The ICANN Board’s New gTLD Program Committee has declined Belgium’s request that a competing bid by Donuts be rejected. The other applicant is Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council, which has made a deal with the Belgian government to donate some of its profits to Spa projects and give the city some control over the registry.
The origin of the word “spa” is disputed. Some dictionaries claim that the word is derived from the town of Spa, Belgium, but this is not the only interpretation. Donuts, which obviously disagrees with Belgium on the origin, refused to make a deal with the Belgian government, arguing that “spa” was not protected by ICANN’s rules on geographic names and hence they were not obligated to secure the support of the local authorities.
This reasoning has prevailed, and the fate of .spa will likely be sealed at an auction.
It is surprising that the GAC chose not to support the Belgian government. Simultaneously with .spa, the GAC was considering a dispute over .amazon between the e-commerce company Amazon and Peru and Brazil, which are part of the Amazon Basin. The South American nations managed to persuade the GAC to issue consensus advice to suspend Amazon’s bid, despite the fact that the word “amazon” does not exactly match the word used in local languages.
Why “spa”, which exactly matches the name of a city, did not receive the same treatment is puzzling.
