Flaws in ‘community evaluation’ of dotgay results in risk of domain being auctioned to highest bidder

ICANN is in the process of creating new top-level domains (gTLDs), like .COM, .EU, and .INFO. Among those to be created is .GAY, which has great potential value to commercial operators who can sell .GAY domains to high-value sites & commercial interests, but also to LGBT individuals and organizations, for whose benefit dotgay LLC applied to administer the name on the basis of “community priority evaluation” (CPE).

The Economist Intelligence Unit, contracted to carry out these evaluations, reported weeks ago that in their opinion, dotgay LLC did not qualify as a community operator, in large part because they believed that the worldwide LGBT population had not supported this application. This was despite the fact that 240 organisations, including IGLA, the most representative body in the world for LGBT interests, had expressed their support on multiple occasions.

Winning this status would have made dotgay LLC the automatic owner of .GAY and allowed it to protect the .GAY name from commercial exploitation, to create shared spaces (for example community-run portals like “health.gay”), and return a portion of profits to the community.

Because of the results of the CPE, the domain will now be auctioned off, with dotgay LLC facing off against well-financed commercial operators who will sell .GAY domains to any client, potentially drowning any community use of the .GAY domain and making it useless for LGBT groups. Even if dotgay LLC finds a financial partner for the auction and is successful, it means a significant change in business model, which at best puts off for many years any financial return to LGBT groups.

BeLonG To Youth Services has been a long-time defender of the principle of community priority for .GAY, and has supported dotgay LLC’s application. The last chance to avoid an auction is the current #reICANN campaign, for “reconsider, ICANN”. As part of this campaign, letters have been sent to ICANN from the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and ILGA.

Now the Federation of Gay Games has written a letter that serves as the focus of support for over 50 businesses and non-profit organizations which BeLonG To has co-signed.

The hope is that the campaign will induce ICANN to reconsider the manner in which the community priority evaluation was structured and carried out, offering a last chance for the future .GAY domain to become a safe space for LGBT people and groups online.