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As announced yesterday Peter Dengate Thrush, former Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN has been appointed Executive Chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings, the parent company of Minds+Machines. Thrush lead the ICANN board when it approved the new gTLD program during its board meeting in June 2011. His term ended in June 2011.

Antony Van Couvering, CEO of TLDH, said:

“Peter will be an outstanding asset to TLDH. Peter and I have worked together as ICANN participants since its inception, and I am very pleased to welcome him as our Executive Chairman. Peter championed successfully the approval of the new gTLD programme at the highest levels and with Peter on board I have every confidence we will achieve the same success at TLDH. I can’t think of a better addition to our team – Peter is a superstar in our field, and we are delighted to have him at the helm.”

Mr Dengate Thrush has been actively involved in international policy development and governance of the Internet since 1995 and is a regular media commentator on Internet issues. Peter is a past Chairman of InternetNZ and past Chairman of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association. A barrister and registered patent attorney specialising in intellectual property matters, Peter is Vice Chairman of the New Zealand Electricity Rulings Panel and a member of the New Zealand Copyright Tribunal.

Following these Board changes the composition of the Board of the Company is as follows:

• Peter Dengate Thrush, Executive Chairman
• Antony Van Couvering, Chief Executive Officer
• Fred Krueger, Chief Strategy Officer and Deputy Chairman
• Guy Elliott, Chief Investment Officer
• David de Jongh Weill, Chief Financial Officer
• Clark Landry, Non-executive Director
• Michael Mendelson, Non-executive Director

 

 

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (5)

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ICANN has posted the new April 2011 Discussion Draft for the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook for a public comment period lasting until May 15th. ICANN plans post a final version of the guidebook by 30 May 2011, in time for consideration of the New gTLD implementation program at an extraordinary meeting of the ICANN Board to be held on Monday, 20 June 2011, at the ICANN meetings in Singapore.

See the full announcement email after the jump.

Guidebook and Public Comment Forum

ICANN has posted for public comment today the April 2011 Discussion Draft of the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook.

In keeping with the draft timeline [PDF, 117 KB] approved by the ICANN Board at its meeting in San Francisco, this draft of the Applicant Guidebook will be open for comment for 30 days, through 15 May 2011.

This posting includes a “track changes” version of the six modules of the Applicant Guidebook, along with a series of new Explanatory Memos related to changes made as a result of the recent consultations between ICANN’s Board and Governmental Advisory Committee:

1. Trademark Protections (Trademark Claims & Sunrise Services; and The Requirement for Demonstrating Use) [PDF, 284 KB]
2. GAC and Government Objections; Handling of Sensitive Strings; Early Warning [PDF, 91 KB]
3. Exemptions to Objection Fees for Governments [PDF, 331 KB]
4. Root Zone Scaling [PDF, 286 KB]
5. Market and Economic Impacts [PDF, 480 KB]
6. Registry-Registrar Separation [PDF, 400 KB]

These memos were developed to document the latest position on these topics by taking into account the current thinking, discussions and public comments received. Each memo not only reflects GAC advice but also contains the reasoning and rationale on each of the relevant issues regarding the launch of the New gTLD Program and Applicant Guidebook.

Also being posted today is the ICANN Reply [PDF, 275 KB] to the GAC Comments (on the ICANN Board’s Notes on the GAC Scorecard).

Keeping with the draft timeline, ICANN plans post a final version of the guidebook by 30 May 2011, in time for consideration of the New gTLD implementation program at an extraordinary meeting of the ICANN Board to be held on Monday, 20 June 2011, at the ICANN meetings in Singapore.

In 2008 Jothan Frakes held an impromptu survey for registry service providers for new gTLDs at the ICANN meeting in Paris. The results were then consolidated into a matrix and published on the Names At Work blog by his friend Antony van Couvering – unfortunately DNN could not locate the information on the site today. Now, two years later and a bit further into the introduction process for new gTLDs- ICANN has published the 4th revision of the Applicant Guidebook for New gTLDs – Jothan Frakes has started a follow-up survey.

The first survey also seems to have had a big part in funding of the new gTLD service & consulting company Minds + Machines, which Frakes was part of. Now that he is not with the company any more, he can once again collect data in an independent survey of the registry services industry.

The survey will run until August 4th, 2010 and service providers (for ccTLDs & gTLDs) interested in having their information included can participate here: Registry Service Provider Survey

[Via Jothan Frakes' Blog]

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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The parent company of Minds + Machines, Top Level Domain Holdings [AIM: TLDH] reported their revenue for the period to the end of April with £32,000 ($49,000), with a loss of £462,000 ($708,000). The company is pretty much in a holding pattern until the release of the new gTLDs by ICANN and is expecting finalization of ICANN’s new gTLD Applicant Guidebook by November and is hoping for the opening of the first round at the ICANN Meeting in December. The company still has almost £4m in cash and equivalents and appears to have been bootstrapping operations. One of the former key-employees, Jothan Frakes, is not with the company any more. Potential threats to the company could be further delays of the release of new gTLDs through litigation.

[via DomainIncite]

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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As already rumored by Stephane von Gelder yesterday, ICANN has just published the fourth version of the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook amongst a number of other documents released over the weekend.

The release is supposed to give potential applicants and other stakeholders time to review the guidebook before the 38th ICANN meeting to be held in Brussels from June 20-25th. The new version of the guidelines includes changes to the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) process, the trademark clearing house and post-delegation dispute resolution, centralized zone file access (ZFA) amongst many other items. Another topic added is the Registry/Registrar separation issue which results in severe restrictions as to who may apply for a new TLD, especially affecting existing industry players. Other modifications seem to make country and continent TLDs close to impossible.

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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Sex seems to be a hot topic in domain land. DNN was tipped about an Ebay auction in which a trademark for sex.sex is for sale.

The owner of the trademark believes that his mark for sex.sex , filed in July 2008 with a claimed first use in commerce of March 2009, will provide a leg up in the inevitable quest to capture the new TLD .sex

The owner states in the Ebay auction description :

The sex.sex trademark is valuable because:

* The bidding for the TLD .SEX won’t just be about the highest price – it must also reflect existing trademarks and business names. We believe that owning the sex.sex trademark will provide an advantage when ICANN make their decision.
* If a bidder is successful in obtaining the TLD .SEX without ownership of sex.sex, they should be obliged to allow the sex.sex trademark holder to register www.sex.sex on their system.
* Registering a trademark is complicated, there are lenghty approval process and proof of usage issues.

Is sex.sex the best word combination if there were a .sex gTLD ?  We can think of quite a few words that go before the .sex that would make more sense and seem to be much more targeted than this.

Trademarking of popular phrases occurred with the release of .EU and other extensions, and we suspect there will be more filings of trademarks and claims like this when other new gTLDs actually go live.  There was also a great deal of trouble getting .xxx approved, so why would a .sex TLD be any easier to get approved.

The ICANN board has voted down the community proposal for Expressions of Interest for new gTLD applicants, requiring a $55,000 application fee. The proposal was mainly driven by proponents and applicants for new gTLDs with the hopes of speeding up the process.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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Google has just launched a Public DNS service according to a post on the Official Google Blog. The goal of the service is “to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone“. On their product page they promise that the service is more secure as well as faster than many traditional domain name service resolved provided by the ISPs.

The OpenDNS like service will as a side benefit Google would also be able to see and track DNS queries of the users on the service and potentially redirect unresolved searches into Google Searches, similar to what many ISPs already do today. The company does promised not to use the data for anything else, but does state that non personal data will be stored for an indefinite period.

Google would also be able to block sites through the service that are for example suspected phishing sites. Depending on adaption the service could even introduce alternative TLDs, comparable to alternative root systems like new.net. For now their policy states that their service “never blocks, filters, or redirects users“. ICANN has recently issued an memorandum speaking out against NXdomain resolution for new gTLDs.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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According to our contacts at the current ICANN meeting in South Korea ICANN staff has announced that the schedule for new gTLDs will be pushed out even beyond Q2/2010 due to the controversy and amount of different opinions and comments from the community.

In the meantime other working groups are pushing ahead to introduce IDN ccTLDs. When the the expansion of the root zones came up, there were no concerns to add as many as 100 zones in a short period of time.

Another topic of discussion is DNSSEC, the signing of the root zones published by the registry as a protection against DNS poisoning attacks.

We also expect the registrar/registry separation to be another big topic at the event. Interestingly enough Afilias seems to be one of the registries pushing to see this issue addressed – the registry operating company running .INFO and .ORG, which is owned by several registrars.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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According to the New York Times, The Dot Gay Alliance (dotgay.org) of New York City and dotGay (dotgay.com) of San Francisco are both planning to apply to ICANN for the .GAY TLD. And while they haven’t closed the door to joining forces, they aren’t exactly planning to work together as of yet.

The Dot Gay Alliance application is spearheaded by Joe Dolce, a longtime gay activist who got the idea for a .GAY domain when he was working with Minds + Machines. The .ECO project caught his attention when Al Gore said he would only support the TLD if half the proceeds from the registration would go towards environmental groups. Because of this, Dolce is planning to use 51% of the proceeds from the extension to fund gay causes.

“This could be a significant source of funding for organizations fighting, doing very good, important work,” said Dolce. “It’s a very novel way that doesn’t involve putting your hand out, doesn’t involve another benefit or charity function. This is a community that has to sustain itself.”

A number of gay activists from the local New York community — including City Council speaker Christine C. Quinn and State Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell — have written letters of support for the Dot Gay Alliance.

On the other hand, the dotGay application is lead by Alexander Schubert, a heterosexual who hasn’t yet rounded up any formal support from the local Bay Area community. He does, however, have experience in applying for new TLDs as he was the co-founder of a group which pushed for .BERLIN.

“All these years, I thought about the perfect top-level domain,” said Schubert, who was born and raised in Berlin, the gay capital of Europe. “I came to the conclusion that it should be a community like the gay community.”

And although Schubert plans to give more than half of the proceeds to gay causes,  Dolce doesn’t think he should be applying.

“If you’re launching a purely for-profit venture called dotGay and you are heterosexual, then you are in a way continuing a legacy of straight people earning a lot of money off of gay people that has gone on,” said Dolce. “I want to create a community which is run by the community and gives money back to the community.”

Both groups will attend the ICANN meeting in Seoul, South Korea, that starts on today.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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