ICANN Announces Names of Proposed New gTLDs Tomorrow

LONDON—Wednesday, Jan. 13, is the day ICANN has set aside to reveal the names of the over 1900 companies, organizations, startups, geographical regions and others that have applied to operate new generic top-level domains. The announcement of the names will take place over four hours during what ICANN is calling Reveal Day. The event is physically taking place in London, at Kings Place, 90 York Way, starting at 12 noon, and will also be streamed live on ICANN.org. Tomorrow's announcements are the beginning of the public vetting process for the proposed TLDs. The Associated Press has been so kind as to publish a guide explaining the process, which in a best-case scenario could take nine months, or until March 2013, from the commencement of ICANN's review of an application to the date of approval of the first batch of TLDs. Challanged applications will take longer. The AP guide is, as follows: THE APPLICATIONS: The system opened in January. Applicants had to answer 50 questions covering such things as what a proposed suffix will be used for and what kind of financial backing the company or organization has. They had until late March to begin the application and until May 30 to finish — the deadline was extended because a technical glitch kept the system offline for more than a month. Each application cost $185,000. THE CHALLENGES: After ICANN announces on Wednesday the suffixes that have been proposed, the public will have 60 days to comment on them. That is when someone can claim a trademark violation or argue that a proposed suffix is offensive. THE REVIEW: ICANN will review each application to make sure its financial plan is sound and that contingencies exist in case a company goes out of business. Applicants also must pass criminal background checks. If multiple applicants seek the same suffix, ICANN will encourage the parties to work out an agreement. The organization will hold an auction if they cannot. The review is expected to take at least nine months, meaning approval of the first batch won't happen until March 2013 or later. If there are challenges or other problems, ICANN believes the review could take up to 20 months. THE LAUNCH: Once a suffix gets approved, the applicant will have to set up procedures for registering names under that suffix and computers to keep track of them. Applicants might have all that already completed in anticipation of an approval. The application pays an annual fee that starts at $25,000. The suffix gets activated and becomes available for use. All that could take days or months. For spectators from the adult entertainment industry, it will be interesting to see who, if anyone, other than ICM Registry, has stepped up to apply for a gTLD. The operator of .xxx indicated in April that it had submitted applications for three additional adult entertainment-related TLDs—.sex, .porn and .adult. More information about the new gTLD process can be found here.