Commercial Connect thinks applicant guidebook states only one TLD should be allocated for the entire “ecommerce namespace”.
Commercial Connect LLC wants the .shop top level domain…badly.
It also doesn’t want anyone else to be able to offer a top level domain that could in any way take away .shop’s marketshare.
That’s why it filed string confusion objections against applications like .buy, .ecom, .services, and .sale. It is (rightfully) losing most of those objections. So today it put out a press release claiming that ICANN isn’t following its new TLD guidebook by allowing more than one TLD “for the eCommerce Name Space”.
$100 goes to the first person who can show me where in the applicant guidebook it says this:
ICANN’s 2012 Applicant Handbook states that in the review process, all proposed TLDs would be categorized by Name Space. This means that in the eCommerce arena, TLDs applicants such as .shop, .store, .buy, .supplies and .services would all be grouped together and after a thorough review, only one TLD for the eCommerce Name Space would be awarded.
This is almost as silly as when a group backing .sport argued that no specific sports, like .basketball, should be allocated.
Commercial Connect also says that ICANN may be “…abandoning its long held belief that Internet names should be sacred and sparse.”
I have news for Commercial Connect: If it argues that .buy and .shop can’t coexist in a sparse namespace, then perhaps .shop and .com shouldn’t, either.
The press release is about Top Line (sic) Domains, not Top Level Domains. So perhaps this is something from a completely alternate universe…
Q: “$100 goes to the first person who can show me where in the applicant guidebook it says…”
A: It is in the modified version of applicant guidebook that is stored in local drive of one of Commercial Connect LLC computers.
Note #1: Please send me $100 reward by PayPal to my email. Thank you.
Note #2: I am just kidding…
For what they charge, you’d think Duane Morris would at least care that their client is trying to get a “top-level domain” and not a “top-line domain”. I love these firms that use their client’s funds for mattress padding.
I’m now heading down to Herndon to light a candle at the altar of “sacred and sparse” domain names. It’s in a chapel just off to the side of Verisign’s lobby.
From the press release, I do not understand what Commercial Connect and ECWR have done that warrants a press release. They “have challenged the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to adhere to its founding principle” but the press release does not say what form that challenge has taken. Lawsuit? Request for reconsideration? Independent review? Or are they just demanding satisfaction before throwing down the gauntlet?