Blog: new TLDs

Some TLD applicants have been saying that they’re “community” applications, which means that would avoid an auction and prevail over even deep-pocketed competitors. But according to ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook, very few if any applications will qualify as a community. If you’re an applicant who’s been telling your supporters or investors that you’re going to win because you’re a community, you might want to take a step back.

This post will look at the reality of who will gain community status under ICANN rules. A few already-announced TLD applications that are commonly thought to be communities — but none of them are even close to qualifying.

One announced applicant for .ECO keeps putting out notices about the “.ECO community.” A .GAY applicant makes lots of references to the gay community. And a well known .MUSIC applicant wrote a blog post just a few months ago that he would file a community application. (Note: Minds + Machines has announced support for bids for .ECO and .GAY — so we’ve looked at this question closely.)

Most people would say there is such a thing as the gay community, maybe music and eco communities not so much. But it doesn’t matter: from the ICANN point of view none of them will qualify for “community status” in their gTLD application. Under ICANN rules, even the “ICANN community” wouldn’t qualify as a community.

Scoring the Apps

Let’s score .ECO, .GAY, and .MUSIC. Turn to section 4.2.3 of the Guidebook, called “Community Priority Evaluation Criteria” and read through how they will score each criterion. Remember, you have to get 14 out of 16 points to beat out your non-community competitor. If you don’t get 14 points, you can still proceed to an auction, but you’re stuck with all the rules you put in place to try to qualify as a community.

Here is a table showing how I would score each of these TLDs would score in a “community priority evaluation.” If you go through the guidebook and score them yourself, you might disagree by a point or maybe two, but if you did, they would get a lower score. The scoring I used is very generous. Explanations follow the table:

Let’s go through it. There are four criteria groupings, and subparts below each one.

Criterion 1: Community Establishment

Part A is “delineation,” which means a “clear and straightforward membership definition.” Members of .ECO are…? People who believe in ecological causes? Not terribly clear. Score of 1. .MUSIC? People who like music? Even worse but there is some connection, a charitable score of 1. .GAY? People who say they are gay? Leaving aside how they’re going to check (that comes later), it’s not super clear, especially as the gay community itself typically embraces bisexual and transgendered people. Generously, we will give .ECO 1, .GAY 1, .MUSIC 0.

Part B is “extension,” which means a community of “considerable size and longevity.” If you accept that these are communities, everyone here scores 2 out of 2.

Criterion 2: Nexus of the Proposed String and Community

Part A is “Nexus,” which looks at how closely the TLD name describes the supposed community. ECO doesn’t really match the name of the movement (it is also called the green movement, or the conservation movement), MUSIC isn’t really about people, but OK, and GAY pretty much means gay people. Out of a possible 3, I score .ECO 1, .GAY 3, .MUSIC 2.

Part B is “Uniqueness,” which asks if there is any other meaning of the word. ECO could easily mean “economics,” GAY doesn’t really mean anything else these days, and MUSIC means lots of things, as big generic words do. Out of 1, .ECO gets 0, .GAY 1, and .MUSIC 0.

Criterion 3: Registration Policies.

The stricter you are, the higher you score. Because you can set your own registration policies, everyone gets the maximum score on this one, though on an application they might not, since super-tight registration rules are suicidal for most TLDs. Also, if you don’t pass the community test, you still have to enforce your registration policies (more on that below). So, as a very generous “gimme”: out of 4 possible points: .ECO 4, .GAY 4, .MUSIC 4.

Criterion 4: Community Endorsement

This is where community applications go to die. If there is any significant objection to your application carrying the banner for the community, you will lose two points, which means that you have to be perfect on every other point — highly unlikely.

Part A is “Support.” If everyone supports you, 2 pts; if you have some support, 1 pt.; no support, a zero. Out of 2 pts., .ECO gets 1, .GAY gets 1, .MUSIC gets 1

Part B is “Opposition,” which can easily come from your competitors. The standard is “relevant opposition from one [or more] group of non-negligible size.” They don’t have to prevail in their opposition for you to lose points — they just have to file. I think all of these applications will have some opposition from more than one quarter. Out of a possible 2 pts., I have .ECO with 0, .GAY 0, .MUSIC 0.

.GAY is clearly the strongest case for community of these three applications, but still falls far short at 12 pts out of 16. .ECO and .MUSIC don’t even come close.

So Who Is a Community?

The only way to make sure you qualify as a community is to *be* the community. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) could get .AARP as a community TLD, because they own the entire name: there is no-one who could object. In this sense a community in the ICANN sense is just like a brand, complete with intellectual property rights, except that it may not have a corporate structure or a profit motive. Otherwise I can see very little difference.

The key factor in the way ICANN has set this up is that although it’s very hard to qualify as a community, it’s very easy to object to one, and that’s where community applications will falter even if they are strong in other areas. Any institution of “non-negligible size” that claims to represent a community (loosely defined) can object to a community (very tightly defined) application. If one such institution objects, you lose a point. If two or more do, you lose two points. (They can object even if you’re not a community, but in that case they have to prevail — a community application loses points even if the objection is not upheld.)

Bottom Line: Think Very Hard Before Applying As a Community

If you have a competitor with some support, or if you haven’t made sure that every organization in your community is on board, you are highly unlikely to pass the community priority evaluation. And since that evaluation only happens if you do have a competitor or a community objection, in most cases it makes no sense to apply as a community. If you have credible competition, you almost certainly will not pass the community priority evaluation, and you will be stuck with restrictive policies that will be very hard to change later.

On Wednesday, May 4, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing called ICANN Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) Oversight Hearing.

Kurt Pritz from ICANN has been invited to testify. Arrayed against him are a parade of intellectual property interests, some reasonable, some pur et dur lobbyists for complete corporate hegemony over all aspects of the Internet. Not invited are any existing registries, any potential candidates, anyone representing free-speech concerns or civil society. Except for Kurt, it’s all intellectual property interests, all the time.

In short, the meeting will resemble an intervention, except without the love.

Here are the other witnesses:

• Steve Del Bianco, Net Choice. As a Washington insider, Steve Del Bianco is not a surprise choice. Last time he testified, he brandished a label-making machine, saying that new gTLDs were just labels. Expect a new prop or other easy-to-grasp soundbite prepared for the benefit of our elected representatives.
• Mei-lan Stark, Fox Legal. I’m not familiar with this person, but I wouldn’t be going out on a limb to suppose that Fox Legal hates new gTLDs, especially given that “fox” is a common English word, which makes it hard to reserve entirely to themselves.
• Steve Metalitz, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP. Steve Metalitz sticks to his guns but he is someone looking for a solution, not a disruption.
• Mike Palage, Pharos Global. Mike seems to love the exercise of government power, but sings to his own tune, preferably with a puzzling metaphor as lyrics.
• Joshua Bourne, CADNA. CADNA never met a restriction on domain names or free speech that it didn’t celebrate with a press release. A reliable source of the most extreme and outrageous positions.

Most of those testifying have been targeting Kurt Pritz for years now at ICANN meetings, and Kurt has always responded with civility. That’s why he’s a great choice on ICANN’s part. He knows the issues backwards and front; he’s polite; he doesn’t avoid questions; answers with candor; and he doesn’t get rattled.

It should be clear to everyone that there will be no new information coming out of this hearing. If previous meetings in front of this committee are any indication, the congresspeople have little insight into the issues. They will be reading the polemics handed to them by their lobbyists and staff, and will not be asking follow-up questions unless those too have been prepared. The domain press headlines will read “ICANN Spanked by Congress,” and CADNA will be issuing its usual “CADNA Congratulates House Judiciary Committee” press release.

But will it derail the new gTLD process? I think not. Happily, ICANN is a global organization. While the House of Representatives can do what it wants, the “approved” channel for governments to beat up on ICANN is the GAC, which is finally getting well integrated into the ICANN process and has become part of the ICANN community, whether you like its positions or not. Just another reason I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the GAC.

Mathieu Weill, CEO of AFNIC, which runs the French ccTLD .FR, said in an interview with David Goldstein that a new law will allow — perhaps compel — AFNIC to offer registrations for at least the following ccTLDs:

• .GF (French Guyana)
• .MQ (Martinique)
• .GP (Guadaloupe)
• .RE (Reunion) was also mentioned, but it is already registering names.

These TLDs have been silent for years, after a brief floresence in the late 1990s was extinguished when the French (I’m still unclear whether it was AFNIC or the French government) repossessed them and shut them down. I have been critical of AFNIC in the past, so it’s very encouraging to see these TLDs activated.

The French control several other inactive ccTLDs:

• .PF (French Polynesia, has a tiny amount of registrations, not open to the public)
• .PM (St. Pierre and Miquelon, used to accept registrations, was taken over by AFNIC under still-unexplained circumstances, closed to registrations)
• .TF (French Southern Territories, used to accept registrations, redelegated by ICANN, now held directly by AFNIC, closed to registrations)
• .WF (Wallis and Futuna, never activated, held directly by AFNIC)
• .YT (Mayotte, never activated, held directly by AFNIC)

M. Weill hinted that these too would be open for registration soon (emphasis is mine):

David Goldstein: Recently AFNIC announced there will be a new legal framework for all French ccTLDs, not just .FR but also .RE, .GP, .MQ, and .GF. What impact will this have and why did it come about?

Mathieu Weill: The new legal framework will be in force on July 1st. The main consequences will be that AFNIC has to review all its current disputes resolution policies. The new law also impacts the other ccTLDs for French territories. We are pleased that this law finally grants us authorisation to launch registrations under these ccTLDs before the end of 2011. We are looking forward to it.

He also said that .FR and other ccTLDs will benefit from the introduction of new gTLDs:

David Goldstein: The new gTLDs, whenever they come about, threaten to change the domain name landscape significantly – how do you think this will affect .FR?

Mathieu Weill: Well, there are three ways to consider this evolution. First, all the domain name market could benefit from it. For instance, we saw .FR registration increase significantly thanks to .EU opening. That’s because people are getting more and more aware of the importance of domain names.

Secondly, there is a risk that hundreds of new TLDs could also create some confusion in users minds and incite them to rally to the TLDs they know best: the main gTLDs and their national ccTLDs. .FR would also benefit from such a phenomenon.

Thirdly, we do not buy the argument telling that new TLDs will replace the current ones. They are new communication channels or opportunities, but users would better think about naming strategies combining several TLDs than relying on just one TLD.

Overall, we hope that new TLD applicants will bring innovative ideas to our field, and that the outcome of the process will be additional added value services to the end user.

Congratulations to AFNIC for this step forward, and thanks to David Goldstein for a good interview. I welcome any corrections or clarifications.

In his eloquent dissent against approving .XXX, ICANN Board member George Sadowsky talked about blocking and filtering top-level domains. It’s a concise statement of a concern that has been identified by various people, including members of the GAC, as an impediment to the new gTLD program. It’s a thorough defense of a common point of view about blocking TLDs, but while no-one can disagree about the fact of blocking, what is the actual effect?

George Sadowsky’s comment is worth quoting at some length:

Fourth, and extremely important, I believe that the future of the unified DNS could be at stake [if .xxx were approved].

I submit that the approval of the application for dot xxx could encourage moves to break the cohesiveness and uniqueness of the DNS.

In my judgment, it would undoubtedly lead to filtering the domain, and quite possibly instigate the erosion, degradation, and eventual fragmentation of the unique DNS root.

Now, while we know that filtering already exists, I believe that the creation of dot xxx would mark the first instance of an action by this board that may directly encourage such filtering, posing a risk to the security and stability of the DNS.

In my judgment, the board should not be taking actions that encourage filtering or blocking of a domain at the top level.

Further, I believe that the filtering of so-called offensive material can provide a convenient excuse for political regimes interested in an intent on limiting civic rights and freedom of speech.

Further, I believe that such moves provide an incitement to fracture the root, a concern that we’ve recognized in preparation for
the new gTLD program as a distinct threat to the security and stability of the DNS.

There can be no doubt that .xxx will be blocked by some countries: the government of India has already announced its intention to do so. The .xxx domain exists in order to be filtered — that’s almost the entire point of it. It is premised on segregating content into adult and non-adult categories, so that people can find it easily — or avoid it. So no-one could disagree with George’s assessment of the likelihood of .xxx leading to filtering.

Widespread Blocking of the Internet Exists Today

As George Sadowsky points out, filtering and blocking already exist. Not just at the second level (individual web sites) or the top level (TLDs), but also of the entire Internet. Consider this graphic from a recent presentation by Packet Clearing House showing Internet traffic in Egypt:

This is filtering on a massive scale, done by a regime that didn’t want its citizenry to have any information that conflicted with its message.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton presented the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights, running to 7,000 pages. The Associated Press writes:

More than 40 governments are now blocking their citizens’ access to the Internet, and the firewalls, regulatory restrictions and technologies are all “designed to repress speech and infringe on the personal privacy of those who use these rapidly evolving technologies.”

Second-level domain names are blocked almost as a matter of course in large parts of the world. The most-blocked site is Facebook, followed by YouTube, Twitter, and a host of other sites that are hugely popular — some of them porn, but many of them not.

Basically, the governments of the world engage in blocking and filtering on a massive scale. They are blocking second-level as well as top-level names, and sometimes they just block the entire Internet. They block based on content: porn, political statements across the ideological spectrum, religious speech of all kinds, and they also block just on the basis that they don’t want people sharing information. This kind of governmental action is not new. Monopoly of information has long been a goal of many governments: until recently, one of the major goals of a coup or a revolution was to capture the TV and radio stations.

Will TLD Blocking Fracture the Internet?

Blocking of Internet content is pervasive, and the creation of new TLDs which are offensive to someone, somewhere, will probably increase it. But will it fracture the Internet? That’s where I think George’s fears may be out of place. The current blocking is so widespread, so thorough, and so invisible to those who don’t have to deal with it that it’s just part of life in much of the world. Why hasn’t blocking already encouraged a fracture?

For one thing, an alternate root by itself is not a fracture. There are already many TLDs on alternate roots out there, from Karl Auerbach’s .ewe to the semi-autonomous Chinese-language TLDs. The threat to the single root doesn’t come from just the fact of setting it up, it comes in the form of a viable alternative that threatens the current Internet by gaining users and adoption at the expense of the current favorite (think MySpace and Facebook). Karl’s .ewe is not getting a lot of takers, and in China you don’t really have a lot of choice — no-one is “choosing” any of the alternatives. (The only alternative use, in this sense, has come from new TLDs/roots in non-Latin scripts, and ICANN’s push to delegate new IDN ccTLDs has done a lot to alleviate that pressure.) So blocking .XXX (or any other new TLD), as long as it doesn’t threaten to create a competing root, is just more of the same old blinkering of its citizens that governments are addicted to and will never stop unless their people insist on it.

Let’s suppose, however, that it was possible for a mandatory alternate root to be set up, enforced by governmental authority. In a state with just a few major ISPs, the government might compel them to point to the new, alternative, government-mandated root. Isn’t that a problem? (Note that this is not currently the case in China, which allows access to the Internet, just not to many of its sites.)

To examine that possibility, let’s turn to television, where this situation is common. In Iran, for instance, there is a limited roster of TV stations and they are all closely censored. What happens there?

One of the biggest hits on Iranian TV is not on Iranian TV. A kind of Persian “Daily Show” called Parazit is broadcast by the Voice of America. Parazit is watched by millions of Iranians through their illegal satellite dishes, which are extremely common in Iran, despite periodic attempts by the morals police to get rid of them (satellite dishes can also be used to access the Internet). Parazit is a hit — it gets 45,000 You Tube visits a week, and 17 million Facebook visits per month.

The net effect of Iran’s censorship is to make its leaders laughable and hated, but it has not threatened the Iranian TV “root,” which goes on broadcasting propaganda. It has not led to a call for an alternate state television either — people simply bypass the restrictions and access the rest of the world.

In the world today, Internet blocking and filtering of all kinds is widespread and deep, and it has not threatened the single root. Censorship is a favorite habit of some governments, and they are not weaned from it easily. Limiting “controversial” TLDs in order to appease that impulse, in the name of preserving a single root, is illusory (alternate roots already exist), not likely to matter (people will get out to the “real” Internet somehow), and it doesn’t really make sense.

As Milton Mueller put it: “The idea that it is somehow better for the Internet to use centralized, global administrative mechanisms to block domains from existing in order to prevent a few individual countries from using technical means to block them locally is absurd and dangerous.” Or, to quote another ICANN Board member, Suzanne Woolf: “The issue of governments or any other entity blocking or filtering access to a specific TLD is not unique to the issue of the dot xxx sTLD. What we agree is blocking of TLDs is generally undesirable. If some blocking of the XXX sTLD does occur, there is no evidence the result will be different than the blocking that already occurs.”

George Sadowsky is a principled person who clearly loves the Internet and wants to preserve it. He gives a clear voice to a fear that many have. But when we look at what blocking actually is, and what it does, I think the fears are unfounded. People will find a way to see what they want to see, and ignore stuff that they don’t like. Blocking of a TLD by a local government is not going to lead to the fracturing of the Internet. If the case of Egypt is any guide, it’s more likely to lead to the fracturing of the local government.

A personal source close to Bill Clinton has confirmed to us that the former president will give the keynote speech ICANN meeting in San Francisco March 14-18. The meeting promises to produce far more electricity than sleepy NGO-lawyer-techie-academic-lobbyist ICANN attendees are used to.

Getting Bill Clinton is a bona-fide PR coup for ICANN. The man can conjure loopy star-struck grins from even the most heavily-lobbied government functionaries, and his cameo will focus the Silicon Valley spotlight on the meeting where — we hope and expect — new gTLDs will get their final approval. For a brief moment the tech blogs might even take a break from their relentless, lifeless posts about iPhones and mobile check-ins and $500K funding rounds and spend a second or two considering the coming sea-change in Internet addressing and navigation.

The inevitable tech press that Clinton’s presence will generate will be good for ICANN and for Silicon Valley too. ICANN acts as if it floats in a static, timeless bubble, protected from the rest of the Internet, and doesn’t understand or acknowledge that gargantuan phenomena like Facebook might completely change how we navigate and message on the Web, or how the ascendancy of apps might make the whole idea of navigating on the web obsolete. Oblivious, it has no strategy to deal with such challenges. ICANN’s impending encounter with the ferocious energy and money of Silicon Valley will be bracing and salutary for the ICANN Board and staff and community and they might (maybe) begin to see the bigger picture.

The tech world, for its part, doesn’t know much about ICANN apart from a foreboding sense that getting anything done there is harder than selling Robert Mapplethorpe photos to the Taliban, and that bizarre Internet policy wonks will yell at you if you try. The tech press has ignored the huge branding and community-formation potential of new gTLDs, and hasn’t woken up to the danger of letting the public policy and legal protections that are built into DNS policy (thanks to ICANN) get replaced by the logic-immune legal departments of Facebook and Twitter, who conduct all business with the public by autoresponder. Because although TechCrunch honcho Michael Arrington might get his name back more easily by calling Twitter than by filing a UDRP, the rest of us wouldn’t. It’s important that these two worlds engage with one another. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom deserves credit for starting up an office in Palo Alto, and whoever snagged Clinton deserves a free gTLD.

Even governments are getting in on the act. The former president’s star turn at ICANN, coupled with the sudden resurgence of the North Korean TLD, shows that regardless of your position on absolute government control over the Internet, just about everyone loves top-level domains.

Here’s a quick update from the ICANN meeting in Cartagena. I will publish a fuller analysis later.

The quick take-away is that the new gTLD process is now nearly inevitable, and that the GAC and the ICANN Board will meet in February 2011 to resolve the remaining issues. This will push the timeline out, but not by much, perhaps a month or two.

In brief, the Board passed a resolution (link not yet available) that they consider several matters in the Guidebook closed, but that several other remain and that they will have a summit with the GAC in February 2011 to resolve remaining issues.

Of huge import is that among the issues considered closed are the trademark issues. Since this has always been the issue holding up the new gTLD process, we can now say that we are definitely moving forward.

The other big issue now considered closed is the economic analysis, which has been the big issue from the Department of Commerce. Other issues deemed closed are root scaling and malicious conduct.

As Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said on stage, “We have reached a turning point.”

We now therefore have a clear path forward. Finally.

At its Board of Directors meeting on October 28, 2010, ICANN let slip this little gem, hidden among its other resolutions:

RESOLVED (2010.10.28.17), the Board directs staff to adopt as a working plan the Launch Scenario with launch date of Q2 2011, as contained in the graphic attached here [PDF, 112 KB].

Here’s the timeline in graphical form, from ICANN (click for larger version):

Highlights:

• November 9, 2010 – Final Guidebook out for public comment
• December 10, 2010 (end of Cartagena meeting) – Board approves Final Guidebook
• January 10, 2011 – Final Guidebook published (after any changes directed by Board
• January 10, 2011 – Four-month ICANN publicity effort (“communications period”) begins
• May 30, 2011 – Opening of the application window for new gTLDs

It’s been a long, long road, but it looks as if we’re finally in sight of the finishing line. Let the policy work finish. Let the applications begin. Gentlemen, start your engines.

ICANN’s 38th get-together, in Brussels, may become known as the meeting where the dust finally began to settle. Long-standing issues were settled, compromises were reached, no-one complained too much about the latest version of the Applicant Guidebook, and the Board stood by its project plan dates, even scheduling a Board retreat to solve remaining issues. Finally, there were no surprise “gotcha!” delays that gTLD applicants have been used to seeing at ICANN meeting. With one possible exception…

September Board Retreat – Good News

ICANN’s Board of Directors is going to take a special retreat, tentatively scheduled for September 2010, to try to sort out the remaining gTLD issues. This was publicly announced by Chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush and much discussed during the Brussels meeting. It is likely that the Board will hammer out some solutions on issues where opposing camps are insisting on their advantages and refusing to compromise.

The Board seems to be taking their task seriously, putting enormous pressure on various working groups (see my notes on the vertical integration working group, below) to produce proposals prior to their retreat. Applicants should be pleased with the vigor with which the Board has decided to address the remaining logjams.

.XXX Decision – Good News

The Board’s decision to green-light .XXX means new gTLD applicants can breathe a sigh of relief. The approval means that the new gTLDs program will not be threatened by .XXX-inspired court interference in the gTLD process. ICM Registry, .XXX’s sponsor, would almost certainly have sued ICANN if the decision had gone differently, and very likely they would have asked for an injunction to stop the introduction of new gTLDs — and they might have been successful. The ICANN Board decision to go ahead with .XXX, however heavily hedged with caveats, removes this threat. That’s good news for gTLD applicants.

Most of the press I’ve seen makes it seem as if .XXX is a done deal, and will be inserted into the root in short order. Unfortunately for the 162,000 reported pre-registration applications for .XXX, we are very far from that. One of the more intelligent analyses of the Board’s resolution is theTom Hymes story at AVN. To their credit, ICM’s blog has a thorough and fact-filled rundown of the remaining obstacles. My own assessment of .XXX isn’t very positive, but it is a good sign that ICANN is letting itself be compelled to following its own rules.

Intellectual Property Issues – Good News

Trademark advocates at ICANN will tell you that they are the reasonable ones, that the people who are unalterably opposed to new gTLDs don’t even show up at ICANN meetings. That may be, but members of ICANN’s intellectual property constituency have hardly been pushovers. Therefore it was a pleasure to witness hardline opponents to new gTLDs, including sharp critics from the BBC, Nestle, and the American Red Cross talk constructively about how they could benefit from them at a panel called “Brand Management in the Age of New gTLDs.”

For instance, Charlotte Walters of Orange (the phone company) had this to say:

I think we’re all about building and driving brand value, in which case if you have an asset that could become a mark of value and a mark of quality so that consumers would come to recognize that something that is dot Orange is genuine and that there is no risk of phishing or any other malicious acts underneath it, then that would be the ideal position that we are all aiming to get to. The question is, how long does it take you to get there.

In the meantime, I think that defensive registrations, which we’re all used to doing, is going to be an ongoing factor….

So on a longer-term view, yes, it — there is a lot of potential value. And from a marketing perspective, there’s a lot of potential value. But it will take a long time, I think, to educate internally and externally as to how to get there.

The intellectual property people fought hard for their position and achieved enormous gains, and now there is a sense that they should take their winnings quietly, which they seem to be doing. There are now several RPMs (rights protection mechanisms) in the Applicant Guidebook, including measures to shut down entire registries if they were found to be knowingly and systematically violating IP rights. The GAC (Government Advisory Committee) is no longer worrying that the sky will fall without more IP protections, and the Board opines quite openly that they see consensus in this area. Strident denunciations will continue, but at the meeting there was overwhelming agreement that we are finally past this hurdle.

Vertical Integration – Good News

The good news — and it is good news — is that the Vertical Integration Policy Development Process (VI PDP) is not going to delay new gTLDs. That doesn’t mean the results won’t affect new gTLDs, but it’s not going to slow things down.

Vertical Integration is another way of saying cross-ownership or control, and in this case the question is whether (and to what extent) a registry can own or control a registrar, or vice-versa. The Working Group (which I participate in) has a wide variety of entrenched positions, ranging from protectionist limitations on cross-ownership to a registrar-pleasing complete lack of barriers. The arguments are arcane, and because the limitations concern a future marketplace that no-one can really grasp, the proceedings are an anxious pandemonium of fears and doubts. But the Board has insisted on getting some kind of report in time for its retreat, and so the Working Group is likely to produce a very thin document that representing whatever consensus the group can achieve. The Board doesn’t want to decide this question on its own, but if it must, it will.

You can access the Working Group’s online resource page, or for a long slog you can read the Working Group’s email archives. A few weeks ago, I took the trouble to articulate the Minds + Machines position, which remains the same.

MOPO – Theoretical Knot with a Real-World Solution

MOPO, also called MAPO, stands for “Morality and Public Order,” which is the last big sticking point. Most did not consider it that big of an issue until this Brussels meeting, when the GAC first declared that ICANN’s whole approach to ferreting out immorality (having jurists decide if a TLD is immoral) was not acceptable and must be changed. They subsequently declared it was not their job to suggest anything in its place. Predictably, ICANN board members and staffers were annoyed, but must realize that ultimately they have to produce something that the GAC can live with. Watching the meetings, I didn’t sense that the GAC was using this as an issue to slow down new gTLDs; on the contrary, they seemed not to want to be seen as the reason for delay.

On the one hand, the GAC is right: the morality and public order module is a mess, bulked up with portentous phrases but basically passing the buck to some highly paid lawyers. On the other hand, the module fails precisely because it’s impossible to determine what’s immoral or not on a global basis — this is a circle that will not be squared. The debate is reminiscent of the struggles of the U.S. courts to define pornography, and the solution that was reached — local community standards — will serve here too.

A practical fix is needed, even if it doesn’t address the underlying (insoluble) problem. My guess is that, despite its overtones of censorship, ICANN will have to set up some kind of morality panel in judgment of names, and people it with diverse enough stakeholders to deflect claims of conspiracy. And the vast majority of TLDs will pass without a whisper of dissent. This panel will be just another objection chokepoint, joining the Independent Objector, the Geographic Names Panel, Community Objection and other procedures as a gateway that gTLD applications will have to pass through. Meanwhile, out in the real world, local jurisdictions may block some gTLDs locally if they find them offensive — just as they now block certain second-level domain names in .com.

Although MOPO is the most concerning of the remaining obstacles to opening the new gTLD process, and does have a chance of slowing down the process, there are a lot of committed people working on a solution. The real difficulty will be to shoehorn the practical solution into a theoretical framework that’s consistent with the principles everyone is keen to display.

The Bottom Line

The final shape of the applicant guidebook is becoming clear. With the possible exception of the MOPO issue, solutions to the remaining problems are visible in outline and in many cases in great detail. There are several efforts underway, including the Board retreat and various hurry-up working groups, to get the new gTLD program to the finish line. There’s always a chance that the timing will slip, but I would say not by much — we’re sticking to our timeline: most indications are that ICANN’s next meeting, in early December 2010 in Cartagena, Colombia, will finally produce a starting date for new gTLDs.