2 GAC Early Warnings for the .VIN new gTLD

The "GAC" is part of the ICANN new gTLD validation process. As defined on its web site: "The GAC's key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy, and especially where there may be an interaction between ICANN's activities or policies and national laws or international agreements."

The GAC filed 242 objections and these were published today. There are 2 warnings for the .VIN new generic Top Level Domain. I was filed by France, the other one by the Luxembourg.

I can't help it witting this but...there is one new gTLD applicant for .VIN and there are 3 for .WINE but there are no Early Warnings for any of the 3 other .WINE applications! This shows, once again, the lack of understanding by Governments. I love to read in one of the reason/rationale for the warning of .VIN:

• "Any product that does not comply with these rules cannot be marketed under the denomination “wine” or “vin” in French".
• "Hence, for the award of the tld .vin it is important to have strict rules verifying a close relation with the wine."

The results of these warnings could seriously endanger Registrants (those who would be interested in registering a .vin domain name) to ever be able to register a .vin domain name. These Early Warnings for the .VIN new gTLD only open the way to have different domain name registration rules for .vin and .wine domain names. There is a long discussion about this issue on LinkedIn.

Should Governments have written these objections for one string only and not its translation in English? Certainly not because it is just a non sense to do it for one and not the other. By doing so it is possible the applicant for .VIN just follows a "Possible Remediation" suggested by the French Government: the simple withdrawal of the application.

In one word: would the applicant for .VIN withdraw its application, the English language, once again, could thank the French Government for offering the wine industry an online identity in English only: the .wine domain names.

I wonder what is going to happen now for the .VIN new gTLD but solutions exist.

What to read now:

1. The list of GAC Early Warnings is available here;
2. GAC Early Warning by the French government is here;
3. GAC Early Warning by the Luxembourg is here.