In a few minutes, at 9AM local time the ICANN Board is going to hold is introductory remarks and its welcoming ceremony
The Board isn’t scheduled to vote on the new gTLD plan until 2 hours later at 11AM all local time.
After yesterday’s long and contentious meeting with the Board and the GAC, it appears to me that ICANN is ready to pass the program over the objection of the GAC with the looming threat of the renewal of the IANA contract with ICANN later this year.
I’m going to be live blogging on the opening ceremony so keep checking back as I will be adding thoughts along the way.
You can also follow me on Twitter.com/berkens.
Ceremony is now underway started off with a good old fashion dragon and music show, I thought that was a Chinese thing, obviously I have a lot to learn.
Interesting fact in Singapore 81% of the population has High Speed connection only 16% do not have Internet access at home. At the Colombia ICANN meeting I think the numbers were pretty much reversed.
ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom is now speaking.
BeckStrom citing study by Mckinsey Global Institute, says “the Internet contributed about $1.7 trillion to global gross domestic product and the Internet contributes about 3.4% of global GDP and in more mature economies 21% of all economic growth over the last five years can be attributed to the Internet.”
Beckstrom chatting like passage of the new gTLD vote is a foregone conclusion:
“and now for today’s big news. every ICANN public meeting is important. but this meeting is particularly important for an obvious reason. this morning, the board of directors will consider whether to approve a program to insure the new generic top-level domains into the DNS.
“It has been a long, long long, hard road, but we are here. ”
“Almost six years after the formal policy development process began, we’re facing a decision today on whether to move ahead with one of the most significant changes in the history of the Internet.
A lot of people thought we would never get here.
“If the board votes to approve the new gTLD program, the name space of the Internet could expand dramatically with the promise of significant economic impact. ”
“Many organizations with an online presence will be affected in some way.”
“This represents great opportunity as well as some risk that we must and will manage. new businesses are already poised to move forward. ”
Consulting businesses to advise applicants have sprung up.”
Over 120 organizations have publicly said they intend to apply and declared applications and more than 90 have active sites marketing their proposed new concepts and ideas.”
“This is innovation at its best. ”
“They are proposing all types of new gTLD’s, city names, community ideas, branding opportunities for companies and products,and others.
“This demonstrates the rich platform for innovation that new gTLD’s represent.
“Others are preparing to take advantage of the up coming change even if they do not intend to apply for TLD’s themselves. development of the new gTLD program continues to be conducted in a highly transparent, inclusive and comprehensive fashion and this has continued here over the last several days. ”
“The community has contributed to tremendous lengths to address the concerns of all interested parties and to seek balance among them.”
“Some claim that icann stands to profit from this new program. this is not true. the program will be run on a cost recovery basis as designed by you, the community, and as approved by the icann board. if approved by the icann board.
As CEO, I have neither advocated nor opposed this program. now that this phase has been completed, i will be raising my hand to vote”
“We have reached the end of the policy and implementation planning phases of new gTLD’s. ”
“Now the real hard work begins: program launch and execution.”
“Application processing will proceed according to our policies, the applicant guidebook and ICANN’s bylaws.”
“The ultimate decision, following staff processes and independent panel findings comes when the board chooses whether or not to delegate a string into the root.
“We have an obligation to represent the global public interest in every aspect of this policy development, implementation, and execution. but each of these phases is distinctly different. and icann and this community must acknowledge that once the decision is made to move forward with this implementation, if it occurs toward, one chapter has closed and another begins.
“Well the 1st news of the day is that Beckstrom is actually going to put up his hand and actually vote.”
At the time of the Board vote on .XXX, we called out Beckstrom for not voting on .XXX application.
Beckstrom closed out this session saying:
“Today we can and will make history”
With that it seems pretty certain that the Board will vote as we predicted to pass the new gTLD program.
There is now a 50 minute break and we will be back when the Board reconvenes
The opening session just ended.
Hip Hip Hurray!
They haven’t voted yet
Of course then will pass it. At the end of the day it all about ICANN’s interests, not the public interest.
Brad
@Brad
Because it would be very difficult for companies, no matter how successful they are, to compete in every ethnically, geographically, linguistically or business-category descriptive domain extensions, they would be discouraged to go after all new domain extensions, and this would allow many many new people launching businesses using these new extensions. The whole idea is about giving so many people the chance/opportunity to launch online business using good/generic domain names. Today the world is about fairness.
“Beckstrom chatting like passage of the new gTLD vote is a foregone conclusion:”
It is a foregone conclusion…in his head, he does’nt care a monkeys what everyone else thinks
Chocolate Starfish Rules
Just because it passes doesn’t mean it will ultimately be successful. The expansion idea is conceptually flawed and is destined to go nowhere — just like .COOP, .AERO, .MUSEUM, .JOBS, .MOBI and .TRAVEL.
Jon Postel will be laughing at these suckers from his grave.
.BrooklynBridge anyone?
How about .FloridaSwampland ?
Stick with your .COM boys and girls. Dot anything else will clearly be a huge waste of time, money and effort.
The gTLD program is a positive concept that will create a lot of new opportunities for people around the World provided that all aspects of this program are managed properly and that these new TLDs are not given out to benefit only a few people in the way of creating more monopolies. If history is being made today we have to make sure that it is the right kind of history and not the kind that is going to replace the long lasting .com monopoly with a bunch of other monopolies. No one entity should be given a monopoly in the way of handing them over a TLD that is based on a top generic keyword that defines a whole Industry.
–
Even if the vote passes, I think there are A LOT of legal hurdles and challenges to still be cleared.
If multiple parties want the same extension, what happens?
What about confusingly similar extensions, typo extensions, etc.
MANY, MANY potential TM issues. Brand owners being forced to register their TM in virtually every extension. Following what .XXX has done, it is almost legal extortion.
Brad
@ ojohn
“No one entity should be given a monopoly in the way of handing them over a TLD that is based on a top generic keyword that defines a whole Industry.”
Let’s take an extension like .Music for example. There is already a fight for that one, and many big parties have not even got involved yet. People creating BS TMs for something that doesn’t even exist.
There are so many legal issues. It is really opening up Pandora’s Box.
If people think this is a “fresh start” they are dreaming.
You really think the people putting out millions to obtain and promote a registry are just going to hand out the best keywords for free or cheap? Yeah right.
Brad
Brad
“”If multiple parties want the same extension, what happens?””
Auction
“What about confusingly similar extensions, typo extensions, etc.”
Parties have right to object and such extensions may not get added
“Brand owners being forced to register their TM in virtually every extension””
.XXX is a special case as companies don’t want to be associated with porn.
There are a ton of trademarked domains available in existing extensions, they aren’t registered or squatted because it is not economically viable, the registration fees on these generally are going to be much higher than .com and won’t have the traffic that .com’s do.
“Some claim that icann stands to profit from this new program. this is not true. the program will be run on a cost recovery basis as designed by you, the community, and as approved by the icann board. if approved by the icann board.
As CEO, I have neither advocated nor opposed this program. now that this phase has been completed, i will be raising my hand to vote”
A bunch of BS there. If ICANN did not stand to profit, they would not be interested.
So Beckstrom will be voting on this, but didn’t have the balls to place any vote on the .XXX extension…
Brad
@ MHB
As far as I was aware, one of the foundations of this program was to not introduce any extensions that are confusingly similar to current extensions.
What happens if someone wants .CON, a great .COM typo extension?
What if someone wants an extension that is confusingly similar to a current ccTLD?
Should the high bidder for a generic extension, be able to block any competitors from owning a domain. For instance Sony is the high bidder for .MUSIC, should they be able to block any competitor from using it?
What about BS TMs already for new extensions that don’t exist.
Should potentially offensive extensions like .porn, .sex, .gay, etc be able to legally extort brand owners for payment?
I know you have some interest in the new gTLDs, but these issues are not as smooth sailing as you seem to think they are.
Brad
“What happens if someone wants .CON, a great .COM typo extension?”
In my opinion it won’t be approved.
If someone wants to gamble $185K on it then go ahead but I think its lost money
“What if someone wants an extension that is confusingly similar to a current ccTLD?”
All strings have to have a minimum of 3 characters
@ MHB
$185K for .CON would be bargain. The amount of typo traffic would be massive, especially if the registry set up some type of wildcard forward to capture traffic.
If Sony acquired .MUSIC should they be able to block any competitors names, so they are unable to use them?
Should .USA be allowed to exist when .US already exists and is the ccTLD of the United States? I think that whole extension would be “confusingly similar”
There are several potential examples like that. If that type of stuff is allowed to go on it will be ridiculous.
You basically have a tiny group of people deciding the future of the internet.
Many of whom were too chicken to even cast a vote on the .XXX extension.
Brad
” but these issues are not as smooth sailing as you seem to think they are. ”
There might be a lot of issues with the new gTLD program, but most of those can be addressed and fixed along the way, it is the steps that cannot be undone later on that we need to pay more attention to. Once monopolies are created it will be very hard to undo them, and that’s exactly what some companies and their insider friends at ICANN are banking on. Before you know it those generic keyword TLDs that represent a whole Industry are handed over to just a few people and if anyone objects ICANN is going to say that its too late to do anything about it now.
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We are now love blogging from the ICANN Board vote on the new gTLD’s
Please move the discussion over there:
http://www.thedomains.com/2011/06/19/live-blogging-from-the-icann-board-meeting-on-the-new-gtld-vote/
Brad
Only 1 member didn’t vote all other voted for the proposal except for Bruce which voted against it.
In all overwhelming approval
if icann is not in this for the money then this can all be done by lottery. there’s no justification for the high application fees.