.Music fresh top level domain community objections fail

All community objections against .music and .band have failed.

An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has denied Constantine Roussos’ community objections against competing applications for .music as well as applications for .band. The same panelist also denied an objection brought by International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies against another applicant. All of the .music objections have been decided in the applicants’ favor.

Roussos applied for .music under DotMusic LLC and filed the objections through American Association of Independent Music (A2IM).

Panelist Professor Sir Robin Jacob denied the objections on basically all counts. He determined that there’s not such “music community” or “band community”:

I do not think that there is anything which can fairly be described as a “music community”. There is a vast range of different types of music in the world. Music appeals to nearly all mankind. Just since there is one word covering all kinds of music does not make a “community” – the word will not stretch that far…

…The string is targeted at anyone interested in music – nearly the whole world.

(I wonder what would have happened if Jacob had heard the cases for .sport and .sports, as you could use the same arguments there.)

He also determined that, even if such a community existed, it would not be clearly delineated as required in the applicant guidebook. Also, A2IM “can hardly claim to be associated with it”.

Thus, A2IM did not have standing to bring the objections.

Jacob also stated that the objections failed the material detriment test.

The decision is consistent with one previously decided against Amazon’s application for .music.

Roussos also filed Legal Rights Objections (essentially objections on trademark grounds) against all applicants for .music, .song, and .tunes. All of those objections failed as well.