Bei einem Workshop auf dem ICANN Meeting in Sydney ist einmal wieder unsere Expertise gefragt.
Die Frage ist, ob es für unproblematische Geo-Top-Level-Domains ein „Frühstarter”-Fenster geben soll. Einen entprechenden Vorschlag unterstützen wir mit zahlreichen anderen Parteien.
Neben sind auf dem Panel der ehemalige ICANN Direktor Amadeu Abril i Abril, der Londoner Rechtsexperte Nick Wood, der Council Member bei MARQUES, der European Association of Brand Owners ist und einen Sitz beim Advisory Board of the Czech Court of Arbitration inne hat, sowie weitere Internetexperten aus.
Mein Redebeitrag:
Dear Ladies and Gentleman, thank you for inviting us again to speak up again on the topic of city top-level domains. We are overwhelmed by the huge success and development the city top-level domain movement made in the past couple of years. Today there are more than 12 city top-level domain initiatives a a lot of cultural and linguistic initiatives as well.
We appreciate that ICANN CEO and President Paul Twomey mentioned in nearly all interviews gave during the last year the cityTLDs as an example of a reasonable and beneficial expansion of the domain name system (DNS).
The benefits of city top-level domains are unquestionable:
They provide local identity for the city, the citizens and their organizations. The recently published Gandi report mentioned that only those TLDs are likely to succeed that are able to provide real identity. Secondly city top-level domains are local name space for today’s hyperlocal world with local search, local business and local news etc.
For place branding cityTLDs mean a needed USP and a desirable advantage of the location. Last but not least cityTLDs will contribute to wealth and revenues even in these hard economic times. ICANN should facilitate this opportunity. To summarize, city top-level domains will be of priceless value for cities.
We in Berlin have our application for ICANN ready since 2007, as well as other cities do have. We as well as our city governments do not understand why ICANN retains us for years now. This hurts the city communities, not only in terms of communication and trust but also with a huge economic burden.
Since cityTLDs and other cultural and linguistic top-level domains are the only ones, I repeat the only ones, which need to be in agreement with the relevant governments and authorities when applying at ICANN, everybody knows that their approval will be a fast track, with no objections.
Therefore we do not see why city, cultural and linguistic top-level domains should be longer retained from entering the root. We think an early application window is needed for these straightforward TLDs. This would relax the first application round a lot and could give ICANN’s nex CEO the chance to show that new TLD are able to create and deliver what they promise.
I hope this discussion will contribute to a relief of the stress symptoms the new gTLD process already shows.
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