About that dotShabaka new TLD sunrise…

The first new TLD sunrise doesn’t look like much of a sunrise yet.

Last week I wrote about how the sunrise for شبكة. (.shabaka) had begun. The only catch was I couldn’t find any place to actually place a sunrise order.

I reached out to Yasmin Omer, General Manager of dotShabaka Registry, to find out why. It turns out there’s a good reason I can’t find any place to submit a sunrise order. Here’s what Omer had to say:

dotShabaka Registry is in the process of accrediting Registrars and these Registrars will be posted on our website once they have successfully on-boarded.

Because we are running a 60 day Sunrise period, we are currently not concerned by this, especially given how insignificant the interest has been in purely Arabic marks in the Trademark Clearinghouse. This can be attributed to how poorly it has been promoted in the Arab region by ICANN.

The latest statistics revealed by ICANN showed there are only 23 Arabic labels in the Trademark Clearinghouse, out of a total of nearly 14,000. This is disappointing and we think ICANN has failed in adequately preparing for IDN Sunrise periods considering we were prioritised in the program. They should have expected this.

It is important that people understand we are running an End Date Sunrise period and there has been some misconceptions about this. In an End Date Sunrise, allocation is not based on first come, first served. There is no difference in submitting an application on day one or day 59 of the Sunrise period. Considering we have only just opened Sunrise, Trademark holders will have until 30 December to participate.

Ultimately, running an effective Sunrise period is in our best interests as it will only harm our namespace should we do the opposite. We’re acutely aware of the consequences of alienating Trademark holders.

We’ve led the way in the new TLD program at every step of the process and unfortunately this has also meant we are burdened with the program’s teething problems. We intend to continue to lead from the front in support of furthering the expansion of the Arabic Internet and the work we are now implementing with our many Registrar partners will benefit new TLD applicants that will follow us.