Fadi Chehadé, president and CEO of ICANN. Image: Wikimedia Commons/ICANN
Advertisement
What ICANN does. Image: Wikimedia Commons/ICANN
Advertisement
Fadi Chehadé's opening speech at ICANN 50
Advertisement
But it’s not as simple as just giving brands and organizations their names in post-dot form; the application to create a new one costs $185,000, plus maintenance each year. Then there’s the problem over whether some names should be reserved for particular groups. And that’s why there’s a land-grab problem over some desirable domains.Why is .wine so controversial? That ties in with the 'authenticity' notion. France is notoriously fussy about its wine regulations, and winemakers can only call something “champagne” if it’s grown in the right region, and so on. Some European representatives have raised concerns that allowing others to use “.wine” or the French version “.vin” might threaten this. Neelie Kroes wrote a letter last year asking for applications for those gTLDs to be held until a consensus on the matter was reached.But in a communiqué just released by the government advisory committee, it looks like it’s still a stalemate, with the GAC writing that “no agreement was reached because of the sensitive nature of the matter.”There’s a similar fight brewing over the .eco gTLD, with environmental groups suggesting that, if it isn’t safeguarded, corporations may try to use the suffix in an attempt to “greenwash” their image.All of the above just demonstrates how tough it can be to get consensus on even matters that seem like relatively trivial issues; fair online governance isn’t easy. “Look, the model of consensus-based governance, which is what we use here, is a fragile model, almost by design,” Chehadé said when I asked what it was like to deal with so many different stakeholders. “But we have managed quite well, thank you, for the past 15 years.”"Look, the model of consensus-based governance, which is what we use here, is a fragile model, almost by design."