ICANN San Juan – New gTLD Frustration

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The ICANN meeting in San Juan drew to a close yesterday. As can be expected ICANN released a number of press releases and statements and these are now being scrutinised by the domain industry.

Bret Fausett, for example, is not overly impressed with Paul Twomey’s statement on new gTLDs:

ICANN’s President Paul Twomey has declared that ICANN’s new gTLD policy is “on track.”

The claim reminds me of the way that Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq back in 2003.

His feelings are echoed to a certain degree by those of Christopher Ambler:

Perhaps ICANN could start by, instead of instituting a whole new process, completing the introduction of the applications still pending from 2000. I would wager that of the 40 applications still pending, no more than 10 to 15 of them still want to proceed. That’s a nice, small number. Let’s clear the backlog and complete the last holdover – those of us who have, as Bret points out, been waiting for upwards of 10 years to compete.

So what exactly is happening?

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

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