Wins .Charity dispute, clearing path to .charity domain names — Donuts (finally)
Panel denies community objection against Donuts’ .charity top level domain name application.
Fresh top level domain name firm Donuts is officially back in the running for the right to run the .charity top level domain name, clearing the way to finalize an operator for the string.
If you have an excellent memory, you might recall that four years ago a panelist confirmed the Independent Objector’s (IO) community objection to Donuts’ .charity application. That same panelist denied the IO’s objection to Famous Four Media’s application since Famous Four submitted a Public Interest Commitment that stated it would only let actual charities register .charity domain names.
Donuts challenged the decision and an Independent Review Panel (IRP) found in Donuts’ favor. That was a year ago, and then Donuts had to wait another year for a separate panel to finish rehearing the IO’s community objection. The panel has denied (pdf) the community objection.
This means that Donuts and Famous Four must now settle a contention set for .charity. It will be interesting to see if Famous Four is still interested in the string. It comes with some ICANN-imposed restrictions, and if Famous Four has to honor its original PIC, it will not go well with its overall strategy for fresh TLD of essentially giving them away for the first year.
