Comments on: ICANN Board to Consider “Expressions of Interest” for New TLDs at December Meeting

By: Domain Name Wire » News » DNW Radio: Antony Van Couvering Discusses gTLD “Expressions of Interest” - The Domain Industry's News Source

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:06:02 +0000

[...] gTLD consulting company Minds + Machines. I invited Antony onto the show to discuss ICANN’s Expressions of Interest for new top level domain [...]

By: Domain Name Wire » News » ICANN Asks for Your Feedback on “Expressions of Interest” - The Domain Industry's News Source

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:49:27 +0000

[...] I’ve reported before, ICANN is exploring accepting “expressions of interest” for new top level domain names. [...]

By: jp

jp — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:59:06 +0000

Right on John

By: Andrew Allemann

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:46:43 +0000

Philip – I suspect the $100k is just a placeholder, and that the potential applicants will push for that to be lowered. Frankly, I think it’s important that there be some sort of mechanism to make the expressions of interest accurate with regards to how many TLDs will be applied for. One of those must be that only those who express an interest are able to apply.

By: Philip Corwin

Philip Corwin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:40:02 +0000

This strikes me as a somewhat strange proposal. As first expounded at the Seoul meeting it sounded like the purpose of accepting “expressions of interest” was to roughly gauge the number of potential first round new gTLD applicants. But now it appears that expressing an interest would be a prerequisite to having a first round bid even considered.
Only those willing to tie up $100,000 per string for an indefinite period and without knowing what the final rules for new gTLDs will be when the application window finally opens would be eligible to climb through that window. From the viewpoint of a potential applicant with considerable capital to risk it may provide a leg up in that it locks up a potentially valuable string against a competing bid (or, looked at another way, lowers the price of finding out if there will be competition for the string by $85,000. But some potential commercial applicants may balk at the notion that they have to pony up $100k without any idea of when the process will really start or the rules they will be subject to, and the potential objection from community applicants in the developing world could be greater.
Let’s see what kind of reaction this gets.

By: Andrew Allemann

Andrew Allemann — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:00:07 +0000

If they have to have to pay $100k to express their interest, at least we’ll know they’re serious. I suspect they’ll push back on that, saying it’s too much given that the money could be locked up for a couple years while the debate continues.

By: David J Castello

David J Castello — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:41:37 +0000

Expressions of interest?
Cute.