ICANN Corporation has refused the third application of the company dotgay LLC for the new gTLD .GAY as the domain that represents interests of LGBT community. Thus, the fate of the domain remains unclear; however, most probably it will be decided on an auction if there are no more appeals. Four companies have applied for .GAY domain, dotgay LLC being one of them. Moreover, it was especially founded in order to gain rights for this domain. dotgay LLC managed to garner wide support - more than 180 LGBT organizations all over the world expressed their support. On this basis, the company claims the domain as a representative of a global LGBT community.
According to ICANN rules, if the domain represents interests of a particular social group, it should be granted to its representatives. However, there is a special procedure called Community Priority Evaluation that precedes the decision. It provides a set of 16 eligibility criteria; the applicant must meet at least 14 of them. The application of dotgay LLC was found to comply only 10 criteria and therefore was rejected. Representatives of the company managed to prove that the application processing took place with a number of procedural irregularities and got the possibility to reapply. However, the result remained the same. dotgay LLC appealed for the third time; however, the claim remained unsettled.
It should be noted that Community Priority Evaluation procedure is thought by many to be complicated and not very transparent. All of this before was the reason to criticize ICANN. However, this time the corporation is accused of infringement of the interests of LGBT community. ICANN’s official statement reads that the corporation does not preclude delegation of .GAY domain and does not deprive dotgay LLC from the possibility of becoming its administrator. The company can do it by winning the auction. ICANN just uses current norms and rules of application assessment when making a decision.
For their part, ICANN supporters believe that actions of dotgay LLC are only delaying the decision concerning .GAY’s fate. If LGBT community needs it so much, it should be understood that the domain would have been delegated and active by now if one of the contenders hadn’t demanded and complained constantly.
