On 24 June 2013 as requested by the GAC, the Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) considered the issue of singular and plural stings being confusingly similar and decided to let the original process stand (subject to individual objections). The record of the decision can be found at http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/minutes-new-gtld-25jun13-en.h.... Of particular note is a statement issued by three Board members (George Sadowsky, Olga Madruga-Forti and Cherine Chalaby) who supported the decision but regretted that, based on the Applicant Guidebook wording, they did not believe that they had the leeway to vote against it. One Board member (Mike Silber) did oppose the decision. A central issue is that "confusingly similar" test relies purely on visual similarity and in the eyes of most (who were involved in the decision), adding an "S" makes it a recognizably different string. The salient part of the Applicant Guidebook (http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/guidebook-full-04jun12-en.pdf) is section 2.2.1.1 of Module 2.
This review involves a preliminary comparison of each applied-for gTLD string against existing TLDs, Reserved Names (see subsection 2.2.1.2), and other applied-for strings. The objective of this review is to prevent user confusion and loss of confidence in the DNS resulting from delegation of many similar strings.
Note: In this Applicant Guidebook, "similar" means strings so similar that they create a probability of user confusion if more than one of the strings is delegated into the root zone.
The visual similarity check that occurs during Initial Evaluation is intended to augment the objection and dispute resolution process (see Module 3, Dispute Resolution Procedures) that addresses all types of similarity.
I believe that the NGPC decision was incorrect. The problem is the belief that "visual similarity" relies purely on what, in computer terminology, would be called "pattern matching". Pattern matching is certainly part of human perception, but it is not limited to that. At issue is whether two strings will be PERCEIVED as being equivalent, and perception is a far more complex (and less understood) issue. The real issue is that if you earlier found something at hilton.hotel, or had decided that the reviews at sheraton.hotel were something you trusted, will you later remember if it was really those sites or hilton.hotels or sheraton.hotels? At best, this could be considered a means of forcing anyone who registers a domain with .hotel or .hotels to register both, and map both of them to the same site. If that were to happen, the predictions of the Intellectual Property Constituency would be borne out, and all of those using these TLDs would have to make double the investment in domain names (presuming this is even possible with differing rules for each TLD). But the impact on users would be minimal. But since we cannot guarantee that both TLDs will remain forever in sync, we do have a user problem. Once cannot expect the typical Internet user to be able to differentiate between two such name spaces, and therefore I believe that we have a genuine case of "confusingly similar". And one that will arguably have as much or more impact on real Internet users, the ones that we are supposed to be here to defend, than any other case I can recall in my 7 year involvement with ICANN At-Large. If others on the ALAC agree, I would be happy to create a statement reflecting what I have said here, that we can, in our formal Advisory Committee role, forward as Advice to the Board. Alan