Wanted you all to see this. I think it will reflect poorly on ICANN's expansion of TLDs.
ICANN hired an international expert panel to scour 1900 new TLD strings and determine which were confusingly similar, so they could be combines in the same contention set.
This is to ensure we don't delegate 2 TLD strings that would confuse Internet users because they are too similar. I expected, for example, that the applications received for .hotel and .hotels would be in the same contention set, since it would be confusing for users to have both TLDs out there. (It would increase the cost of defensive registrations, too, since hotels would have to buy domains in both TLDs. )
After several months of careful study, ICANN's experts published their contention sets yesterday. (link<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-26feb13-en.htm>)
They "identified" 230 "exact match contention sets" where multiple applicants sought the exact same string.
And they found just 2 "non-exact match contention sets" (unicom and unicorm; hoteis and hotels )
Unbelievably, they did not consider the singular and plural versions of key words to be confusingly similar.
This means we will get new TLDs for both the singular and plural versions of keywords such as:
ACCOUNTANT ACCOUNTANTS
AUTO AUTOS
CAR CARS
CAREER CAREERS
COUPON COUPONS
CRUISE CRUISES
DEAL DEALS
FAN FANS
GAME GAMES
GIFT GIFTS
HOME HOMES
HOTEL HOTELS
HOTEL HOTELES
KID KIDS
LOAN LOANS
MARKET MARKETS
NEW NEWS
PET PETS
PHOTO PHOTOS
REVIEW REVIEWS
SPORT SPORTS
TOUR TOURS
WEB WEBS
WORK WORKS
What are the implications for applicants? Well, let's take an example. The 2 Applicants for .GIFT just got a huge gift from ICANN when they were not placed in the same contention set as the 2 applicants for .GIFTS
One of the 2 .GIFT guys must prevail in their "singular" contention set. They can then proceed to delegation, as they planned. Or they can negotiate to be bought-out by the winning applicant from the plural contention set ( .GIFTS ).
In other words, many applicants dodged a bullet by escaping from contention with their singular/plural form competitors. My guess is they want to explore ways to monetize their good fortune.
--
Steve DelBianco
Executive Director
NetChoice
http://www.NetChoice.org and http://blog.netchoice.org
+1.202.420.7482
March 1, 2013
ICANN is taking steps to try to better understand views across the
community. Please see the invitation from ICANN for an online survey
regarding some areas of strong interest to business users. This survey
is partly an outcome from the feedback that occured to ICANN during the
Intercessional planning session of the Non Contracted Parties House,
where the CSG ExComm members all supported the need for ICANN to ask the
broader community of ICANN, not just outsiders about ICANN's reputation.
The ExComm encourages all BC members to participate in this online
survey. It is an excellent opportunity to provide direct feedback to
ICANN. You may wish to also discuss this survey as a BC via the bc
online list.
Transmitted by the BC Secretariat on behalf of the BC ExComm
---------------------------
Dear All,
As ICANN operates on a multi-stakeholder model, we are committed to
ensuring that we maintain a dialogue with the ICANN community. Of
particular importance are the opinions of the members of ICANN's Support
Organizations and Advisory Committees as they represent a unique
perspective on ICANN.
To that end, we have partnered with Echo Research, an independent,
global research organization, to survey our stakeholders to gather
perceptions of ICANN including their knowledge of the organization and
their opinions surrounding several aspects of its reputation and
communications.
The research is in the form of an online survey that will take
approximately 10 minutes of your time to complete. Be assured that the
survey is hosted on Echo's secure server and conducted under the Code of
Conduct of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations
(CASRO), which ensures your confidentiality
Please click on the link below to participate in this important research
effort:
http://www.youropinionsmatter.com/E0083/
We know time is scarce these days, but we would appreciate if it you
would consider participating and sharing your feedback. Thank you in
advance for your input.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Cluffo Clark
Research Director
ICANN
--
Kind Regards,
Benedetta Rossi
BC Secretariat
https://community.icann.org/display/gnsobc/Homewww.bizconst.org
bc-secretariat(a)icann.org
