It appears ICANN is NOT willing to give any assurance to applicants who put down their $185,000 application fee that any special refund would be available in the event a court orders ICANN to stopped or delay the new gTLD program.
When asked about the refund policy of ICANN in the event that some court orders ICANN to stop or delay the new gTLD program, ICANN was quite clear.
“We will only offer refunds that are laid out in the Applicant Guide Book.”
“The Guidebook does not specifically talk about a refund based on court action.”
“The only refunds provided under the Guidebook are:
“If the GAC (Governmental Advisory Counsel) issues an early waring and the applicant withdraws its application they get 80% of the application fee back;
“If an Applicant withdraws before initial evaluation they get 70% of their application fee back”
“After initial evaluation if the applicant withdraws their application they get 20% of the application fee back.”
So ICANN is clearly asking the applicants to take the risk of litigation with them.
Some groups like the ANA have openly threaten to sue ICANN to stop the new gTLD program and they have said they might not sue right away.
When it come to a partial refund of the application fee, the old saying Time is Money, is particularly true.
Something that any applicant needs to consider before writing out the check for $185,000 per application.
well if the Guidebook does NOT “chat” about a court action…
It seems that in the event it was ICANN itself that got shut down from issuing the TLD’s due to a court action towards them, they would not have a choice but to fully refund the applicant(s)… if not, the courts would ultimately force them to anyway.
Seems lame to specify all the percentages and limits on refunds for all the other scenarios but leave the one scenario completely unaddressed.
It still amazes me how hard they are pushing to get these out despite all the calls to slow down. It’s all about the money…nothing more.
It still amazes me how slow they are going, pushing these out – despite all the calls to hurry up. It’s all about the money…nothing more. 🙂
If this fails, and I expect it will, guess what…
The tens of millions they spent putting all of this together will get passed on as price hikes on domain renewals..
Registrars and TLD consultants will be making $$$
Calling all SUCKERS…er…gtld registrars.
I’m not concerned about the refund provision. The only question in my head is what investors, in their right mind, would be dumb enough to forge into this foolhardy scenario?
As a follow up, I would like to know what web operators in their right mind, would be dumb enough to establish their precious online business on a quicksand foundation involving one of the new extensions that can go under at any moment?
Oh, one more…sorry…what consumer, in their right mind, would be willing to visit, trust and patronize a new, non-established extension. Had that been an option .BIZ, .MOBI, .PRO, .TEL, .AERO, .TRAVEL, .JOBS, .CAT, .COOP., .INFO and .MUSEUM would have taken off long ago. Know anyone that uses any of these as a PRIMARY site? Nope, me either. We will soon be able to add .XXX to the list. Same with .US and .CO country codes too. Nice for domain collectors, but those rockets just ain’t gonna launch.
If and when these are introduced, I expect a loud fizzle fizzle thud thud as they each go down in flames.
you have to laugh when icann people say registries must not be “fly-by-night” operations run from someone’s kitchen and at the same time they are asking for a non-refundable _$185K_ _application_ fee. no guranatees whatsoever. sort of like… fly-by-night registries. poof. say goodbye to your money. that is precisely what consumers should be protected against. consumers need protection from icann.
perhaps the reason they are pushing for this is that they know their dns’ exclusivity is nearing its end.
it won’t last forever in the face of changes that are taking place as the internet grows.
they might be able to scale with the volume of traffic, but not with the volume of disputes they knowingly create.
urs is a joke.
the names should never be created in the first place.
icann wants to create these infringing names and collect the fees: either from trademark holders via regisration _or_ urs filing fees, or from domainers (aka sqautters) via registrations.
the domain names costs pennies for registries to maintain but they bring in an incredible return for icann, from the registry application fees to get “approval”, and the icann fees registrars pay.
but this operation only works because of trademarks, and the marketing and advertising dollars companies have spent to strengthen them in the real world.
there’s no value in these domain names otherwise. we’ve had many years to observe this in action. it is not “magic”. icann knows full well where the money comes from.
“domaining” (i.e., what has made great money for some individuals and pretty good money for icann and the registries and registrars) may have begun innocently and no one was sure where it would go, but everyone knows now. icann knows. and they’ve decided they want a big slice of the domaining pie.
it’s a little late for that. hence the rush. new domain extensions. domain names that are easily confused with brands. we’ve been though this before. it’s a scam that is nearing it’s usable life.
.BigMistake
Not feelin’ the love, here. Does anyone out there (other than Beckstrom and Crocker!) actually think this will be a success?
Michael, I am surprised to read of this ugliness on your site. Weren’t you a proponent of the rollout?
Seems like an obvious recipe for disaster if you ask me. Fasten your safety belts for 1/12/12. Train wreck ahead.
I suspect whoever does pony up the $$ and gets a domain like
acme.brick
and then advertises that address
will be sending tons of traffic to whoever owns acmebrick.com
It will take a decade or more to unlearn the habits of the last two decades.
and seriously. who in their right mind thinks a few hundred websites
have any chance to outcompete the millions of websites already in operation.
@40Z — I could not agree more.
Consider that 90% of all national ads are from the Fortune 500. How many Fortune 500 firms do not have a .com as their main address? I’ll give you a hint: none.
Accordingly, netizens will be subjected to and brainwashed by .COM ads for years and years to come. How can .Sillyness compete with that? It can’t. Destined to fail.
The only success will be the idn gtld in .com imho yet it is rarely mentioned.
So ICANN is willing to take all of the rewards, and none of the risk?
Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Brad
1. It will never be approved
2. If it is approved, no one will ever pay $185K + $25/yr
3. If someone does pay $185K + $25K/yr to register .whatever, no one will want it.
4. If someone does register Whatever.whatever, no one will trust it or go there.
5. Not enough people will register .whatever to cover the $185K+$25K/year
6. the .whatever registry will go under for lack of sales and interest
7. all sites using the .whatever tld will be foreced to close down
8. search engines will not list .whatever2 due to instability
9. consumers will shun .whatever2 for lack of credibility
10. register your .com now while you can still get one
can you imagine the companies that have invested millions and millions
in their expensivebrand.com, now disregarding all of that branding and
marketing expense, existing SEO, thousands of incoming links, and going
to the expense to start over with expensive.brand ??
really I’m incredulous that a committee thought they could change the
architecture of the internet.
they are more than a decade late with this non-brilliant idea.
haven’t they ever heard of a focus group? this bad idea would have
been flushed out in one session.
I agree that this offering is doomed to fail. Bad idea. Bad implementation. No need. No demand. Nothing is solved by their introduction.
I think it will make .com more valuable after these go bust within a few months. .XXX will serve as a guinea pig. Just you watch.
.stupidwasteofmoneythatwouldhavebeenbetterspentondotcom
I think that all of the additional gTLDs released, e.g. .MUSEUM were just stupid to start with & doing it on a small scale would never take off.
There will be lots of advantages too, e.g.
Buying .TESCO will allow them to have their domains at the top of search results, e.g. insurance.tesco, shop.tesco, etc. Being top of the search makes a huge difference to online income.
Easier to track TV Adverts, e.g. displaying the URL http://apriloffer.tesco, normally this is very difficult
Secure banking, e.g. https://hsbc.bank.
Better local domains, e.g. instead of buying http://www.jamiesshopinlondon.com they will buy http://jamiesshop.london. They will also be able to buy domains more appropriate for the business they are in, instead of trying to find something vaguely similar from .com – again, good for SEO & profits.
I also expect email addresses like firstname@surname.mail
Lets also not forget that the world does not just have one language and character set. The change opens this up.
So its not all bad at all.
Send me $100,000 and I’ll tell you how you can save $85,000 on your gTLD application.
Most of the comments about the massive pre-eminence of .com are just a plain waste of words – tell us something we don’t know – and when they say that NO other tld is worth a cent – .net ? .org? even the humble .info for some uses – i just don’t get it. Of course the .com for any domain will always fetch way more at a disposal-sale, but that’s a completely different thing to saying that there is no functionality in the other tlds for running websites and earning revenue-streams. When it comes to searches, how often does anyone type in the tld in addition to the keywords ? For many highly-searched keywords, the premium tlds are being hoarded by domainers, so the only sites with the content which someone needs to find – i can think of several health-related sites right now – are those with humble tlds. The searcher gladly lands on those sites to get the info they need and couldn’t give a rats xxx about the site’s tld. The worst thing that could happen to everybody – except for those holding big portfolios of .coms – basically investor-gamblers – is a slavish devotion to the mantra: Only .com is good…only .com is good……only…..blah blah. ( Hang on, maybe i’ve got this wrong – go on, force the .com values higher and higher, and then folks will be forced to come and bid on my humble .nets & .orgs when they can’t afford a .com for their venture or organisation ! ) Whatever, what prompted me to say anything, is that this thread’s obsession : gTLD’s Versus .com just seemed to bypass the other non-g tld’s altogether.
Kenny
you been watching too many directv commercials
My Kindle Fire has a .com button, that’s all I’m saying.
@CB — Or, if they send me $20 and I will hook them up with a .COM AND show them how to create a subdomain to achieve the same simple effect sought by “G” who thinks he needs an entirely new gtld structure to achieve that.
@Joe Ray — Good point about the button on your Kindle Fire, most other phones AND TABLETS now have .com buttons too. Hey, wait a MINUTE…shouldn’t phones have a button for .TEL? Oh, wait…that was a failure. What makes you think .anythingelse will do better?
@G — Sound like you just don’t get “it”. That’s fine. You go right ahead and invest heavily in either the registry or the registrant aspect of this well thought out ICANN plan. Go you! (snicker, snicker!)