Group says that it spurred ICANN to take action.
As Jeff Neumann commented last week, Dot Hip Hop has withdrawn its reconsideration request regarding the assignment of the .hiphop TLD from Uniregistry to Dot Hip Hop (DHH). It’s only the thirteenth withdrawal of a reconsideration request at ICANN since 1999. In its letter to the ICANN Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee, DHH noted:
…We are doing this because we believe that no matter how uncomfortable this action was for DHH, the request served its initial purpose. It is certainly an unfortunate undertaking, but we believe it was necessary to help move the process forward and seems to have done well to open up the channels of communication.
As a result of our formal withdrawal of Reconsideration Request 21-3, it is our expectation that DHH’s request for the assignment of .hiphop will immediately be put back on track without the need for a “pause” in the process, as stated in ICANN’s December 22, 2021, letter to DHH…
As part of the team behind Dot Hip Hop, Neumann had characterized ICANN’s decision to “pause” the assignment process as retaliation against Dot Hip Hop for calling out the delay in processing the assignment requests. ICANN addressed that contention in a recent blog post.
The withdrawal letter, which has not been published on ICANN’s RR 21-3 archive page as of Monday, states that the initial goal of the reconsideration request was to get ICANN into action on the stalled .hiphop transfer application. A glance through the history of ICANN’s reconsideration process shows that the likelihood of successfully protesting actions or inactions by ICANN’s board or staff is rare. ICANN has dismissed or denied the vast majority of the 178 reconsideration requests that have been made.
However, sometimes a reconsideration request can result in a policy refinement or a process improvement. In 2001, RR 01-5 led to a formal mechanism for Board designation of policies to the Internet Coordination Policy list. In 2018, RR 18-10 sparked additional process refinements regarding ICANN work with countries in the Amazon region as .amazon applications were considered. Or, as RR 21-3: Dot Hip Hop highlights, making a reconsideration request can draw attention to an issue while prodding ICANN org into offering an explanation if not taking more immediate action.
MICHAEL DOONER says
Forgive my ignorance….will .hiphop becoming online.
John Berryhill says
It already is. It was launched in 2014, and in the years since then it has exploded in popularity with over 650 domain names registered.
MICHAEL DOONER says
Hi John will there be a .hiphop?
John Berryhill says
On the off chance that this is not some bizarre form of trolling – .HIPHOP ALREADY EXISTS!
.hiphop has existed in the root since 2014. You can go to Name.com, type in Dooner.hiphop and register it right now if you’d like.
Yes, there will be a .hiphop. There has been a .hiphop since 2014. There is a .hiphop today. There will be one tomorrow too. There are over 650 domain names already registered in .hiphop. That’s a lot. It would take several minutes to read them all in a list.
The news item to which we are responding is merely about the sale of .hiphop from the existing .hiphop registry to a new entity which believes that the popularity of hip-hop will somehow translate into a lot of domain registrations. For example, most people own and wear shoes. That is why .shoes has soared to over 4800 domain name registrations in eight years.
With enough investment, advertising, promotion and more money into the pit, .hiphop has the potential to attract hundreds more domain registrations, and may someday be as big as .shoes.
Kevin says
Great explanation John! LMAO!