Not a clearly delineated community, panel rules — Gold is
Rival applicants fails to eliminate Donuts’ .gold top level domain application.
An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has ruled that “gold” is not a clearly delineated community, and has thus rejected a community objection filed by World Gold Council against Donuts’ application to run .gold.
World Gold Council (WGC) is a rival applicant for .gold. It did not apply under community status.
In one of the shortest community objection decisions to date, panelist Anibal Sabater ruled (pdf) that “gold” is not a clearly delineated community, and thus the objection fails.
Sabater wrote that, while you might make a case that the gold mining industry is a clearly delineated community, it’s implausible to claim that the gold industry itself is a community, and thus “gold”.
Sabater pointed out that the gold industry goes well beyond mining firms.
But the Expert notes that there is a significantly larger cast of characters involved with gold who are not clearly classifiable as belonging to the gold industry or not. There are, for instance, transportation firms that, along with other products, ship and deliver gold (gold ore or processed gold) throughout the world. Is a shipping firm that occasionally delivers gold part of the gold industry? Similarly, there are retailers who sell gold exclusively, primarily, or as a modest fraction of their trade. There are also gold ore processing firms; and there are firms that manufacture, among others, products that contain gold, such as computer processors, tooth implants, or prostate seed implants. There are even firms specializing in management and safekeeping of investments in precious metals, like gold or platinum. Without needing to consider further examples–which certainly exist–it is difficult to discern whether any of these firms is part of the gold industry. Or, more broadly, it is difficult to discern where the gold industry community starts or ends, who or what can genuinely claim to be a part of it, and what its membership criteria and formal boundaries are.
This is along the lines of what I was trying to argue in this post yesterday, and exactly why the .sport community objection ought to have also failed (but didn’t).
Ought to gold bugs be part of the gold community? What regarding gangstas from the 80s?
