.Music domain name applicant fails in community bid

A second applicant fails to get community status for .music top level domain name.

DotMusic Limited, an applicant for the .music top level domain name, has failed to pass its Community Priority Evaluation. Had it passed, the group would have automatically been awarded .music. Now an auction will be held to determine who gets to operate the domain name.

The applicant scored 10 out of 16 points (pdf) on its application. 14 are necessary to get community status.

It scored 0 out of 4 on “community establishment”, which sunk the rest of the application.

The panel determined that, although the applicant defined a community, “The community as defined in the application does not demonstrate an awareness and recognition among its members.”

It continues, “…While the Panel acknowledges that many of these individuals would share a “commonality of interest” in music, according to the AGB this is not sufficient to demonstrate the requisite awareness and recognition of a community among its members.”

The panel also found a lack of “organization” and that the community, as defined, did not pre-exist by the guidebook cut off of 2007. Yes, the individual “members” existed in 2007 but “the fact that each organization was active prior to 2007 does not mean that these organizations were active as a community prior to 2007.”

While DotMusic didn’t pass the Community Priority Evaluation, it scored much better than a rival applicant’s 3 points.

It will probably be a while before a .music top level domain name becomes a reality. Ten bucks says DotMusic Limited founder Constantine Roussos will file some sort of appeal with ICANN.