[NA-Discuss] Regional Advice on .HEALTH Objection

[John R. Levine]

> This is very interesting, I am not sure the Review Group was aware of
> all these historical details. Are your saying that the WHO previously
> applied for an paid an underfunded application fee for the .HEALTH string?

There were several previous rounds of gTLD applications, which is where 
the newish gTLDs such as .AERO and .XXX have come from.

There were far more applications than the ones that were accepted, and in 
ICANN's typical blundering way, they never actually rejected the ones they 
didn't accept, they just stopped doing anything about them.  In the 
current round, ICANN offered a discount to previous applicants if they 
would agree to relinquish claims to the prior application.  As far as I 
know, none of the previous applicants did that.  One sued and got nowhere, 
the rest seem to have moved on.  The guy who sued has a history of feeble 
claims for his pet domain .WEB, so I agree with Eric that his suit doesn't 
tell us much about the legal status of the rest of the applications.

While I agree there is a lot not to like about ICANN's handling of the 
prior round applications, I don't see why it is our responsibility to 
represent the interests of the WHO.  They are an international treaty 
organization with a billion dollar budget.* If they have issues with 
ICANN, they could take them up directly as the ICRC and IOC did.

And if we care about .HEALTH, why don't we care about Spamhaus' 
application for .MAIL?  It's an equally generic term, and ICANN equally 
blew them off in the last round.

R's,
John

* - Conspiracy theorists should note that their HQ is in Geneva, within 
walking distance of the ITU and WIPO.  I had a nice lunch with Joan 
Dzenowagis there about a decade ago.
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