ICANN’s new Extended Process Similarity Review Panel gave first results. It considered the appeal of Greece and Bulgaria and decided that IDN ccTLDs of these countries - .ΕΛ and .БГ, respectively, are not “confusingly similar” to existing national domains in Latin and could be delegated.
Bulgaria’s application for .БГ domain was rejected way back in 2010. ICANN’s commission found that it was too similar to Brazil’s national domain .BR (.br). In 2011 the same things happened with Greek application for domain .ΕΛ – it was considered to similar to .EA domain. It is interesting that this gTLD does not exist at all. But ICANN suggests the possibility of its appearance in the future.
The decisions were evaluated negatively by ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Largely under the pressure of the Committee the corporation decided to introduce procedure of extended review and provided an opportunity to appeal. Greece and Bulgaria used it.
It’s noteworthy that initial ICANN refusals were made almost without explanation; current decisions are accompanied by detailed description of methodology. The Committee conducted quite a scientific experiment. A group of American students saw browser address bar on the screen with addresses filled in. There were .ΕΛ and .БГ, as well as potentially similar .BR and .EA. Later the subjects were asked to pick out addresses that they have seen. The possible confusability was decided according to the number of mistakes. By the way, as a result of experiment another appeal was rejected. It was Greek application for internationalized Greek version of European Union domain .EY. The string in fact was very similar to .EV and .EY. The application was rejected on these grounds before.
According to ICANN rules, this means that the application for .EY is permanently rejected, without the possibility of reconsideration. But domains .ΕΛ and .БГ now have green light and will soon be delegated.
Andrei Kolesnikov, CEO at Coordination Center for TLD RU, have congratulated his colleagues: “The long story of getting IDN domains is finally over. Bulgaria and Greece are getting domains in their national languages. The address Internet space has changed dramatically over the past years, different communities – national, geographical, professional - have got their gTLDs. Appearance of new IDN domains is an obvious global trend that will change the way users interact with Internet resources. We congratulate our Bulgarian and Greek colleagues and wish prosperity to the new domain zones.”
