Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
We should be convinced that the single-digit domain name will be as a business as the registries business. In fact who will buy x.com, an entity interested in selling sub-domain under the X.com ( may pron oriented site ). Who will be interested in o.com, e.com , same thing. So giving possibility to someone to sell subdomain under a one digit domain name is like ccTLD who are selling .com.uk for example. We will have www.mysite.e.net or www.company.c.com and others. I think that the best is to use the same method to allocate a new gTLD or sTLD licence by giving a license to ONLY one entity that will sell to registrat and to registrar what they want of sub-domain under what ever single-digit and PAY contribution to ICANN for each sub-domain. Maybe this contribution should be less than the one payed for a domain name. Anne-Rachel Inné wrote:
ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
16 October 2007
As recommended by the GNSO Council, ICANN is commencing a forum on potential allocation methods for single-letter and single-digit domain names at the second level in gTLD registries. Examples include a.com <http://a.com>, i.info <http://i.info>, 4.mobi, 8.org <http://8.org>. Since revenue will result from this allocation, comments regarding the potential uses for this revenue are also requested.
ICANN intends to synthesize responses to the forum and present proposed methods for allocation of single-letter and single-digit domain names at the second level for community consideration.
To be considered by ICANN, ideas on potential allocation methods should be submitted no later than 23:59 UTC, 15 November 2007 to allocationmethods@icann.org <mailto:allocationmethods@icann.org>. Comments may be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/allocationmethods/.
The GNSO Council asked ICANN to initiate a forum on this issue after considering a report of the Council's Reserved Names Working Group (RN-WG), which recommended that "single letters and digits be released at the second level in future gTLDs, and that those currently reserved in existing gTLDs should be released. This release should be contingent upon the use of appropriate allocation frameworks. More work may be needed. In future gTLDs we recommend that single letters and single digits be available at the second (and third level if applicable)." The GNSO is one of ICANN's primary stakeholder-populated policy making bodies. The recommendations of the RN-WG can be found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/final-report-rn-wg-23may07.pdf [PDF, 713K].
*Background*
Currently, all 16 gTLD registry agreements (.AERO, .ASIA, .BIZ, .CAT, .COM, .COOP, .INFO, .JOBS, .MOBI, .MUSEUM, .NAME, .NET, .ORG, .PRO, .TEL, and .TRAVEL) provide for the reservation of single-letter and single-digit names at the second level. ICANN's gTLD registry agreements contain the following provision on single-letter and single-digit names. See Appendix 6 of the .TEL Registry Agreement, http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/tel/appendix-6-07apr06.htm ("the following names shall be reserved at the second-level: All single-character labels.").
Letters, numbers and the hyphen symbol are allowed within second level names in both top level and country code TLDs. Single letters and numbers also are allowed as IDNs -- as single-character Unicode renderings of ASCII compatible (ACE) forms of IDNA valid strings.
Before the current reserved name policy was imposed in 1993, Jon Postel (under the IANA function) took steps to reserve all available single character letters and numbers at the second level for future extensibility of the Internet (see 20 May 1994 email from Jon Postel, http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/namedroppers.199x/msg01156.html). All but six (q.com <http://q.com>, x.com <http://x.com>, z.com <http://z.com>, i.net <http://i.net>, q.net <http://q.net>, and x.org <http://x.org> ) of the possible 144 single letters or numbers at the second-level in .COM, .EDU, .NET and .ORG remain reserved by IANA. Those six registrations are an exception to the reservation practice. Under current practice, these names would be placed on reserve if the registrations were allowed to expire.
The RN-WG carefully considered technical implications of releasing single-letter and single-digit domain names from reservation, and engaged in discussions with technical experts as the working group recommendations were being developed.
There are currently 265 TLDs in the root zone (19 gTLDs and 246 ccTLDs). Although nearly all single-letter and single-digit domain names are reserved in gTLDs, 24% of ccTLDs (60) have at least one single-character name registration. According to IANA, out of 9540 possible combinations of single-character ASCII names (containing 26 letters, 10 numbers, but not symbols, across 265 TLDs), 1225 delegations of single-character ASCII names exist in the TLD zones (See http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-rn-wg/msg00039.html).
ICANN has received many inquiries from third parties seeking to register single-letter and single-digit domain names, and has advised these parties that the names are reserved. Through the establishment of the public forum described above, ICANN is following its bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model to develop suitable allocation mechanisms for the release of single-letter and single-digit domain names as recommended by the GNSO working group.
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We should be convinced that the single-digit domain name will be as a business as the registries business. In fact who will buy x.com, an entity interested in selling sub-domain under the X.com ( may pron oriented site ). Who will be interested in o.com, e.com , same thing.
Actually, the ones that aren't already in use most likely to be snapped up by large companies. Type x.com into your browser, and you'll find that it's Paypal. (Long ago, x.com was their original name). The domain q.com was originally registered by a guy in Massachusetts who eventually sold it to Qwest, a large telephone company, because Q is their symbol on the stock exchange. z.com belongs to Nissan, the car maker, which uses it to promote their Z series of cars. At this point, I don't see any reason to treat one or two letter names any differently from any other names. This is particularly true in domains that allow second level IDNs since the number of single character names will be in the thousands. R's, John
Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and use the cash as a trust fund for development of IDNs for languages communities of less developed countries (Khmer, Lao?) and for supporting participation (not just travel! Translation.) Trust fund, live off the interest. How much is g.COM worth? Or perhaps it would be illegal for ICANN to act in that way? Adam (not cc'ing allocationmethods@icann.org and africann@afrinic.net, guessing they are lists and I'm not subscribed.) At 10:51 AM -0400 10/17/07, John L wrote:
We should be convinced that the single-digit domain name will be as a business as the registries business. In fact who will buy x.com, an entity interested in selling sub-domain under the X.com ( may pron oriented site ). Who will be interested in o.com, e.com , same thing.
Actually, the ones that aren't already in use most likely to be snapped up by large companies. Type x.com into your browser, and you'll find that it's Paypal. (Long ago, x.com was their original name). The domain q.com was originally registered by a guy in Massachusetts who eventually sold it to Qwest, a large telephone company, because Q is their symbol on the stock exchange. z.com belongs to Nissan, the car maker, which uses it to promote their Z series of cars.
At this point, I don't see any reason to treat one or two letter names any differently from any other names. This is particularly true in domains that allow second level IDNs since the number of single character names will be in the thousands.
R's, John
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On Oct 18, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Adam Peake wrote:
Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and use the cash
For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own? ICANN placed a restriction on single-letter TLDs once upon a time on the theory that the letters might be needed at some future time for expansion of the TLD space (i.e., that we might have, amazon.a.com, amazon.b.com, amazon.c.com, etc.). So if that need no longer exists, and the restriction can be removed, why do the auction profits go to ICANN and not the registry and registrar? -- Bret
For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own?
You beat me to it. This wouldn't be the first auction of high value domains, and in the past the money's always gone to the registry or registrar. I can't imagine Verisign agreeing to an ICANN auction of .com or .net domains. The reality, of course, is that no matter what the nominal procedure is, there will be auctions. The only question is who gets the money. R's, John
On Oct 18, 2007, at 8:56 AM, John L wrote:
in the past the money's always gone to the registry or registrar
And under the status quo, most of that would go to the registrar. Verisign would take its $6.42 and ICANN would get its 20 cents, and everything over $6.62 would go to the registrar that was able to register the name first. -- Bret Fausett (skype me at "lextext") smime.p7s is a digital signature http://www.imc.org/smime-pgpmime.html -------------------------------------
At 11:56 AM -0400 10/18/07, John L wrote:
For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own?
You beat me to it. This wouldn't be the first auction of high value domains, and in the past the money's always gone to the registry or registrar. I can't imagine Verisign agreeing to an ICANN auction of .com or .net domains.
What cases? (genuine question, pretty clueless about this!) Registries have auctioned names under new tlds, and registrars acquire names and then re-sell them. But these single letters would be names from a reserved list, not different? Which of all accredited registrars would have a right above any other? Does Verisign own the com namespace?
The reality, of course, is that no matter what the nominal procedure is, there will be auctions. The only question is who gets the money.
So why not ICANN / a trust fund. Once technical criteria were met, ORG was assigned on the basis of promised good works. Adam
R's, John
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This wouldn't be the first auction of high value domains What cases? (genuine question, pretty clueless about this!)
I was thinking of .MOBI auctioning off place names and popular words like flowers.mobi. It's not exactly analogous, but it's pretty close, reserved names released into registry auctions.
Does Verisign own the com namespace?
Given the presumptive renewal language in their contract, in practice, yes.
The reality, of course, is that no matter what the nominal procedure is, there will be auctions. The only question is who gets the money.
So why not ICANN / a trust fund. Once technical criteria were met, ORG was assigned on the basis of promised good works.
I think the .ORG transfer was a one time event that is unlikely to be repeated. In any event, IDNs make this a much more complex issue. What do we do with names that consist of a single accented Latin letter? Single Japanese kana? Single characters of Arabic, Hindi, etc. etc. etc. ? It's a swamp on which I'd much rather just pull the plug since I don't see much benefit in trying to trickle them out. R's, John
One of the arguments against the one-letter domains was related to mistyping. Once upon a time, when domain names were "sparse" in relation to all possible permutations of the letters of the alphabet, the chance of hitting a wrong domain name by mistyping one character was very low (this is less and less true today). The argumentation by John Klensin was that if we allow one letter domain names, you are sure to land on a different domain by mistyping one character (because it is the only one!), and this is a stability concern. I report this only for the sake of historical completeness, without judgement on the merit. Cheers, Roberto _____ From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bret Fausett Sent: 18 October 2007 17:04 To: At-Large writ small Subject: Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum onAllocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names On Oct 18, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Adam Peake wrote: Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and use the cash For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own? ICANN placed a restriction on single-letter TLDs once upon a time on the theory that the letters might be needed at some future time for expansion of the TLD space (i.e., that we might have, amazon.a.com, amazon.b.com, amazon.c.com, etc.). So if that need no longer exists, and the restriction can be removed, why do the auction profits go to ICANN and not the registry and registrar? -- Bret
Is that a concern at the second level -- a.com, b.com, c.com? Adam
One of the arguments against the one-letter domains was related to mistyping. Once upon a time, when domain names were "sparse" in relation to all possible permutations of the letters of the alphabet, the chance of hitting a wrong domain name by mistyping one character was very low (this is less and less true today). The argumentation by John Klensin was that if we allow one letter domain names, you are sure to land on a different domain by mistyping one character (because it is the only one!), and this is a stability concern.
I report this only for the sake of historical completeness, without judgement on the merit.
Cheers, Roberto
From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bret Fausett Sent: 18 October 2007 17:04 To: At-Large writ small Subject: Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum onAllocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
On Oct 18, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Adam Peake wrote:
Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and
use the cash
For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own? ICANN placed a restriction on single-letter TLDs once upon a time on the theory that the letters might be needed at some future time for expansion of the TLD space (i.e., that we might have, amazon.a.com, amazon.b.com, amazon.c.com, etc.). So if that need no longer exists, and the restriction can be removed, why do the auction profits go to ICANN and not the registry and registrar?
-- Bret
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That was my understanding from John Klensin's argumentation. Nowadays, with the density of names we have, thanks ;>) also to domain tasting, it has become very difficult to be able to misspell a name and get a 404 message :<( So, I really don't know how much this objection still holds for one-char SLDs. Another interesting issue is that I see likely to happen that we will have IDN SLDs with one symbol (for instance, for chinese script - Hong, please correct me if I am saying silly things). So to have the restriction for some scripts but not for others might raise additional questions. Cheers, Roberto
-----Original Message----- From: Adam Peake [mailto:ajp@glocom.ac.jp] Sent: 19 October 2007 07:22 To: Roberto Gaetano Cc: alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum onAllocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
Is that a concern at the second level -- a.com, b.com, c.com?
Adam
One of the arguments against the one-letter domains was related to mistyping. Once upon a time, when domain names were "sparse" in relation to all possible permutations of the letters of the alphabet, the chance of hitting a wrong domain name by mistyping one character was very low (this is less and less true today). The argumentation by John Klensin was that if we allow one letter domain names, you are sure to land on a different domain by mistyping one character (because it is the only one!), and this is a stability concern.
I report this only for the sake of historical completeness, without judgement on the merit.
Cheers, Roberto
From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bret Fausett Sent: 18 October 2007 17:04 To: At-Large writ small Subject: Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum onAllocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
On Oct 18, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Adam Peake wrote:
Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and
use the cash
For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own? ICANN placed a restriction on single-letter TLDs once upon a time on the theory that the letters might be needed at some future time for expansion of the TLD space (i.e., that we might have, amazon.a.com, amazon.b.com, amazon.c.com, etc.). So if that need no longer exists, and the restriction can be removed, why do the auction profits go to ICANN and not the registry and registrar?
-- Bret
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Another interesting issue is that I see likely to happen that we will have
IDN SLDs with one symbol (for instance, for chinese script - Hong, please correct me if I am saying silly things). So to have the restriction for some scripts but not for others might raise additional questions.
Roberto is right. Single-character IDNs may be registered either under .cn and .com. But this has not become any serious problem most probably because most modern Chinese words (verbs or nouns), which is different from the Confucius classics, normally consist two characters. Hong
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Peake [mailto:ajp@glocom.ac.jp] Sent: 19 October 2007 07:22 To: Roberto Gaetano Cc: alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum onAllocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
Is that a concern at the second level -- a.com, b.com, c.com?
Adam
One of the arguments against the one-letter domains was related to mistyping. Once upon a time, when domain names were "sparse" in relation to all possible permutations of the letters of the alphabet, the chance of hitting a wrong domain name by mistyping one character was very low (this is less and less true today). The argumentation by John Klensin was that if we allow one letter domain names, you are sure to land on a different domain by mistyping one character (because it is the only one!), and this is a stability concern.
I report this only for the sake of historical completeness, without judgement on the merit.
Cheers, Roberto
From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bret Fausett Sent: 18 October 2007 17:04 To: At-Large writ small Subject: Re: [At-Large] [AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum onAllocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
On Oct 18, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Adam Peake wrote:
Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and
use the cash
For the sake of argument, on what right would ICANN claim that money as its own? ICANN placed a restriction on single-letter TLDs once upon a time on the theory that the letters might be needed at some future time for expansion of the TLD space (i.e., that we might have, amazon.a.com, amazon.b.com, amazon.c.com, etc.). So if that need no longer exists, and the restriction can be removed, why do the auction profits go to ICANN and not the registry and registrar?
-- Bret
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participants (6)
-
Adam Peake -
Bret Fausett -
Hong Xue -
John L -
Khaled KOUBAA -
Roberto Gaetano