Dotgay Registry Faults ICANN for Delaying .gay Community gTLD Case Consideration
Dotgay criticized the ICANN board Tuesday for tabling its expected decision earlier this month on considering the Board Governance Committee's rejection of dotgay's appeals of Economist Intelligence Unit evaluations of the registry's application to have the .gay generic top-level domain…
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designated as a community gTLD. The board removed consideration of the .gay issue from its agenda for its Aug. 9 meeting. The ICANN board is to meet again Sept. 17. Board consideration of the BGC's review of dotgay's case was seen as a necessary precursor to board consideration of now-former ICANN Ombudsman Chris LaHatte's report urging ICANN to designate .gay as a community gTLD (see 1608010063). “Ever since the collective gay community has stood up and asked for their own piece of the Internet with .GAY, every conceivable argument has been used to deny their efforts,” dotgay said in a news release. “The approach being used is divisive and contrary to the goals of ICANN's new gTLD program and aspirations of the LGBTQIA effort behind creating a community-operated .GAY.” Dotgay noted the similarity between its case and an independent review panel's recent finding that ICANN's accountability process in its consideration of gTLD applications by the Dot Registry amounted to a “rubber-stamp.” The Dot Registry case vindicates dotgay's “claims that the Economist Intelligence Unit's purportedly independent community priority evaluation reports were flawed, applied unequal standards and that dotgay's application has never been given appropriate consideration,” dotgay said. ICANN didn't comment.