Round 2 and Blocked Names: Page 191 of the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook

I didn't pay attention to this in the first place because I saw no reason for a change about the .LOCAL new gTLD.

The .LOCAL new gTLD...

...is definitely one of the best strings to submit an application for anyone wanting to promote local content with domain names ending in ".local" (instead of ".com").

Can you submit an application for .LOCAL ?

I read it twice and compared both versions of the two applicant guidebook: version 2012 (page 60 & 61) and version 2026 (page 191 & 192) to understand why the .LOCAL new gTLD (and a few others) had disappeared from the list of Blocked Names from the 2026 Applicant Guidebook.

I noticed a few strings were missing form the list of Blocked Names and wondered: "How is it possible that I did not notice this?"

Reality came back knocking at my door when I read that paragraph about Special-Use Domain Names :

"Special-Use Domain Names: These are specific strings reserved by technical standards for purposes inconsistent with delegation, as explicitly noted on IANA’s Special-Use Domain Names Registry.245,246,247".

Special-Use Domain Names are specific strings reserved by technical standards for purposes inconsistent with delegation and when you click on the 245 hyperlink, it shows a few more strings that you cannot submit an application for. "Local" (and a few others) is in that list.

List of Blocked Names from 2012 Round 1:

List of Blocked Names from 2026 Round 2:

Don't submit an application for .LOCAL : this string is a blocked name. 

Latest news: the new gTLD Guidebook was adopted

Just in case you missed:

1. The ICANN84 Governmental Advisory Committee Communiqué Now Available. 12 very exciting pages to read and even more exciting starting page 6 of the PDF (the rest is a transcript):
1. Applicant Support Program Implementation and New gTLD Next Round Outreach.
2. Additional Fee for Evaluation of Geographic Names During the Next Round of New gTLDs.
3. Latin Script Diacritics.
4. IGO Protections.
2. The ICANN Board just "adopted" the next round Applicant Guidebook (also called the "AGB"),
3. ICANN Request for Proposal: New gTLD Program: 2026 Round Background Screening Services,
4. ICANN Request for Proposal: Evaluator Panels for String Similarity and Variant Strings for the new gTLD Program: 2026 Round,
5. Collaboration Key to Delivering ICANN’s New gTLD Applicant Guidebook.

There is a new "Quick links" pages on the ICANN website here.

Houston? We lost .STAR

I am sure that the so many groups working to prepare the next round of the ICANN new gTLD program will have come with a solution for the problem after.

Applications' contacts
There are two contacts to list when submitting a new gTLD application:

1. A primary contact;
2. A secondary contact.

These two contacts are important; they are the two references for the entire new gTLD application. It can take time for an application to launch and many things can happen between the moment you submit your application to the ICANN and the moment the TLD is "live"; sometimes up to 10 years. In 10 years, it is not rare that the employee of a company changes job (inside or outside of the company). It is what's happened with this registry.

Knock Knock?

I found out about the .STAR new gTLD and contacted the operator:

1. I fist went to nic.star. This second level domain is reserved to registries and often introduces the TLD. Lucky me, there was a contact page with an email but writing to it, I received an error in return with a "We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (xxx) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group..." Strange, this is the email of a group and anyway...there is a problem with the email.
2. I went to the new gTLD application and checked the primary contact and I found...a Gmail address, so I wrote to it. I doubled checked on LinkedIn and found that the contact - not only uses an email external to the company, but also...he left the company.
3. I checked the secondary contact and sent the same email. Guess what: this is the answer I received from the server: "Your message wasn't delivered to xxx@xxx.combecause the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail" (note that I changed the email for this publication). This is bad luck because none of the two most important contacts of the application can't be reached by email and the Gmail address could be used by...anyone.
4. I finally went to the IANA website, which lists all registries and I found an email for the administrative contact to whom I wrote to (I'll come back on this if I receive an answer).

A security hole?
You can have the best tools and the best technique to achieve your goals, but it also happens that security problems are not necessarily technical ones but human ones: who knows if these emails were not used for something else as important as a $185,000.00 new gTLD application? Using an email on which the company has no control for such projects can cause serious security breaches.

New gTLD applications require an update
I already noticed that many applications are not up-to-date. For example, some have changed hands and the contacts are not the same anymore. It also appears that question 18/A ("Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD") does not reflect the mission of the gTLD anymore.

I believe that the ICANN should ask applicants to check their new gTLD application (and if possible, without asking them to pay for this) - to update question 18/A at least, but ensure that primary and secondary contacts...are the good ones.

Links to official documents (Specification 5)

Many of us have read Specification 5 of the Applicant Guidebook (4 June 2012) regarding reserved names at the second level in gTLD registries. Basically: which domain names should be reserved, and not allowed to be registered.

After searching in the Applicant Guidebook annexes and the entire new gTLD web site, I remember finding the documents on the United Nations' web site...after 20+ minutes searching. The two documents I am refering to*:

1. The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names, Part III Names of Countries of the World;
2. The list of United Nations member states in 6 official United Nations languages prepared by the Working Group on Country Names of the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

I visited the web site yesterday to check the documents again and I found a draft dated 2006. I didn't want to spend 20 more minutes trying to locate the documents again so I sent an email and received a very fast and kind answer which I want to share with you:

The first document you list is only available for purchase and is not current.  If you want to purchase it, here’s the link:

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/pubs/gesgrid.asp?ID=377

The second set of information is available in the following document, which is current as of May 2012:

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/docs/10th-uncsgn-docs/econf/E_CONF.101_25_UNGEGN%20WG%20Country%20Names%20Document.pdf

Even if most back-end registry providers will take care of these lists for their clients applicants, I suggest to double check if they have the latest documents.


* These are just 2 of the documents concerning reserved names. For the rest of them, I suggest to read Specification 5 again (page 46 of the Registry agreement in the Applicant Guidebook).

New version 10 of the Applicant Guidebook

A new version of the applicant guidebook (V10) was just published with minor changes. You can find it here. Down the page you will find a link entitled "Summary of Changes to the Applicant Guidebook" which shows, in red, changes with last version.

What are these changes:

1. Attachment to Module 2 (Evaluation Questions and Criteria), Protection of Geographic Names: Link references are updated;
2. 3.1, GAC Advice on New gTLDs: Updated for consistency with the formulation of GAC advice;
3. 3.3, Filling procedures: Updated to provide current reference to Dispute Resolution Service Provider rules;
4. Dispute Resolution Service Provider fees and rules: Draft provider fees and rules are no longer included in Guidebook as page has been established for the Objection and Dispute Resolution processes and the current information is available at http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/objection-dispute-resolution;
5. Attachment to Module 5: Registry Agreement, Registry Functions Activity Report: Removed total line for registrars as this report relates to registry functions;
6. 6.1, Trademark Claims Service: Updated to correct copy/paste error in sentence order: The Trademark Clearinghouse Database will be structured to report to registries when registrants are attempting to register a domain name that is considered an “Identical Match” with the mark in the Clearinghouse. “Identical Match” means that the domain name consists of the complete and identical textual elements of the mark. In this regard: (a) spaces contained within a mark that are either replaced by hyphens (and vice versa) or omitted; (b) only certain special characters contained within a trademark are spelled out with appropriate words describing it (@ and &); (c) punctuation or special characters contained within a mark that are unable to be used in a second-level domain name may either be (i) omitted or (ii) replaced by spaces, hyphens or underscores and still be considered identical matches; and (d) no plural and no “marks contained” would qualify for inclusion. Identical Match” with the mark in the Clearinghouse. “Identical Match” means that the domain name consists of the complete and identical textual elements of the mark. In this regard: (a) spaces contained within a mark that are either replaced by hyphens (and vice versa).

Read the ICANN announcement here.

The Applicant guidebook available in French soon!

According to an email I just received:

1. An updated version of the Applicant Guidebook will be available sometime this month ;
2. French is one of the languages it is being translated into but there is no specified date for this publication.

I don't know what the changes are going to be in the updated version, neither can I say whether it will be called the “final version” or “version 8”.

I am happy French readers can have the same level of information as the rest of the world...because everyone knows the rest of the world speaks English right ?

:-)