ICANN Draws Ire Over Batching For Dot.word Domains

angry tapir writes "ICANN has been subjected to more criticism over the process of creating new 'dot.word' generic top-level domains. Registry services companies have criticised ICANN for processing the 1900 or so applications for new gTLDs in batches, which means that it will take significantly longer for some new domains to go live than others. The real kicker is the process for choosing who goes in which batch: 'Digital archery' — essentially an applicant nominates a particular time then tries to click a button in a browser as close to that time as possible. I should have taken advantage of all those 'punch the monkey' ads in the good ol' days."

This will work...

[Sqr(twg)]

...but only because anyone who's dumb enough to pay US$185,000 for a gTLD won't realize he can hire a programmer for five minutes and get a greasemonkey script that clicks the "submit" button at exactly the right time (minus network lag).

Re:Archery

[azalin]

or "gaming the system"

Re:Can you be bothered?

[azalin]

This officially answers the question if icann are out of their minds. How does anyone even remotely sober come up with such an utterly stupid idea? IF this would be for some gaming site handing out free beta keys it would OK, even fun. But if you are talking about business in the 6 figure range something a little more sophisticated should be used. Unless of course you want to look like a bunch of script kiddies far out of their league.

Re:Can you be bothered?

[azalin]

There are three options that come to mind:
1) First come, first serve (though this requires that you don't mess up the registration process) (fair, if done right)
2) Highest Bidder (profitable)
3) Lottery / Random process (fair)
The third requires an audit/verification process to prove it was truly random, but it's not that difficult to do. If done right, this is the fairest option.
What you don't want to do, is leave the impression that this is just a joke for you and let your customers play (rather silly) games for it (like ican did).

Re:Sometimes the only way to be fair is by chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, football IS a multi-million dollar business.