[bc-gnso] Update: Contention sets for new gTLDs

[Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wanted you all to see this.   I think it will reflect poorly on ICANN's 
expansion of TLDs.

ICANN hired an international expert panel to scour 1900 new TLD strings and 
determine which were confusingly similar, so they could be combines in the same 
contention set.

This is to ensure we don't delegate 2 TLD strings that would confuse Internet 
users because they are too similar.  I expected, for example, that the 
applications received for .hotel and .hotels would be in the same contention 
set, since it would be confusing for users to have both TLDs out there.  (It 
would increase the cost of defensive registrations, too, since hotels would 
have to buy domains in both TLDs.  )

After several months of careful study, ICANN's experts published their 
contention sets yesterday. 
(link<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-26feb13-en.htm>)

They "identified" 230 "exact match contention sets" where multiple applicants 
sought the exact same string.

And they found just 2 "non-exact match contention sets"  (unicom and unicorm; 
hoteis and hotels )

Unbelievably, they did not consider the singular and plural versions of key 
words to be confusingly similar.

This means we will get new TLDs for both the singular and plural versions of 
keywords such as:

ACCOUNTANT ACCOUNTANTS
AUTO  AUTOS
CAR CARS
CAREER CAREERS
COUPON COUPONS
CRUISE CRUISES
DEAL DEALS
FAN FANS
GAME GAMES
GIFT GIFTS
HOME HOMES
HOTEL HOTELS
HOTEL HOTELES
KID KIDS
LOAN LOANS
MARKET MARKETS
NEW NEWS
PET PETS
PHOTO PHOTOS
REVIEW REVIEWS
SPORT SPORTS
TOUR TOURS
WEB WEBS
WORK WORKS

What are the implications for applicants?   Well, let's take an example.  The 2 
Applicants for .GIFT just got a huge gift from ICANN when they were not placed 
in the same contention set as the 2 applicants for .GIFTS

One of the 2 .GIFT guys must prevail in their "singular" contention set.   They 
can then proceed to delegation, as they planned.  Or they can negotiate to be 
bought-out by the winning applicant from the plural contention set ( .GIFTS ).

In other words, many applicants dodged a bullet by escaping from contention 
with their singular/plural form competitors.   My guess is they want to explore 
ways to monetize their good fortune.

 --

Steve DelBianco
Executive Director
NetChoice
http://www.NetChoice.org and http://blog.netchoice.org
+1.202.420.7482