Confusion continues to surround ICANN’s gTLD program, with the organization canceling the “digital archery” program it had planned to determine the winners of contested generic TLDs. Digital Archery” is now not even lurching towards reality: ICANN hasn’t worked out a replacement process for the land-grab domain releases. In “ …

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Sunday 1st July 2012 22:03 GMT Christoph

Digital Archery

So they tried to rob from the rich, and ended up not so much Robin Hood, more Dennis Moore.

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Sunday 1st July 2012 22:09 GMT Anonymous Coward

1) Borrow one of those rotating-jumbly-ball-machines from your local village fete

2) Write each bidder on a pingpong ball and put into machine

3) Turn handle of machine

4) Pull out a ball, show it to everyone witnessing the draw

Why the fuck are they making it so complicated?

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1. Monday 2nd July 2012 06:54 GMT frank ly
  
  re. making it complicated
  
  Maybe there has to be an 'element of skill', otherwise it's an illegal lottery? (Just trying to think like a lawyer here - makes me feel dirty).
  
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  1. Monday 2nd July 2012 10:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: re. making it complicated
    
    If it needs some sklill then just add a question
    
    TLD in the application stands for
    
    A: Tropical Lemon Drink
    
    B: Top Level Domain
    
    C: Total Logistical Disaster
    
    (hmm, suppose there could be 2 correct answers there!)
    
    .... or alternatively add "you can also enter for free at itv.com"
    
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Sunday 1st July 2012 22:57 GMT Mike 29

Why are they doing it at all?

We should refuse to support this trash, since it will actually break a lot of legacy systems that check for a valid TLD and will refuse all these.

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1. Monday 2nd July 2012 00:38 GMT Ole Juul
  
  No Problem
  
  . . . it will actually break a lot of legacy systems that check for a valid TLD and will refuse all these.
  
  I don't think those legacy systems will be broken. They'll continue to work just fine and filter out useless domains.
  
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2. Monday 2nd July 2012 08:39 GMT TeeCee
  
  No, the new TLDs will be valid and things should still work.
  
  Unelss of course some pillock has decided that a DNS lookup to check an address' validity is too much like hard work, elected instead to hard-code a list of "valid TLDs" and elected to do so in code rather than referring to an easily maintainable list of such somewhere.
  
  That would fall under the umbrella of; "You broke it, so you can bloody well fix it.".
  
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Monday 2nd July 2012 00:13 GMT I ain't Spartacus

AHA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

Tee Hee Hee Hee.

Etc.

Good Grief! The levels of incompetence are staggering. You'd have thought that the half a billion odd dollars they've made would be enough to make a working system. Oh well, I'm sure something else will go wrong if we wait long enough (like another week...).

[Insert standard joke about ICANN buying .fail or .fiasco here]

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Monday 2nd July 2012 00:33 GMT Steve Knox

Here's a though...

How about they actually evaluate the proposals, and award them on the merits, rather than randomly handing out domains?

Nah, you're right. It'd never fly.

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1. Monday 2nd July 2012 01:01 GMT QrazyQat
  
  Re: Here's a though...
  
  That's like, you know, work.
  
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Monday 2nd July 2012 01:04 GMT Anonymous Coward

History

The people involved in approving this have history in doing this kind of thing.

If you believe Peter Dengate-Thrush spoke to the Singaporean company after jumping ship, I have several bridges I'd like to sell you. He got caught flat out lieing about a number of things when he was the chair of the Internet Society of NZ (which resulted in him being removed) and I find it hard to believe he'd leave ICANN without making sure he had quite secure strings in place to continue manipulating it.

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Monday 2nd July 2012 01:12 GMT Anonymous Coward

Pass the parcel

ICANN are dead scared of being sued if they prioritise applications.

All they need to do is pass them as a stack to GAC and hint that they have no standing to advise the GAC on what order they pass them back to ICANN.

This allows the untouchable GAC to decide the order that applications go through the system.

Simples!

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1. Monday 2nd July 2012 01:25 GMT I ain't Spartacus
  
  Re: Pass the parcel
  
  A better answer would be CEO arm-wrestling.
  
  Plus, as we know they're so desperately eager for cash, they could sell the TV rights of Google vs. Microsoft for a few million more.
  
  Maybe go up to cage fighting to decide between competing bids for the same domain?
  
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  1. Monday 2nd July 2012 06:57 GMT frank ly
    
    Re: Pass the parcel
    
    That's right not-Spartacus, it's the modern way :)
    
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  2. Monday 2nd July 2012 09:04 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
    
    @CEO arm wrestling
    
    As much as like the idea of CEO arm wresting, the internet is clear on this: it's settled by rock-paper-scissors.
    
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Monday 2nd July 2012 08:11 GMT Blofeld's Cat

Do I hear $12,000,001 anywhere?

Put the contested domains up on Ebay, with a ridiculously high reserve, and watch as the big players try to outbid each other in the last few picoseconds.

Pass the .popcorn

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1. Monday 2nd July 2012 08:41 GMT TeeCee
  
  Re: Do I hear $12,000,001 anywhere?
  
  Ooooooooooo, using High-Frequency Trading systems for bid-sniping on eBay?
  
  I like it!
  
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Monday 2nd July 2012 10:55 GMT Shonko Kid

Rock, Paper, Scissors?

To give their arbitration process a more professional quality.

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