Re: ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs

[Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joel Jaeggli" <joelja () bogus com>

> > > http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/consultation-outreach-en.htm
> >
> > That page doesn't appear to discuss the specific topic I'm talking about,
> > and for the 9th or 10th time, I *know* they've been talking about expanding
> > the root; I approved that message back in 1997, as posted earlier.
>
> It does.
>
> The process as described in 2009 places no lower bound on the
> narrowness of the community which a gtld proposes to serve.
>
> 1.2.2 Community-Based Designation
> All applicants are required to designate whether their
> application is community-based.
>
> 1.2.2.1 Definitions2
>
> For purposes of this Applicant Guidebook, a communitybased gTLD is a
> gTLD that is operated for the benefit of a
> defined community consisting of a restricted population.
>
> An applicant designating its application as communitybased will be
> asked to substantiate its status as
> representative of the community it names in the
> application, and additional information may be requested
> in the event of a comparative evaluation (refer to Section
> 4.2 of Module 4). An applicant for a community-based
> gTLD is expected to:
>
> 1. Demonstrate an ongoing relationship with a defined
> community that consists of a restricted population.
> 2. Have applied for a gTLD string strongly and specifically
> related to the community named in the application.
> 3. Have proposed dedicated registration and use policies
> for registrants in its proposed gTLD.
> 4. Have its application endorsed in writing by an
> established institution representing the community it
> has named.
>
> For purposes of differentiation, an application that has not
> been designated as community-based will be referred to
> hereinafter in this document as an open gTLD. An open
> gTLD can be used for any purpose consistent with the
> requirements of the application and evaluation criteria,
> and with the registry agreement. An open gTLD may or
> may not have a formal relationship with an exclusive
> registrant or user population. It may or may not employ
> eligibility or use restrictions

I will concur with your assertion that it is *possible to infer* that
Apple running a .apple registry for its own internal commercial purposes
would fit their definition of "community"... but the phrasing of the 
restrictions they place on it makes it pretty clear, at least to me,
that the people who wrote it weren't thinking about that possible
use case.

All of their restrictions/instructions become tautologies in that limiting
case, do they not?

And indeed: who arbitrates trademark conflicts, in what is now *necessarily*
a global collision space?  Forbidding the registration of gTLDs which 
conflict with trademarks registered with any national authority would seem
to be only minimally sane, to me...  but that's orthogonal to whether
the issue's come up in specific detail, of course.

My apologies for not reading deeper into your citation, though I'm not sure
I would have caught that section as a response to me anyway.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra () baylink com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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