Donuts, that won domains .VIN and .WINE, it seems, will finally get a chance to launch them. Today the status of the domains on the official ICANN webpage were changed from “On Hold” to “In Contracting”. Various wine trade associations and several governments (primarily European) with strong traditions of winemaking were against the launch.
Better say, they were trying to get special conditions on registrations in the new gTLDs. Their concern is that if there is no special mechanism names like Bordeaux.vin or rioja.wine could be registered by anyone who might have nothing to do with famous winemaking regions. This will obviously harm both winemakers and consumers. ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC) has not been able to reach consensus on this issue because some countries including the US did not support the objections mentioned above. As a result the EU government together with some trade associations filed a formal complaint against the decision of ICANN to delegate these domains.
Last autumn ICANN president Fadi Chehade assured French government (one of the main stakeholders) that he personally was negotiating with domain applicants so that winemakers’ interests were met. It remains to assume that the negotiations were successful. The change in domain status on the ICANN’s official webpage means that the complaint had been withdrawn and there are no formal obstacles to the start of .VIN and .WINE any more. It remains unclear on what conditions the parties have agreed.
