Should an EOI filing confer exclusivity on the TLD string?

[Werner Staub <werner@xxxxxxxx>]

The current EOI draft implies that the respondent(s) who
paid a fee to state their interest in a given TLD will
be the only ones allowed to apply for that string.

This leads to two new forms of speculation:

1) A speculator submits an EOI to “buy” the right to launch
a given gTLD.  This will probably be done large-scale, as
is has been done with second-level domain names. Unless
this is corrected, EOI is simply a discount program for a
TLD land grab.

2) A speculator submits and EOI as a “competitor” to an
existing, well-known TLD projects in order to be bought out.
At USD 55,000 per EOI, that speculator can expect to either
get cash or a share in the TLD project.

One way to mitigate this danger is to make EOI specific to the
string, but not to the applicant. This also diminishes the need
for outreach prior to EOI, as the best outreach is the list of
proposed TLD strings (preferably each with a short project
description). In other words, removing he exclusivity helps
avoid delays.

The question of whether this is "fair" to the EOI applicants
is not relevant. True, they pay the EOI fee earlier. But the
delays in the gTLD process cause incomparably more harm and
unfairness. Also, the delays in gTLD process systematically
hurt community-based initiatives and favor speculative ones.
And the delays systematically favor incumbent TLD operators
over new or smaller registry service providers.

Werner Staub