Stephane Van Gelder

On Thursday October 1st, ICANN is set to party! Invites have been sent out to selected VIPs (don't worry, I'm not one of them, I'm either too French or too irrelevant (probably both) for ICANN to feel that my presence would in any way add to the quality of the proceedings) for a "reception to recognize the conclusion of the Joint Project Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce" as it says on the card.

So it really does look like this is it as far as Memorandums of Understanding, JPAs and other contracts linking ICANN to the US government. Last week, a remarkably well informed article published by The Economist claimed that the JPA won't be renewed and that it would be replaced by an "affirmation of commitments" giving ICANN a lot more independence.

Now this party… The writing definitely seems to be on the wall as far as the JPA is concerned.

This week, people from all over the world and from all types of backgrounds came together to co-sign a letter to ICANN's management asking for new gTLDs to be launched as soon as possible.

The domain industry's major registrars, registries, prospective new gTLD operators, existing TLD operators, academics, business people both from inside and outside the domain industry… all participated in this landmark group action to speak for the innovation, job creation and increased competition that new gTLDs would bring.

The letter boasts a total of 61 signatories, from 16 different countries. INDOM was the only company from France to be asked to co-sign. We gladly agreed and are proud to support this initiative.

The long awaited 3rd version of ICANN's Draft Applicant Guidebook for the new gTLD program should be out at the beginning of next month. Maybe as early as October 1st. ICANN Senior VP Services Kurt Pritz confirmed the DAGv3 anticipated release date during today's GNSO Council teleconference which I attended as the Registrar Stakeholder Group's European representative on the Council.

Included in the DAGv3 should be those IRT recommendations that ICANN staff consider as useful in order to include a suitable level of rights protection in the gTLD program.

There's a flurry of activity going on around ICANN, domains and new gTLDs at the moment.

First came a letter written by US congressmen and sent to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom on September 15. The letter can be summarised as a call to delay the introduction of new gTLDs and to see ICANN put under a permanent contract with the US government.

In passing, I cannot help but once again be flabbergasted by the US politician's apparent lack of regard for a) a policy development process that has been on-going for years (new gTLDs) and b) the fact that it's hard to consider the Internet as still being America's plaything these days, as opposed to a world resource.

But I digress. Rod Beckstrom wasted no time in responding to the Congress letter. On September 22, he penned a note of his own in which he addressed the points raised by the Congressmen in detail. Looking below the surface of Rod's letter, there are a few new elements with regards to the gTLD program that can be ascertained. For example, on whether ICANN intends to implement the IRT recommendations, Rod says that "ICANN may ask the GNSO to begin an expedited review of the recommended solutions". That in plain language seems to imply that we on the GNSO Council are going to have a whole plateful of new work thrown our way as ICANN looks to put the IRT recommendations back into its standard policy development process.

While Rod Beckstrom was tackling the US Congress, ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush was dealing with another group of politicians: the GAC. Governmental Advisory Committee chairman Janis Karklins had written to ICANN on August 18 to voice its concerns over elements of the new gTLD program.

Peter's letter in response, dated September 22, also provides insight into some of the avenues ICANN is currently looking at for the new gTLD program. One that caught my eye is a discussion of the possible categories that new gTLDs could fall into. Peter identifies the following possible TLDs: single owner, geographic, intergovernmental organisations, socio-cultural, community and open. But he makes it clear that categories would only be considered after the first application round.

All this correspondence is well worth a read to gauge the current mood around ICANN as a whole and new gTLDs in particular.

On September 30, .YU will cease to exist as Serbia transitions to its new .RS domain as the country's sole Internet suffix.

There's a little bit of Internet history being made over in Belgrade, Serbia, at the moment.

On September 30, ex-Yugoslavia's .YU will be disconnected from the Internet and all remaining .YU domain names will cease to function.

RNIDS, the local registry, initiated a transition to the country's new .RS suffix (the country code for Serbia) in March 2008. Yet the registry reports there are still around 4,000 .YU names (around 50,000 .RS names have been registered since the new suffix was opened).

Owners of those names need to go for one of the new Serbian suffixes (e.g. .RS, .CO.RS or .ORG.RS) asap if they want to stay visible on the Net.

I often talk about creating new Internet suffixes on this blog. It's not often I get to touch on the ones that are being killed off…

The dotHotel initiative isn't new, but surprisingly, it has managed to avoid drawing too much attention to itself. Not intentionally though, as the TLD sports a full and informative website.

The idea is to position .HOTEL as the TLD for the hotel industry, rather than a domain aimed at individuals such as hotel customers. "Domain names available with .HOTEL are precise and create identity for hotels, the hotel business and services," says dotHotel. 

However, it remains to be seen whether dotHotel can get key members of the hotel industry to support their efforts. Without such support, getting a generic TLD as valuable as .HOTEL may prove difficult…

DotHotel is a German initiative co-created by .BERLIN alumni Johannes Lenz-Hawliczek.

Add one world city to the growing list of candidates for CityTLDs. Thailand's Bangkok.

For the moment, the initiative's website is most definitely a work in progress. There's no real information on the site but a news story published by DomainPulse positions .BKK  as a partnership with the city's government. As such, all city agencies would get free .BKK names...

Another news story coming out of the second conference for ccTLD registries and registrars and the many workshops and talks given there by Central and Eastern European registries: Russia is said to be ready to launch the IDN version of .RF (Russian Federation) next summer.

This would probably make Russia one of the first countries to take advantage of ICANN's IDN ccTLD program to create a local-script TLD. The IDN .RF would exist alongside the standard .RU and .SU domains. The Russian registry also revealed plans to harmonise regulations in all three ccTLDs before the end of next year.

Last week, on the French version of this blog, I talked about a rumour going around that .EU registry EURid was to introduce IDNs (domain names with accents and other special characters) before the end of the year.

Participants at the second conference for ccTLD registries and registrars currently being held in Slovenia have confirmed this.

EURid plans to release IDNs in all 23 European Union languages on December 10.

One of the good things about new gTLDs is that they make ignoramuses like myself a little less dumb. Take Szeklerland. Until a few minutes ago, I'd never heard of the place. A quick browse on Wikipedia and now I know that it's almost the birth place of Dracula. Szeklerland refers to " the territories inhabited by the Székely, a Hungarian people living in eastern Transylvania, centre of present-day Romania. They live in the valleys and hills of the Eastern Carpathian Mountains…".

Well it seems the Szekler people also call themselves the "Siculitas" and their National Council is intending to request .SIC from ICANN. It is clear that lesser known communities and territories like Szeklerland have a whole lot to gain from obtaining their own TLD. Just ask the Catalans if they are anything but happy with the way .CAT has put them on the world map!

So good-luck to Szeklerland and let's hope that they don't run into any interference from ICANN's very own SIC, the acronym for the Board's Structural Improvements Committee. Not that anyone could call that jolly band of fellows a bunch of bloodsuckers (sorry SIC members, couldn't resist that awful pun, and awful I have to admit it is).

The .OTTAWA project is intending to apply for the corresponding CityTLD. The project's website provides little information as to whom is behind .OTTAWA and in particular, if it is a private enterprise "à la" .BERLIN or directly supported by the local government as is the case for .PARIS or Barcelona's .BCN.

However the website does feature interesting schematics on some of the planned websites and on the planned registry systems.

Great news for all European Internet watchers, especially those from Belgium and France, ICANN's June 2010 international meeting will be held in Brussels.

The meeting itself promises to be a crucial one. If ICANN's current calendar doesn't change, the first round of new gTLD applications will have opened a few months earlier (February 2010). During the June 20-25 Brussels meeting, attendees should therefore be able to learn more about which new TLDs have been requested and evaluated.

ICANN's European office is in Brussels and the Belgium capital is also home to many of the European Commission's offices. So the June meeting may also provide an interesting backdrop for ongoing discussions between Europe and the US over whether ICANN should be an international organisation or continue to be placed under US control.

What can ccTLD (national suffix) managers do to reduce the risk of fraud for the users of online banking services? The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency's (PTS) answer: restrict domain name registrations containing the word "bank".

On August 27th, PTS requested that Sweden's registry proactively block all such domain registrations. From now on, those applying for a .SE domain name containing the word "bank" will have to undergo validation.

A new rule which could make life difficult for bona fide domain name registrants who simply wish to use the word bank. Except that the .SE registry is prepared to allow registrations where it is clear that the requested domain name will not lead to any misunderstandings for Internet users.

Bank being a protected term in several countries, including Sweden, it should only be used by entities with the right to call themselves banks. PTS' new rule therefore makes perfect sense and seems like a good way to protect both the banks themselves and their customers.