New information appeared on the official ICANN webpage dedicated to notifications on termination of registration agreements. It concerns ten new gTLDs, agreements of which were terminated. The reason was that the domains were delegated a year ago, however, in all this time no names were registered in them. In accordance with ICANN rules, this leads to termination of registration agreement between the corporation and the registries.
By coincidence, nine out of ten domains were delegated to African companies. These are domains: naspers, .supersport, .mzansimagic, .mnet, .kyknet, .africamagic, .multichoice, .dstv and .gotv. Observers believe that ICANN’s decision might provoke a wave of criticism towards the corporation. ICANN has been repeatedly criticized before that it doesn’t do enough for the development of the domain industry in the world and that the program of new domains has been developed mainly for American companies and users. Indirect confirmation of this is that out of almost 2000 applications for the new domains on the first stage only 17 represented Africa. And 9 of them will be terminated now. In fairness, however, we have to admit that it’s not ICANN’s fault that registries couldn’t ensure normal functioning of their domain zones.
It should be noted that ICANN corporation has warned more than 200 companies that their delegated domains would meet the same fate if their domains zones don’t show normal activity in the near future. Above all, this applies to dot-brands, Intel, Netflix, Lego and Nike are among large companies that own some of these. Experts believe that by applying companies wanted to protect their brands in the domain space. However, now they are unwilling to spend on the development of domain zones and pay annual fees to ICANN’s budget.
