They're the talk of the town (no pun intended) at the ICANN meeting, currently under way in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. But not everyone agrees that CityTLDs such as .BERLIN are a good idea…
.BERLIN may not yet exist as an Internet domain, but its promoters have already given it a home on the Web at www.dotberlin.de.
They've already got their own nickname. "CityTLDs" (TLD means Top Level Domains in domain-tech speak) or "GeoTLDs" are all the rage at the moment. Several initiatives are under way to bring about the launch of these new, city-specific Internet domain extensions.
The biggest by far is .BERLIN. A privately-funded project that claims approval from both the German city of Berlin and the German parliament, dotBERLIN, the company behind the project, is said to have already invested in excess of 2 million euros building it up.
Part of that money has been used to spread the word and get the .BERLIN initiative known. With a great deal of success. .BERLIN has become the standard-bearer for new CityTLDs as other major cities have followed in its wake. There are currently at least two very serious attempts to get domain extensions created: for Paris (.PARIS) and New York (.NYC). There are also thought to be plans for TLDs for places like Tokyo, London or Beijing.
No new TLDs anytime soon
Despite all the noise currently being made around CityTLD projects, nothing can be done with the consent of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN has final authority for approving or rejecting new TLDs. Since 2001, it has okayed several new Internet domains. Generic ones like .INFO (for information website like www.Domaines.info). More specific ones like .MOBI (websites tailored for use on the smaller screens of mobile devices such as smartphones and PDAs, one example of which is www.Indom.mobi). And even geographic ones like .CAT, which launched in 2006 to promote the Catalan culture and language worldwide and is, in many ways, the inspiration for the CityTLD projects.
Three times a year, ICANN holds public meetings where issues such as the possible green-lighting of new Internet domains are discussed. The second meeting of 2007 is being held this week in San Juan, the Capital city of Puerto Rico.
Initial discussions don't seem to have gone well for CityTLDs. Despite a dedicated workshop being organised specially for them (perhaps the workshop name - "New Geo-TLDs - More Consumer Choice or More Consumer Confusion?" - should have given participants an idea of which way ICANN is leaning on this issue…), it seems ICANN isn't in a hurry to ratify new CityTLDs.
In the run-up to the workshop, an ICANN staff member hinted that no CityTLD could be launched before at least 18 months to give ICANN time to look at possible prior-rights infringements that new TLDs might create.
Although this has never stopped ICANN saying yes to new TLDs before, the next day ICANN staff were indeed given three months to look at possible dispute resolution procedures for new TLDs. This would seem to rule out any progress being made on CityTLD proposals before the last ICANN meeting of the year, scheduled for early November in Los Angeles.
Berlin turns against .BERLIN
As if that wasn't enough, yet more dismaying news for the promoters of .BERLIN, who obviously need to see their domain launched as soon as possible in order to actually start selling something and getting some kind of return on their already large investment, has come out of Germany today.
An unofficial report claims that the city of Berlin's government also thinks .BERLIN would infringe existing rights, starting with the city's very own right to its name.
If true (.BERLIN's promoters sought out local support from the start and have involved the city's government as much as possible), this really is bad news for .BERLIN in particular and maybe CityTLDs in general. The support of the city is of vital importance to .BERLIN and losing it would most likely bury the project as ICANN would never risk saying yes to a new TLD that didn't have its local community behind it.
Advocates of CityTLDs worldwide will therefore be looking closely at what happens to .BERLIN in the next few weeks, starting with the outcome of the San Juan ICANN meeting and any comment the ICANN board might make on the subject when it meets to bring the meeting to its official close this Friday…
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