To throw TLD applicants a bone on name collisions — ICANN needs

If delays are necessary, ICANN ought to pitch in for monitoring and notification system.

A couple weeks ago fresh top level domain name applicants received some very unwelcome news: many of their TLDs could be significantly delayed due to security concerns regarding “name collisions”.

Basically, some private networks by now ping non-existent top level domain names that applicants have applied for. This leads to so-called name collisions.

ICANN ought to have undertaken its study of the matter years ago. Now, over a year since accepting $185,000 a pop for applications, and well following many applicants have bulked up on staff to market their domains, ICANN has added a fresh requirement and a big delay.

To be sure, ICANN states the delay for 80% of the strings won’t be much since it will happen concurrently with other aspects of the onboarding process. But it still adds more technical requirements; Applicants must now alert people that make requests to the non-existent domains.

There’s an open comment period to give feedback on ICANN’s name collision mitigation plan.

My thought is this: ICANN needs to throw fresh TLD applicants a bone on this one. It’s bad enough that they face more delays. It’s worse that they need to invest in technical resources to detect and inform people that use their future TLDs.

Can Donuts, Google, and Amazon handle it? Of course. But what regarding the modest guys? The ones that have tied up a significant portion of their capital into the process?

ICANN received well more money from applications than it was expecting. It ought to use some of the money to create its own detection and notification service on behalf of registries.

Not only will this alleviate the burden on applicants, but it will also ensure consistency and a single point of contact for ISPs and firms that receive notifications.

No one (OK, one firm) is excited regarding this delay. Pitching in is the least ICANN can do.