BeLonG To welcomes ICANN decision to new Community Evaluation of ‘dotgay’

Yesterday the board of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, accepted the reconsideration request for .GAY put forward by BeLonG To and over 50 other LGBT Organisations. This will result in a reconsideration of the application by dotgay LLC to administer the domain on the basis of "community priority evaluation" (CPE).

The previous evaluation carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit reported that in their opinion, dotgay LLC did not qualify as a community operator, in large part because they believed that the worldwide LGBT population had not supported this application. This was despite the fact that 240 organisations, including IGLA, the most representative body in the world for LGBT interests, had expressed their support on multiple occasions.

This reprieve by the board of ICANN will deliver a new evaluation with new evaluators of the CPE application. CPE status would afford dotgay LLC automatic ownership of .GAY and allow it to protect the .GAY name from commercial exploitation, to create shared spaces (for example community-run portals like “health.gay”), and return a portion of profits to the LGBT community.