ICANN has published its Proposed Measures for Letter/Letter Two-Character ASCII Labels to Avoid Confusion with Corresponding Country Codes. The document has created a sensation, as many of these highly-prized domains are likely worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, but were impossible to buy until now.
As the headline suggests, the main problem is that two-letter domain names often coincide with corresponding country codes. This is why under the base New gTLD Registry Agreement all two-character domain names were taken out of circulation. However, ICANN changed the procedure in late 2014 giving registry operators the right to request ICANN’s approval for the release of letter-letter domain names. The decision was to be made by the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which suspended the registration of two-character domain names for a 60-day period during which governments could object and governments rushed to make use of this opportunity. According to Domain Incite, over 16,000 unique letter-letter domain names have been objected to and therefore blocked over the past year.
ICANN’s new procedure would introduce a 30-day period of Exclusive Availability Pre-registration, which is like a mini sunrise period during which only companies or government entities in charge of matching ccTLDs will have the right to register two-letter domain names that coincide with their country codes. If they don’t do this within 30 days, the domain name will then be made open for general registration. In other words, governments and ccTLD registries will be able to pay for two-letter domain names before they go on the market.
This is a major step towards meeting the requirements of new gTLD registries.
The document outlining the Proposed Measures is, however, light on many vital details. For example, it does not specify price caps for two-character gTLDs during the Exclusive Availability Pre-registration period. And it does not say what happens when a government and the ccTLD manager both want the name, a likely situation due to the fact that many non-governmental entities and even private companies operate ccTLDs independently.
The Proposed Measures are open for public comment on ICANN’s website until mid-August.
