As most of you know by now, New York has become the newest state to legalize gay marriage.
As the owner of GayMarriage.com we have been following the story closely and now all eyes in the domain world will turn towards the new gTLD .Gay.
Its no secret that a group lead by domainer Alexander Schubert is going to apply to operate the .Gay registry based off a community application.
Why try to get the extension as a community?
Because if you can do that, you avoid a possible auction where the high bidder wins.
A community is entitled to its extension, but can something other than a non-geographic region be a community?
To give you a feel for how complicated an issue this is here is a transcript from an ICANN session on the new gTLD’s and a discussion on the topic: especially those remarks of Mike Rodenbaugh who is an attorney and has served on ICANN committee which were part of creating the Applicant Guidebook:
“”Just to cap it, any of these objections is going to take you out of the normal flow. and, you know, assuming that there is hundreds of applications i think is an extremely conservative estimate. there is really time-to-market issues that you have to consider. any objection is going to take you out for a good six, eight months minimum.
“Clearly, there are some strings that are going to be more popular and have multiple applicants, and if they’re both simply generic, they’ll go to auction, but icann has also identified this community preference to — as a way of you demonstrating you have support from your special-interest group for that very popular string.”
it’s not something to — it’s not a step to take lightly.
It’s something that if you’re planning to apply in January as a community, you should be , you should have lined up support by now from members of that community, and the applicant guidebook is very detailed in terms of how you can demonstrate that level of commitment.”
so that’s will likely be one of the biggest areas of disputes.
“we’ve seen disputes just recently with dot xxx and dot jobs, which are really community-based disputes, so i think you’ll see a lot of community-based disputes based on — and it’s — it will happen — it could happen to any application, but the likelihood is raised if you’re claiming a community preference.
Mike Rodenbaugh:
“It’s very — going to be very difficult, i think, very difficult, to — suffice to say, to prove that you’re a community-based application particularly if you’re going for a more generic word. in fact, the guidebook specifically cautions against it.
The Guidebook says community-based applications are intended to be a narrow category.
It says, you know, that the whole guidelines — and there’s 10 pages of scoring guidelines as to whether or not you’re a community, and you have to get 14 of 16 points.
They’re designed to eliminate false positives, meaning referring to a community construed merely to get a sought-after generic word as a TLD string. ”
“I mean, ICANN is specifically cautioning against this and if you really get into the weeds with the evaluation criteria, it’s going to be very difficult to show.”
“Bottom line, if — you will lose two points — meaning you have to have an absolutely perfect — all the remaining 14 points if two or more non-negligible groups oppose your application you will also lose one point — and so therefore your application is now dead — if two non-negligible groups oppose you and your string has some sort of alternate meaning.
“In other words, as a generic word, so it seems to me that generic vertical words are simply not likely to qualify under almost any circumstances.”
“The only other thing that i would add about it is you also have to show your dedicated use policies, your security verification policies. it’s very — intended to try to limit your audience, rather than allow you to have an extremely large audience, and you have to live with these rules, again, for the life of the term. it’s going to be very, very difficult for a community-based applicant to change those rules later.”
Sara Langstone (of Verisign) :
“I just wanted to make sure that everybody that was aware who are thinking of applying as a community, sometimes i hear people get confused and they think that if they opt for a community priority evaluation, that it means they’re not going to have to go to auction. and they don’t realize, sometimes, that more than one party can receive more than 14 of the 16 points, and that you could still end up in an auction situation and have the costs of, you know, managing the more narrow registrant base and the more extensive eligibility policies.”
Frederick Felman: “I guess there also are fees associated with the community priority evaluation as well which you must pay, so there’s also a cost consideration, so you should be certain of it before you actually incur those fees.”
So that should give you just a little feel about how complicated the new gTLD process will be.
Of course there are many gay and lesbian organizations around the world and many are in favor and are vocally supporting a .Gay extension.
Here is some information on that from the .Gay Alliance Facebook page:
“””””
The successful addition of a “.gay” domain will likely influence how marketers target the LGBT community online, especially if LGBT users begin to widely adopt its use as a means of raising funds for various gay causes, or expect that it will be used to specifically target GLBT users, who have proven to be loyal to products, organizations and causes that support gay issues.
According to one Harris Interactive poll, nearly one in four (24%) LGBT adults said they had switched products or service providers in the previous 12 months because they found a competing company that supported causes that benefited the LGBT community.
The “.gay” movement also may be a natural fit for the online-friendly LGBT users, who are much more engaged online, and with social media in particular, than their heterosexual peers, a recent survey found.
Approximately 55% of gays and lesbians report reading some type of blog, compared with just 38% of heterosexuals, according to a separate Harris Interactive survey.
Other statistics about the online GLBT population:
* 34% of online gay and lesbian adults say they read news and current-issue blogs, compared with 22% of heterosexuals.
* 25% of gay and lesbian adults read entertainment and pop culture blogs, compared with 15% of heterosexuals.
* 28% of gay and lesbian adults read political blogs, compared with 14% of heterosexual adults. This represents an increase over March 2008, when 23% of GLBT read political blogs.
* 14% of gay and lesbian respondents say they read travel blogs, compared with 8% of heterosexuals.
So this will be one of the more interesting applications to watch.
There is no doubt in my mind that there will be more than one applicant for the extension and certain members of the Government Advisory Council (GAC) may also object to the string.
Will it be awarded on a community basis?
If you follow Mr. Rodenbaugh logic there is little chance as long as there are mulitple applicants.
Guess we will find out but its certain shaping up to be a long and expensive fight.
Good post, Mike.
There are likely to be folks who come in with the notion that avoiding auctions by seeking “community” status is preferable, and who are likely to be disappointed.
The intent is more along the lines of someone like the Boy Scouts of America going for .bsa or the Roman Catholic Church going for .rcc (although they already have .va). Membership organizations, in particular, strike me as good candidates for a community.
But, sure enough, someone with the backing of, say, the Humane Society will go for .animals, and then the gTLD applicant will be motivated to find folks at, say, the SPCA to claim it is not supported by a substantial part of the community. This is relatively easy to do in the case of “communities” who are served by multiple organizations with an eye on who is getting a finger in which pie.
.Gay is an interesting case. I could swing both ways on the question of whether that will succeed as a community application.
“Guess we will find out but its certain shaping up to be a long and expensive fight.”
Many of these new TLD’s will be so controversial they will cause a shitstorm of epic proportions around the world.
The ICANN of worms has been opened and the implications of that are likely to be long lasting, expensive and a very messy affair.
(That’s if nobody jumps in to shut it down)
Thats what happens when you put $’s before common sense.
When Gay Marriage legalised recently,
I hand reg GayRegistries.com to avoid expensive and possibly confusing .gay extensions.
Having gone through this process under the 2004 rules and reading in details the new, much more stringent qualifications needed, together with the numerous challenge methods, i had advised, FWIW, this applicant to think very carefully about going in as a “community” applicant and I think Mike Rodenbaughs analysis is probably not very far off.
On the other hand , it does appear that they have some impressive support.
Legalize gay, online gambling and marijuana— big boom to the economy and more $$$$ for all of us.
Plain and simple!!!
The natural registrar for .gay is Fabulous.
@ John Berryhill
quote: ” .Gay is an interesting case. I could swing both ways …….”
LOL, you said it…..
My prediction is their application will be challenged by .happy
How come no one is blogging about how easy it’s going to be for governments to censor the new gTLD’s ?
.gay – good luck getting that to show in conservative countries. Same for anything gambling or porn related.
What about boycotting companies … if one country doesn’t like a particular country, or a company based in said company (i.e. don’t like america, block .FORD), then .BRAND’s can easily be blocked too.
Think a company is unethical, BLOCK
It’s going to be too easy. gTLD’s just helped further internet censorship, whether you see it now or not. Hence, .COM/.NET/.ORG’s, which are already used everywhere, will be the only way around it. They can’t block .COM/.NET/.ORG- half the people in their country already use it and have companies/sites on them !
@pt
Blocking websites by TLD is like blocking phone numbers by their vanity name.
Eventually people are going to realise the letter combinations are just a convenience, and that dialling by number works just as well.
Blocking 1-800-Buy-Ford is useless when someone can just look up Ford’s phone number.
Moreover there are easy ways to use domain names on the computer without using ICANN’s root servers.
If ever you see a government taking control of IP addresses, then you will probably see plenty of discussion about potential censorship.
To track the IP number situation, watch what’s happening with the IANA contract between ICANN and the US Dept of Commerce. ICANN currently has indirect control of IP’s through the IANA. But the contract periodically has to be renewed. It’s always possible there could be changes.
Domain names (TLD’s) are not needed for the web to work any more than vanity phone numbers are needed for the telephone system to work. They are simply a convenience. Nor do domain names necessarily have to be the ones sold through ICANN. These are merely traditions, for lack of a better word. If users needed to ignore traditions to avoid censorship, they could. The web requires cooperation. But it does not necessarily have to be coordinated through ICANN and their TLD business.
Lots of people know this.
ICANN should favor .gay on the whole.
Thanks for the response, but I completely understand the concept of IP numbers, and that the whole domain name is just tradition idea. But the vast majority of people haven’t the slightest clue what a domain name is, let alone understand that a domain name is actually connected to a unique # consisting of only numbers.
Sure, it’s possible to set your computer settings to bypass a filter, but how many ordinary (non technical) people would actually be able to pull this off and do it properly? Not many. A very very tiny percentage, a completely insignificant %.
Just because it is technically possible to circumvent/overcome the blocking doesn’t mean that it will be easy, or happen at all. And it’s entirely possible that the technology used to block certain gTLD’s also gets better and better.
It won’t happen quickly … no. Governments, and all individuals, understand the concept of easing into things slowly so that they will be accepted easier. Bottom line is that gTLD’s just made internet censorship A LOT EASIER, and greatly increased the rate of internet fragmentation.
@pt
I hear ya. And agree with everything you’re suggesting.
My point is only that if there’s a will, there’s a way. In fact there’s several ways.
Right now there’s no will. That could change if anyone starts playing games with the DNS. And lots of people know this.
When the will exists to accomplish some internet task, the many anonymous and attention-seeking coders who inhabit the internet have a way of making things easy for non-technical people.
If that weren’t the case, the problem of IP infringment via publicly sharing copyrighted works such as music and films over the internet probably wouldn’t be such a large scale problem.
How many people know how to use ftp? It’s a fairly small number. It’s not nearly as many as can move large files over the internet. How is that? FTP is a fairly complicated protocol.
How many people can explain the BitTorrent protocol if you ask them? Let alone implement it themselves. How many can even use the original Python client?
Yet millions of people use this protocol. And large files are sent and received by millions of non-technical users daily. How can that happen?
Because others took the prototype and made the solution easy for others to use.
If people start playing games with DNS as some braindead way to block access to websites, and users want to avoid such nonsense, they will. And they’ll make it ridiculously easy for non-technical users to do the same.
That’s not to say DNS-based blocking won’t happen. Look at the draft “Protect-IP” legislation. People are discussing this.
But it wouldn’t be effective. And it would just give people a reason to avoid ICANN’s servers.