How much, how soon, how to apply? Let ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush and ICANN CEO Paul Twomey be your guides for new TLDs that are set to shake up the Internet.
ICANN board chair Peter Dengate Thrush and ICANN CEO Paul Twomey at last week's Paris meeting during which a historic expansion to the Internet was approved.
Paris, June 26th 2008, around 19:30. The Paris ICANN meeting is now officially over, but the venue hotel's halls and corridors are still full of people trying to grasp the full implications of the ICANN board's resolution to open up the Internet's top level to a new, and this time unlimited, wave of TLDs in what ICANN's press service will later call "the biggest expansion to the Internet in 40 years."
Are we really witnessing the dawn of a new era for the Internet? Going from the 21 gTLDs currently available to a number that could potentially be in the thousands will undoubtedly turn out to be a big change. No wonder Peter Dengate Thrush and Paul Twomey looked pleased with themselves as they led us away from the crowds into one of the hotel's smaller meeting rooms for a question/answer session on the new TLDs.
Peter Dengate Thrush : A new approach.
"The new process takes away a lot of the subjectivity of the previous one. This is a completely new approach. If the applicant can meet the criteria that his application will do no harm, then his application will proceed. That is a complete change of attitude."
Paul Twomey : No profit for ICANN.
"This TLD expansion is not based on profit for ICANN. We will be looking to recoup our costs, but over what period of time we will do so depends on how many applications we receive. We expect initial application fees in the low 6 digits US dollars. As time goes on, the fees may go down as we receive more and more applications and meet our costs. So you could say that early applicants may end up paying more than later ones, but whatever happens the whole process will be very transparent."
Paul Twomey : First new TLDs could be out before end 2009.
"Today's decision is a historical one for the Internet. But there's still a lot of work to do. ICANN staff will now have to finalise what the license terms will be. We expect that work to take about 4 months. Before we start the application process, we intend to do a global PR campaign so that as many people as possible know about this opportunity. That should also last about 4 months. So we should be able to start to accept new applications in April or May 2009. We're aiming for a processing time of around 90 to 120 days for this simplest applications. This means that accepted applicants could even start to register names in their new TLD before the end of 2009."
Peter Dengate Thrush : 4 reasons to bloc applications.
"As we've said, this process will be as simple as possible. Anybody will be able to apply. If there's only one application, then it will be simple. If there are several requests for the same TLD, then we may use an auction process. And if there's some controversy surrounding a TLD application, we will use a clear set of 4 criteria for blocking an application:
It must respect prior rights and marks;
It mustn't be confusingly similar to any existing TLD, for example a .KOM would be too close to a .COM;
If it represents a community, it must be with the full agreement of that community;
It must respect morality and public order.
We will not select applications beyond these for criteria. So beyond that, it's just a question of who comes forward with an application."
Peter Dengate Thrush : Several stages of review.
"Although the intent isn't to have "rounds" in the sense of what we had before, we may need to run periodic checks on the effect of this on the stability of the Internet. There will also be several stages of review as we implement this process and the expansion moves forward."
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