Many responses to .gay community application decision are oversimplifying what happened…and getting it wrong.
In headlines and tweets, it’s pretty easy to knock ICANN for a recent decision not granting .gay applicant dotgay llc community status for the domain name.
The reality, for anyone who takes the time to understand it, is that ICANN didn’t determine anything about whether there’s a gay community. Nor did it (or anyone) block dotgay llc from using .gay.
But the reality is difficult to disseminate in 140 characters or less, so the echo chamber continues to blast ICANN for the decision.
Let’s start with a key point: ICANN didn’t make the decision on the .gay application. It was Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), with which ICANN contracted to handle Community Priority Evaluations for new top level domain names. (It’s worth noting that EIU is affiliated with The Economist, which has long supported gay rights.)
Next, understand that EIU did not say gays aren’t a community. It just said:
The applied-for string neither matches the name of the community as defined by the application nor does it identify the defined community without over-reaching substantially, as required for a full or partial score on Nexus.
EIU has a set of guidelines with which to determine if a new top level domain name applicant should be granted community status. The guidelines are in the new TLD applicant guidebook; a set of rules created in advance by the internet community. The threshold is strong, given that a community applicant automatically wins a contention set.
You can argue whether or not the requirements for community status were good. You can question how .hotel and .eco prevailed but .gay didn’t. Frankly, many people are surprised that any applications have gained community status given the strong threshold.
But to say ICANN or EIU thinks there’s no “gay community” is simply incorrect.
Finally, this decision does not prevent dotgay llc from running .gay. It just means it doesn’t automatically win the contention set for it. It must compete with three other applicants to run the domain name.
I’ve heard rumblings that it can’t compete with commercial interests, i.e., the other applicants. I’m not so sure. Given the level of support it claimed in its community priority request, it seems possible that it could raise the money required to win the contention set. Surely a number of companies and organizations would chip in.
To summarize:
1. ICANN didn’t say gays aren’t a community.
2. EIU merely determined that dotgay llc’s application and community request don’t meet the requirements under the new TLD program for community status.
3. dotgay llc can still run the .gay domain name.
That’s not quite reduced to 140 characters, but it’s as close as I can get.
That’s what happens when a single entity attempts to ‘represent’ an entire global group of individuals, whether that is gender/sexual definition or religion. I would expand the list to include ethnic minorities as well.
What you seem to not mention is the EIU guidelines were created after the community applications were submitted. ICANN defines the EIU as an extension of ICANN, so they are in fact part of the process and culpable. And yes, dotgay llc can now go to auction against the others. The fact they we’re trying to create a community vs a commodity for .gay should be noted, for not only the protections of its users and visitors, but for charitable and philanthropic aspect as well. At at least in all of this, the #ICANNisBroken tag got people to really notice that the process is broken, evident by the GAC communique recommending several major changes to CPE.
Jay, the rules by which community bids were evaluated were in the guidebook, published before applications were submitted.
I agree that the objections process has been riddled with seemingly conflicting decisions, but any suggestion that ICANN doesn’t respect the gay LGBTQ community because of this decision is nonsense.
Well the EIU guidelines that were published after applications were submitted allow for less flexibility around community than the AGB infers. The simple fact that even the Economist uses “gay” interchangeably with the LGBTQIA acronyms in their own reporting on our community shows a clear double standard. Giving zero of four for Nexus is flat out wrong. Just search a few articles on the Economist website to get your proof. The outrage that LGBTQIA people are expressing in social media represents years of being discriminated against in the name of process and policy. ICANN is yet another example being highlighted with the .GAY TLD. It’s easy to say that the community still has a fair chance to get .GAY to operate in alignment with community interest, but does anyone really believe that the only way to properly determine if the gay community should have that right is if they can pay for it? Give it a break. The only opposition to the community model is coming from the competitive bids, and it’s sad to see that their wishes are being granted by ICANN and those ICANN has hired to do the evaluations. Who is really being protected here? Not the gay community.
Jay and Fred – by mentioning that this is affiliated with The Economist, I was trying to show that there wasn’t some institutional bias at play here. Obviously, it wasn’t Economist journalists who were decided the objection.
In general, I tend to agree with the commentary provided on Domain Wire, but on this subject, I do have to disagree openly. First, EIU was hired by ICANN to conduct the evaluations. That doesn’t provide ICANN with the convenience of denying responsibility for, or distancing themselves from the decision. EIU acted as agent for ICANN. If not, then ICANN could conceivably use that same “distancing” to vacate the findings of the EIU, state that they were wrong and that .gay is a community. Second, you state, that dotGay LLC could survive an auction. While that may well be true, the purpose of the Community application was to provide recognition of a community. To argue, “well they can always go to auction” is rather disingenuous. It basically means, “well you were poorly evaluated but you always have a back up plan”. Third, going back to the comment regarding the Economist and its support of the gay community, while this is true and is commendable, it is flawed in relation to the community application. First, EIU in fact redefined what the gay community is for the purposes of this application. Their new definition is contrary to their own inclusive definition of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the articles of the Economist as a publication. So for their readership, they use one definition of the inclusive term “gay” and for their application review, they used another which was much more myopic in its view and disenfranchised a grouping which commonly includes itself under the term “gay” for equal rights, marriage equality, protection from discrimination and employment protection where in many U.S. states and many countries, it is still legal (yes even in the US) simply to terminate an employee for being a sexual minority.
Finally, and what many fail to acknowledge is that while having 100’s of endorsements from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations who suppported the term as an inclusive term for representing sexual minorities, the EIU caused the .gay applicant to lose points because of one (singular) objection. Interestingly, despite requests to do so the EIU and ICANN never investigated the validity of the singular objection. As a matter of fact, they went through great pains to avoid responding to requests for an investigation of the objection. Had either done so, they would likely have found evidence (vis-a-vis a document trail) that the objection was financed by a competing applicant. This was an applicant that needed the community application to be denied so that the applicant would have the opportunity to obtain the TLD at auction.
With these facts, I hope that you can see that your premise and logic in support of ICANN is seriously undermined and that indeed, #ICANNisBroken when it comes to the community application process.
Perhaps the greatest flaw in regards to this particular community is societal tendency to believe that they need to grant permission to minorities to allow them to define themselves on their own. It is tantamount to asking ICANN, for their permission before an individual can self identify as a member of this grouping. In fact it is insulting. It is analogous to those non-Native Americans who claim that the term “Redskin” is not an insult. If you are a Native American, and you are offended by the term then it is indeed an insult. A non-Native American does not get a “veto” and is not authentically empowered to claim it is not offensive. Unless, the EIU review team can demonstrate that they had a cross section of reviewers who were members of sexual minorities (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) then they lack sufficient emotional, ideological and experiential understanding to understand or redefine a community that has worked for generations to bravely form their own identity and community.
Fred,
I appreciate your comments. I think you’ve taken some of my points and made presumptions based on them. For example,
“…you state, that dotGay LLC could survive an auction. While that may well be true, the purpose of the Community application was to provide recognition of a community. To argue, “well they can always go to auction” is rather disingenuous. It basically means, “well you were poorly evaluated but you always have a back up plan”
I don’t think they were poorly evaluated. I don’t think the applicant qualifies under the guidelines that were provided in the applicant guidebook. I think the disconnect comes in with something like .hotel being granted community status; I certainly don’t think that was the intention of Community Priority.
“Perhaps the greatest flaw in regards to this particular community is societal tendency to believe that they need to grant permission to minorities to allow them to define themselves on their own”
ICANN doesn’t care how people define themselves. It does care if a new TLD should be granted based on this definition. It’s worth noting that the applicant itself wants to require people to essentially be “authenticated” to be eligible to register the domains.
Allen, thank you for your respectful response. I think we will have to disagree in regards to ICANN and the definition of gay community. In fact ICANN said that the historical (and indeed cultural inclusion) of the members traditionally identified with the gay community is “over reaching”. To disenfranchise gay women, intersex or transgendered people is a unilateral redefinition of the community as that community defines itself. That shows a de facto lack of support of the community en toto, in favor of a incredibly narrow and presumed straight definition of what is permitted to represent the gay community. to say that ICann doesn’t care how a community and in the very same sentence state that it does care if a community TLD be granted based on this definition is a bit of an oxymoron. Who’s is more qualified to define our community, our members or ICANN?
In your orignal article you stated that you are hearing rumblings that dotGay cannot support the commercialization of the TLD. Myron where or whom are those rumblings coming from? It seems does not seem to be supported by a specific citation. This is similar to when Fox News says “sources say” or “some would say” when they are responding to a matter that they find objectionable to their views (please note I am drawing an analogy and not intending to be insulting to your journalistic skill sets)
In regards to your comment about organizations and companies chipping in, I am compelled to remind you that these organizations are most often not for profit and lack the financial resources to “chip in”.
finally in regards to your comment about , “even dotGay requiring authentication”. I support it for one simple inescapable fact. The straight community is not a target of political, religious or “traditional” organizations that view it simple existence as a threat in some manner. authentication allows the gay community to protect itself from hate speech and bad actors who call for violent, brutal and fatal treatment of Straight people, while our community of gay men, gay women, bisexual, transgendered and intersex people face this every day. I will leave you with three potential strings that should be an eye opener for readers.
1). WestborobaptistChurch.gay
2) GoKilla.gay
3) HowToBeatA.gay.
Again, I greatly respect and appreciate your indulgence and willingness to provide a discussion forum.
Hi Fred,
Regarding the question of people saying they can’t afford to pay, I talked to multiple people at ICANN last week who refuted my idea that they can just win at auction. They said it’s unlikely they can beat their competitors financially.
I find that hard to believe. I feel like this is something a company like Google would take up.
Regarding the example domain names you give, those indeed would be unfortunate registrations. I’ll point out something I’ve been saying for years: there’s nothing fundamentally different between a new TLD and an existing domain name. People could easily go register any of the domains you have above, just moving “gay” to the left of the dot and slapping .com on the end. There’s really no difference between this and having .gay to the right of the dot. Fortunately, no one has registered any of these domains in .com.
Andrew, he knows that.
He is just making a bullshit argument so he can impress some people that don’t know anything about domains. He thinks creating fear will get his way. He also trying to get some headlines for the media:
“If dotgay llc doesn’t gets .gay then GoKilla.gay will be registered the next day and 50 gays will die”.
Quite impressive Fred but no one bites.
@Konstantinos-maybe- because, as you self-admit (http://onlinedomain.com/about-us/) English is not your primary language, or you’re just drumming up your own hysteria, but there’s nowhere that Fred Nor says ’50 gays will die’ if a certain domain is registered. Your ignorance, bordering on arrogance, is exactly why dotgay llc put forth a plan to protect and support the community. Please tone down the exaggerations in order to have a civil discussion.
At this point, I am going to do the gentlemanly thing and agree to disagree with you, and wish you well.
Andrew…Konstantinos has stated that I claimed 50 gays would die. Would someone kindly read through my comments and point that out to me? I never made such a statement. I also have no media interest..I am debating a topic in a civil manner. If someone is setting up an interview for me with the BBC or CNN, please do let me know as I will likely need to get a haircut and iron a shirt. I have avoided using the comments fraught with hysteria that my industry colleague is using to throw an online temper tantrum.
I will just quote you to saw you how YOU started this unnecessary fear hunt:
“Does your creation of music cause you to be stoned to death? Does it cause employment discrimination? Does it cause you angst when you tell your family that you are in fact a musician? Does your creation of music cause you to be beaten in the street because of a prejuidice?”
“I will leave you with three potential strings that should be an eye opener for readers.
1). WestborobaptistChurch.gay
2) GoKilla.gay
3) HowToBeatA.gay.”
@Jay Boucher
I think you got this other way around. The hysteria is coming from Fred and his “GoKilla.gay” domains.
No one should be getting a community status.
Does dotGay LLC represent all gay people in the world? No.
The same applies to any other communities like eco and hotel and plumbers and pretty much everything else.
And of course .music shouldn’t get a community status. Even if it represented all pro musicians in the world. I create music everyday. Why should they own .music?
Besides .osaka, which was a curious case of a city hall not wanting to decide between possible registry operators, all the other contested community applications have questionable reasons of being called a community. It’s a very rare condition to actually being a community and being in a contention set, and there is no CPE approval so far that couldn’t go the opposite direction and be right.
I think AGB tried to address a very specific corner case of a clash between a community and a generic term, most likely in different languages, that hasn’t happened in this round. It could happen in future rounds, but for this round, if every contention set was simply decided on an auction basis, it wouldn’t be unfair in any of the cases.
Konstantinos, your comment regarding .gay is so incredibly over-simplified it’s actually painfully disingenuous. The purpose of the TLD is to represent those who wish to participate in a community. That community is historically inclusive of gay men, gay women, bisexuals, transgendered and intersex persons. To draw an analogy between .gay and .music to support your position on string contention for .music demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge when it comes to being discriminated against for being a sexual minority. Does your creation of music cause you to be stoned to death? Does it cause employment discrimination? Does it cause you angst when you tell your family that you are in fact a musician? Does your creation of music cause you to be beaten in the street because of a prejuidice? So please, if you are going to promote your own agenda for .music have the respect and decency to NOT do it at the expense of a minority grouping that is often ostracized and lives in fear. It demonstrates uninformed heterosexual presumptions on life as gay men gay women, bisexual or transgender persons. It’s also phenomenally unkind.
My comment is simply the truth.
The TLD is still there and anyone will be able to register a domain. This is about who will be making the money from these domains.
This has nothing to do with any community.
Nobody attacked the gays. Do you understand the difference between gay people and .gay the domain?
And no, I don’t want a US company claiming to “represent” the gay community in Greece.
And there is no such thing as a unified world gay community that can be represented by a single company.
I could have created dotgay2 llc in Greece and with the Greek community’s support could apply for .gay community status. How would be fair to all gay people in the world?
Are we doing a contest of who has suffered more? What about blacks? Jews? Women? Men? What are you talking about? What do stones have to do with .gay the domain names?
I don’t have any agenda with .music. I have an agenda with those who have an agenda to promote a company on the backs of gay people. Got it?
.Gay domains WILL BE AVAILABLE! Get one and stop complaining about a just decision.
So Fred why don’t you tell us who you are and who you work for?
Konstantinos, last question first. I am Fred Nor – I do not work for dotGay LLC if that is what you are inferring. It is up to you to believe that or not. Whether you chose to believe it, does not undermine my opinion or commentary.
Now working backwards, how does dotGay have an agenda “on the backs of gay people”. Your comment assumes a detriment to the gay community, when there is none. How are they harmed by the presentation of an inclusive top level domain? What gay person would be disenfranchised by such a community?
Are we doing a contest on who is suffering more? No, that was not indicated and for clarity, no minority should suffer because they are simply a minority. To introduce an argument on who suffered more has no relevance to community standard for a TLD. If those you call out as also having suffered had applied for a community TLD as a unifying TLD, then yes I would have fully supported that. It’s rather odd that you would introduce a such divisive comparisons to justify the fact that .gay was not awarded a community TLD.
In regards to your comment, is there such a thing of a “unified world community that can be represented by a world community?” Well yes, yes there is, particularly when you take note of the fact that in the application dotGAY LLC called for the establishment of an independent board where a majority of the profits from .gay would be distributed to gay organizations world-wide. Note that this independent board would not have any participants from dotGay LLC. Do you believe it would be better that ONE company, operated by openly straight people be the sole owner of .gay and not be compelled to benefit the gay community?
I take note that you don’t want a US company representing the gay community in Greece. Do you have a particular issue with the company being in the US? Did another company in another country or across multiple countries apply for the TLD as a community? No they didn’t, so please don’t fault the company for being based in the US, particularly when its leadership and ownership is made up of people from multiple countries.
Yes – you could have established a company in Greece representing the interests of gay people in Greece. So why didn’t you? Perhaps you would be willing to undertake such an enterprise in the next round of TLD’s? If not, your argument has undermined itself.
When you state that “this is about who will make money from the domains” When 2/3rds of the monies earned are going back to the community, who will make the money from the TLD. In the case of the community application, it will be gay men, gay women, bisexuals and transgendered.
Finally and forgive me for being so blunt, but when one redefines the gay community as did the EIU, indeed a community that has struggled hard to establish itself, has indeed been attacked. I hope that is a notion that you come to understand and appreciate.
“What gay person would be disenfranchised by such a community?” DomainIncite replied to that very well as to the dotgay application.
The real question is how is the gay community be disenfranchised is another applicant wins .gay and releases the .gay domains? It won’t be.
I introduced it because others have suffered but they didn’t apply for a community gtld. And gay people didn’t really apply, did they? It was a COMPANY that did.
So now you infer that dotgay llc is operated by gay people and the other 3 companies by straight people??? Even if that is true (no one knows and knows wants to know) what does this have to do with domains?
You know what? 66% to the gay community is not enough. First of all why should we have one company choosing who gets what money? And why not 100%? And I mean a true 100%. Not 100% after the CEO gets a 2 million salary. If that was the case maybe I would support it. Now? NO.
I don’t want any COMPANY “representing” gay people or any other group of people for that matter. It is not a problem with the US.
I didn’t do it because it is wrong to do it. dotgay llc is in this for the money. Period.
And again: 100% to the community? Maybe, if you get all gay communities in the world to vote for a board that will decide who gets the money.
66% and the CEO getting millions each year? NO.
Konstantinos: Thanks for making perverse assumptions simply because your argument has been undermined. I gather you are a true gentlemen in a debate. You do realize that in my disagreement with you I maintained a civil discourse and never once insulted you personally. It’s interesting that you have stooped to such a level because of a difference of opinion, while you have failed to address the concerns pointed out to you. I hope in future disagreements if there are any, you can maintain a level of maturity, professionalism and civility.
I have nothing more to say to you.
You brought the discussion to this level with your bullshit fear loving domains.
Yes you did insulted me and you keep doing it.
If you think that calling your argument “bullshit” then you know what an insult is.
Probably more like what you wrote here and a lot worse.
This matter is closed. .Gay is going to auction. Bye.
Perhaps it is going to auction…perhaps it is not but I am genuinely pleased to say Good bye to you as well.