Name applicant denied again — .Gay domain

ICANN Board Governance Committee denies one .gay applicant’s request for reconsideration.

dotgay LLC has lost again in its attempt to get community status for its .Gay top level domain name application.

The firm lost its first bid for community status, and then got a second crack at the Community Priority Evaluation process since of a procedural technicality. It lost that bid as well.

It then filed a request for reconsideration. ICANN’s Board Governance Committee just denied the request.

Unfortunately for ICANN, few outside the industry understand why dotgay LLC doesn’t get community status. That has resulted in a lot of negative publicity.

ICANN and the Economist Economic Intelligence unit aren’t saying there’s no such thing as a “gay” community. It has determined that dotgay LLC’s application for .gay for Community Priority does not meet the community-defined requirements.

Additionally, this does not mean that dotgay LLC can’t operate the domain name, and it doesn’t mean there will never be a .gay. The firm can win rights to the domain name in an auction or arrangement with the other applicants for .gay.

In fact, .gay would probably exist on the web by now if it weren’t for dotgay LLC’s attempts to circumvent the application guidelines.

ICANN has published a notice regarding the decision and what it means.