, Director of “An Inconvenient Truth”; Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at UC Berkeley and contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and Roger Moore, actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador; as well as others.

To view the film, please click here: http://www.supportdoteco.com/video

A .eco web address will allow individuals to express their support for environmental causes, companies to promote their own environmental initiatives, and environmental organizations to maintain their websites in a namespace relevant to their core mission. By charter and mission, a majority of Dot Eco profits will be distributed to support environmental causes.

“The Dot Eco initiative has earned the official support of leading scientists, ecological and philanthropic groups, as well as high-profile environmentally conscious individuals,” says Fred Krueger, founder of Dot Eco. “This film highlights their passion for this important effort.”

About Dot Eco LLC

Dot Eco LLC was founded by Fred Krueger, Clark Landry and Minor Childers to secure, operate and promote the .eco top-level domain in order to advance environmental initiatives and awareness. Dot Eco LLC will be applying for the .eco top level domain through the ICANN gTLD application process.

ICANN has just posted an update on their website that applications for new TLDs will start being accepted in the First Quarter of 2010, with June’s meeting in Sydney being used to discuss and collect final issues for the third version of the Draft Application Guidebook.

The Sydney meeting should be quite interesting and lively as a result.

From the ICANN announcement:

ICANN continues to move forward in the implementation of the new gTLD Program while balancing and addressing community concerns on specific aspects of the program. The public comment period on the second version of the applicant guidebook recently closed and work continues to proceed regarding the discussion of overarching issues.

In order to continue progress and the community discussion, ICANN will:

• Publish an analysis of comments similar to that published after the fist version of the Guidebook
• Conduct consultations and fora at the Sydney meeting and afterward to develop solutions to the overarching issues
• Publish the third version of the Guidebook after the Sydney meeting when solutions to the overarching issues can be included

With that in mind, it is anticipated that applications for new top-level domains will be accepted starting in the first quarter of 2010.

Guidebook Analysis

As with the first version of the Guidebook, ICANN will organize and report a synopsis of all the comment made in the ICANN comment forum as well as at the ICANN meeting in Mexico City. The report will analyse comment by category and balance different proposals made. The goals of the report are to:

• analyse the comment in order to develop amendments to the Guidebook that are consonant with the meaningful input of the community, and
• demonstrate that the comment is taken seriously and carefully considered.

ICANN will not be producing a third version of the Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains before its upcoming June meeting in Sydney, Australia. This is because the discussion of overarching issues will continue through the meeting and beyond (as was expected). Publication of a new Guidebook version without addressing these issues might signal that they are not considered important.

In order to provide specifics and point up discussion, the Comment Analysis will be accompanied by several excerpted redlined sections of the Guidebook so that potential changes can be discussed. These excerpted sections are being developed in response to the recently closed public comment forum and will be published in time for discussion in the Sydney meeting.

After over a decade of effort, we’re pleased to see that momentum is not lost for this very important process.

-Jothan

What’s ICANN without acronyms? Here’s a new one: IRT. That’s not Interborough Rapid Transit, the subway on the west side of Manhattan, it’s the Implementation Recommendation Team. Their job is to come up with a plan to address the concerns of trademark holders in connection with the introduction of new TLDs.

What’s brilliant about this move is that the team is comprised of people who suggested solutions to the trademark quandary during the public comments to the last version of the guidebook. Those who simply said “hurrah” or “harumph” will not be asked for any more of their opinions.

Nicely played, ICANN.

Mexico City, Mexico… March 7, 2009: ICANN’s 34th International public meeting in Mexico City has drawn to a close after the organization’s Board of Directors approved the establishment by staff of an Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) comprised of an internationally diverse group of people to develop and propose solutions to the over-arching issue of trademark protection in connection with the introduction of new generic top level domain names (gTLDs).

“The Board has clearly heard and believes strongly that the concerns of trademark holders must be addressed before this process is opened for applications,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN. “The establishment of this team, is an attempt to get proposed solutions from the people with skill in trademark protection and other issues.”

The IRT will be comprised of people who put forward solutions in the first public comment period on the new GTLD Applicant Guidebook. The IRT has been asked to draft a report by 24 April for comment and to produce a final report no later than 24 May so it can be considered at ICANN’s Sydney meeting in June.