Actually, no — it's an evaluation fee, simply to review your application; and they will reject applications that don't meet their criteria.
One of those criteria is that you actually do something with the gTLD — per their FAQ:
> ICANN expects all new gTLDs to be operational. One of the reasons ICANN is opening the top-level space is to allow for competition and innovation in the marketplace. The application process requires applicants to provide a detailed plan for the launch and operation of the proposed gTLD. gTLDs are expected to be delegated within one year of signing a registry agreement with ICANN.
- They will reject applications made by known cybersquatters
- They will reject your TLD string if it has rendering problems on major OSes (e.g. if its codepoints aren't covered by at least fallback fonts)
- They will reject your registration policies if they're incoherent or unenforceable
- They will reject your application on behalf of a community if you can't provide sufficient references establishing that you actually represent the interests of that community
- They will reject your application if you haven't outlined to their satisfaction a plan for continuity/migration of control of the gTLD from your organization to some other organization in case of the bankruptcy/dissolution/etc of your organization (note: this is a separate thing from the technical considerations of registry fail-over et al, which are more something that most applicants would have a technical registry partner fill out on their behalf)
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In all, the process actually seems quite thorough — but as with regular domain-name registration, it's a default-accept, not a default-deny, policy. The more arbitrary gTLDs that have been established so far all just-so-happen to be "innocent" of all of the disqualifiers.
Specifically, I think, given the criteria, that any multinational company could probably expect to be able to acquire its own name and trademarks as gTLDs without much fuss; and recognized leaders/stewards of any major religion (or other non-country-endemic sociocultural group) could likely get any jargon term specific to that religion/subculture as a gTLD. Those two cases together cover most of the "weirdness" in approved applications.
One assertion I might make after reviewing the evaluation criteria, is that very few of the criteria look at the gTLD string itself. Almost any gTLD string is a potentially valid registration. Almost all of the evaluation process is set up to establish whether you, the applicant, have a valid claim for stewardship over the given gTLD string.
It’s part of the initial process for you to develop and file contingency plans in case happens. Most likely delegating to a different company in one way or another.
If you pay ICANN hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can get basically any .word domain.
I believe the only actual requirement is that it has to be 3 characters or longer, as two characters are reserved for countries.
Actually, no — it's an evaluation fee, simply to review your application; and they will reject applications that don't meet their criteria.
One of those criteria is that you actually do something with the gTLD — per their FAQ:
> ICANN expects all new gTLDs to be operational. One of the reasons ICANN is opening the top-level space is to allow for competition and innovation in the marketplace. The application process requires applicants to provide a detailed plan for the launch and operation of the proposed gTLD. gTLDs are expected to be delegated within one year of signing a registry agreement with ICANN.
A few highlights from the full evaluation criteria (https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/evaluation-qu...):
- They will reject applications made by known cybersquatters
- They will reject your TLD string if it has rendering problems on major OSes (e.g. if its codepoints aren't covered by at least fallback fonts)
- They will reject your registration policies if they're incoherent or unenforceable
- They will reject your application on behalf of a community if you can't provide sufficient references establishing that you actually represent the interests of that community
- They will reject your application if you haven't outlined to their satisfaction a plan for continuity/migration of control of the gTLD from your organization to some other organization in case of the bankruptcy/dissolution/etc of your organization (note: this is a separate thing from the technical considerations of registry fail-over et al, which are more something that most applicants would have a technical registry partner fill out on their behalf)
---
In all, the process actually seems quite thorough — but as with regular domain-name registration, it's a default-accept, not a default-deny, policy. The more arbitrary gTLDs that have been established so far all just-so-happen to be "innocent" of all of the disqualifiers.
Specifically, I think, given the criteria, that any multinational company could probably expect to be able to acquire its own name and trademarks as gTLDs without much fuss; and recognized leaders/stewards of any major religion (or other non-country-endemic sociocultural group) could likely get any jargon term specific to that religion/subculture as a gTLD. Those two cases together cover most of the "weirdness" in approved applications.
One assertion I might make after reviewing the evaluation criteria, is that very few of the criteria look at the gTLD string itself. Almost any gTLD string is a potentially valid registration. Almost all of the evaluation process is set up to establish whether you, the applicant, have a valid claim for stewardship over the given gTLD string.
Application fee with ICANN: $185k, non-refundable,
Yearly fee: $25k
Technical backend with Verisign: $200k per year
Add maybe $100k of lawyer fees.
What happens when a company goes under and the yearly fee can no longer be paid? Has a gTLD ever been resigned?
From the ICANN site, 154 gTLD agreements have been terminated. I'm not sure how many due to non-payment, but https://domainincite.com/30105-icann-to-terminate-five-new-g... indicates that at least some have been due to non-payment.
https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements?sort-column=top...
".active" is no longer active...
It’s part of the initial process for you to develop and file contingency plans in case happens. Most likely delegating to a different company in one way or another.
That's crazy, why is it so expensive
time to start fundraising for .fhqwhgads
I’m there for it; all told it’s not much more than a house …
can't wait to be reachable at come@on.fhqwhgads
i.mean@come.on.fhqwhgads
This is the kind of stuff you’ll see and know I hit the powerball
Imagine having the domain cyber[.]threat
Would be kind of cool, most attacked domain on the web, probably
I think my top three worst ideas someone actually paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for are .sucks, .ooo, and .hiv.
.sucks has plenty of potential
you pay ICANN a hefty fee.
https://icannwiki.org/New_gTLD_Program:_Next_Round