Daily Wrap: EC Shows Its Displeasure To Some gTLD Applications, While Africa Sees Many Objections
A Domain Incite story on new gTLDs caught the eye today regarding the European Commission noting their displeasure with 58 applications.
The European Commission’s list of 58 gTLD applications it considers problematic has it “thumbing its nose at ICANN’s procedures for handling government objections to new gTLDs,” claims Domain Incite.
The list includes several that were not subject to “Early Warnings” from governments through the Governmental Advisory Committee including .sexy, .sex and .free.
Remarkably, Domain Incite notes, “the cover letter says that the gTLDs are not ‘Early Warnings’ as described by the ICANN Applicant Guidebook and says the Commission may continue to work outside the established process in future.”
The letter says in part:
The position outlined in this letter is without prejudice to any further action that the Commission might decide to undertake in order to safeguard the rights and interests of the European Union and of its citizens.
For the sake of clarity, the Commission does not consider itself legally bound to the processes, including the means of recourse, outlined in the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook and/or adopted by ICANN, unless a legal agreement between the latter and the Commission exists.
Meanwhile in a posting on Circle ID, Katim S. Touray, an International Development Consultant and ICT for development advocate, comments on the list of Early Warnings issued by the GAC.
Touray notes that “it was not surprising that Africa had the least number of gTLD applications in ICANN’s new gTLD program. Only 17 of 1,930 applications were from Africa. Even then, two of the 17 applications were from the League of Arab States based in Egypt, and 13 were from South Africa, leaving only 2 applications from only two of the remaining 45 countries in SSA.”
Touray also notes that “Africa also tops the list of warnings issued to an applicant, with the .africa application from DotConnectAfrica Trust (DCA) receiving 17 warnings from 16 African governments, and the African Union Commission (AUC), a GAC observer. .africa sits just above .hotel, which has 16 GAC early warnings. Other strings with significant numbers of warnings are .health (9 early warnings), and .sarl (with 6 early warnings).”
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