dotSport

Dear Colleagues,
Dear Friends,

 

As I was contemplating this issue of the .sport update in preparing to write it, it occurred to me that January 2010 will mark our 2nd anniversary of this important pursuit. Clearly, it takes time for ICANN to establish the rules and procedures around rolling out new top-level domains (TLDs) - as much as it takes time to introduce the idea of an exclusive space on the Internet with vital communications and participation benefits to international sport federations (IFs). However, in both cases considerable progress is being made and our circumstances confirm this recognition. We are on the cusp of advancing sport via the Internet! We are also grateful that our outreach to the IFs and their respective communities has brought us so many new friends; all sportsmen and women from an international family. It is nice to be welcomed back to the fold.

Our Winter 2009 Update is intended to provide you with current information on the following three areas of our activity:

ICANN Seoul Meeting (Update on the New Top-Level Domain Process)
With over 1.6 billion people now online, diversity, choice and competition are key to the continued success and reach of the global network we call the Internet, so the new top-level domain process is a high priority. The first of our three public comments regarding the 3rd Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAGV3) was that one registry operator should manage a single registry in respect of the languages or scripts that a particular community may use. Our second comment pushed back on the revised comparative evaluation scoring. We have said that until all subjectivity has been removed from the process, ICANN's responsibility is to ensure a fair process that errs on the side of applicants. Finally - but perhaps most importantly - we are leading the contention that new TLD evaluation procedures must include 'market differentiation'.... Read more following these short summaries of activities...

International Forum Peace and Sport 2009
Over 440 world sport decision-makers from 83 nations gathered at the third Peace and Sport International Forum in Monaco, 25-27 November 2009. With Heads of State, sport ministers, sport federations, NGOs, National Olympic Committees and several United Nations delegates in attendance, the conclusion this Forum was "Peace through sport is within our reach". Adding to its growing prominence, Peace and Sport introduced the Champions for Peace Club. Collectively, these sport heroes have no less than 47 world championship titles, 20 Olympic titles and nearly 100 national and regional titles between them and all are dedicated to contributing to peace throughout the world... Read more...

XIII Olympic Congress
Called the 'world's greatest sports political event', the 121st IOC Session and XIII Olympic Congress gathered together all IOC Members and Honorary Members; International Sport Federations (IFs); National Olympic Committees and Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games; athletes and their coaches, doctors and medical staff; referees, judges and technical officials; IOC's Olympic partners; and media. This Congress was 12-years in the making, the first of the new millennium and, more importantly, the first one since the start of the digital revolution. Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive of advertising giant WPP, in his keynote speech on the theme The Digital Revolution, could have used life.sport as his example.... Read more...



The full text update of our three current activities follows:


ICANN Seoul Meeting (Update on the New Top-Level Domain [TLD] Process)

ICANN's 36th international public meeting took place in Seoul, Korea with over 1,000 people from more than 100 countries coming together to debate and dialogue issues surrounding the operation and governance of the Internet. At the top of the list of topics stood the third iteration of the Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAGv3) which was publicly posted 10-days before the meeting. With over 1.6 billion people now online, diversity, choice and competition are key to the continued success and reach of the global network so the new top-level domain process is a high priority.

In our last Update, I noted four "overarching issues" that need to be addressed before any introduction of new top-level domains can begin (trademark protection; malicious conduct; security and stability; and demand and economic analysis). A good deal of progress has been made, but trademark protection remains a thorny issue. And ICANN must address how trademarks will be protected from abuse as a result of hundreds of new TLDs being added to the Internet before new top-level domains can expand the domain name space.

So it appears that a delay in the start of the application process is unavoidable; much to the dismay of many, including dotSport LLC. We anticipate that the start of the application process may be delayed by as much as six months or until Q3 2010. While frustrating, we ourselves have consistently stated that the entire process has to meet an acceptable consensus standard before it can begin, so once we have consensus on the fundamental intellectual property issues we will be that much closer to everyone's goal.

In addition to trademark protection we were also engaged in discussions on other issues that DAGv3 called attention to. Our public comment focused primarily on three areas, the first being one registry operator should manage a single registry in respect of the languages or scripts in respect of the languages or scripts that a particular community uses. Members of one community would naturally expect to have one TLD operator manage their common space on the Internet. Moreover, community-based gTLD operators should be able to offer registrants their chosen domain names in whichever languages and/or scripts they self-select. This is the critical component of a global, multi-lingual Internet that ICANN aspires to coordinate.

Our second comment pushed back on the revised comparative evaluation scoring, which is the test of an applicant's nexus or connection to the community it intends to serve. We have said that as long as subjectivity is the basis for evaluator conclusions, i.e. until all subjectivity has been removed from the process, ICANN's responsibility is to ensure a fair process that errs on the side of applicants. Otherwise, ICANN will be holding community-based applicants to a standard higher than that detailed in the Expression of Interest document used by ICANN to invite evaluators to do the comparative evaluations. That document notes that "the scoring process requires that the evaluators exercise considerable subjective judgment concerning the extent to which each community Applicant meets or fails to meet the standards defined for each of the four criteria."

Finally, we are leading the contention that new TLD evaluation procedures must include 'market differentiation'. I first brought this to your attention in our summer Update under the heading: What constitutes a top-level domain (TLD)? The current implementation plan is contrary to the GNSO Final Report of the Introduction of New gTLDs to the Board wherein the instruction was to facilitate the introduction of new gTLDs in an orderly way... as well as introducing new gTLDs to include market differentiation. In simple terms, we want to ensure that some level of order is maintained as ICANN introduces new TLDs into our singular, globally shared, critical resource called the Internet. Our view, and that of many others in the ICANN community, is that the uniqueness of the Internet puts it at polar opposites to the automobile or any other consumer goods market. In those markets consumers expect to find many multiples of the same products or service competing for their money. The Internet, on the other hand, is a shared resource for global use and must be managed with some logic according to its special nature.

The Commercial and Business Users Constituency (BC), the Government Advisory Committee, the Internet Service Providers Constituency, Intellectual Property Constituency, as well as the At-Large Advisory Committee all agree that the new TLD rollout must be orderly. The BC put forward recommendations that ask applicants how their intended domain would differentiate itself from what may already exist within the Internet domain name system. Sharper criteria will enable ICANN to approve TLDs that valuably expand the name space and strengthen diversity on the Internet while dismissing those that don't with good reason.

Omitting market differentiation from the final Applicant Guidebook, i.e. ICANN approving applicants in spite of knowledge that they overlap or undercut other registries, is wholly antithetical to the first principle guiding the new gTLD policy development process, that being new gTLDs will benefit registrant choice and competition.

We are grateful to highly regarded Vice-President IOC Executive Board, Thomas Bach, who, in his Congress keynote speech strongly emphasized that "solidarity of sport is critical for autonomy of sport". Noting that the sport family follows the "leading principle" of "unity in diversity", he presented a strong case for uniting all sport through its exclusive top-level domain .sport. As the PAC letter addressed to the Chairman and CEO of ICANN noted, "IFs are the embodiment of sport; through its very being .sport is the embodiment of sport solidarity."

Nairobi, Kenya will host the 37th ICANN meeting in early March 2010. We anticipate that DAGv4 will be posted prior to that meeting, and therefore we will have more to report when we see one another in SportAccord Dubai.

International Forum Peace and Sport 2009

Over 440 world sport decision-makers from 83 nations gathered at the third Peace and Sport International Forum in Monaco, 25-27 November 2009. With Heads of State, sport ministers, sport federations, NGOs, National Olympic Committees and several United Nations delegates in attendance, the conclusion of this Forum was "Peace through sport is within our reach". Organized in partnership with the United Nations represented by the UN Office on Sport for Development and Peace and the UN Office for Partnerships for the first time, it was an auspicious conclusion.

As was well-noted in the Forum, peace is not merely a state of absence of war: peace is taught, learned, and transmitted. Fair play, morality, trust in others, teamwork, social integration, listening, discipline and revealing talent are all part of sport's universal language. And, as a tool for dialogue, brotherhood and respect, sport plays such an important part in transcending political, social, racial, ethnic and religious differences that are often at the heart of conflicts in this world.

Founder and president, Joel Bouzou's vision of an apolitical Peace and Sport organization, under the High Patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, rests on the five principles of neutrality, independence, long-term commitment, action-oriented, and flexibility of intervention. Today, the Peace and Sport platform for cooperation is active in locally-based projects in Cote d'Ivoire, Burundi, Israel-Palestine, Colombia, Timor Leste and soon, Haiti. And as a particular result of the 2009 Forum, I personally believe it is poised to become the platform for many, many other new and existing peace initiatives where it can bring its exceptional organizational skills to bear.

Adding to its growing prominence, this year Peace and Sport introduced the Champions for Peace Club. This initiative is currently represented by athletes from 23 nationalities from all 5 continents in the world, comprising 24 Olympic and non-Olympic sports disciplines. Collectively, these sport heroes have no less than 47 world championship titles, 20 Olympic titles and nearly 100 national and regional titles between them and all are dedicated to actively or symbolically contribute to a real culture of peace throughout the world. It was an electrifying moment when they were introduced to the conference participants at the Opening Ceremony, and the excitement that their presence generates was visible on both the faces of the athletes and audience alike. It is this extraordinary 'human capital' generated through sport that can change peoples' lives.

We, at dotSport LLC, have committed ourselves to fulfilling Mr. Bouzou's vision of turning no-man's lands into sport grounds, integrating child soldiers and refugees into civil society, giving war orphans confidence in themselves, providing open access to education for the very poor and to introduce a culture of citizenship into disadvantaged urban areas. We support the notion that sport can greatly assist in achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and are active contributors in spreading that culture. We welcome your joining us as - together - each can do their small part to support a brighter future for so many.

XIII Olympic Congress

Called the 'world's greatest sports political event', the 121st IOC Session and XIII Olympic Congress took place October 1-9, 2009 in Copenhagen and gathered together all IOC Members and Honorary Members; International Sport Federations (IFs); National Olympic Committees and Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games; athletes and their coaches, doctors and medical staff; referees, judges and technical officials; IOC's Olympic partners; and media. This Congress was the first of the new millennium and, more importantly, the first one since the start of the digital revolution. And utilizing technology through a Virtual Congress, this was also the first time in the history of Olympic Congresses where the general public was given the opportunity to have their say on the topics that were discussed.

As the Paris Congress 12-years before focused on protecting the environment, Copenhagen aimed to take the pulse of the Olympic movement by inviting discussion from the full spectrum of the sport community on the challenges and opportunities it faces.  Five themes: Athletes; Olympic Games; Structure of the Olympic Movement; Olympism and Youth; and the Digital Revolution were on the table for discussion.  Questions like how do we increase the size of sport audiences and how do we communicate with stakeholders in the digital age set the stage for wide-ranging dialogue. From the sixty-six diverse conclusions that came out of the three-day Congress, the primary driver for the future is clear: young people and how the Olympic movement can engage them.  At the conclusion of the august assembly it was declared that this will be remembered as the Congress of youth and athletes.  It delivered clear guidance that serving young people and athletes should be the IOC's top priority.

It was a privilege to be counted among the influential group of delegates and as the Congress came to an end I was grateful that dotSport LLC had been fortuitously present at the landmark event. For the past two years, as CEO of dotSport LLC, I have been articulating our vision of how .sport will enable IFs to manage a communications platform that significantly enhances the emotional and financial relationship between each of their sports and their fans. Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive of advertising giant WPP, in his keynote speech on the theme 'The Digital Revolution', effectively stated that the next step in Internet evolution is here. If Sir Martin were to have used an example that embodied his thesis it could easily have been life.sport.

Sir Martin cautioned that while the opportunity is huge, there is a risk that sport will be slow to adapt to this new world of communications, which he described as "multiple touch points to consume content." He declared that sport needs to realize that "it's in a fight for attention" and that with so many new means of communication and viewing media "sport must compete with entertainment" to demonstrate its dynamics to win over youth. Underscoring the importance of the power of the Internet, he noted that people who had both television and Internet access watched twice as many hours of the Beijing Olympics as those who just had a TV.

Patrick Baumann, IOC Member, secretary-general of FIBA, and Chairman of the .sport PAC or Policy Advisory Council (the advisory body responsible for assisting the dotSport Registry develop policy pursuant to the .sport top level domain) also addressed the Congress. Speaking about the advance of technology his approach was true to his IF credentials, i.e. from the perspective of the reality of the IF world. "All of this is very nice, but someone has to pay for it...", Mr. Baumann commented. Adding that "...seeking companies willing to invest in exchange for revenues from commercializing content" would be a good way forward.

One of my colleagues noted that every sport is an island in a world of sports, and since many people follow and/or participate in several sports, why not build bridges between the islands? We take it further, to the next level. Consider every athlete and team or league within one international sport federation (i.e. each 'sport pyramid' full of islands) all connected! As valuable as something like LinkedIn is for peoples' business lives, so too is life.sport valuable for sporting people's lives.

The moment has come when you or someone you know can organize their sports life in one place among other likeminded people on the Internet - whatever sport it is and wherever you may stand in the hierarchy of the fan through to the athlete or administrator. The findings of the Copenhagen Congress could not have been clearer, nor more timely in confirming the digital evolution. dotSport LLC's response is to ready the introduction of our free-of-charge life.sport social network, the status of which will be presented at SportAccord Dubai, in April 2010. More information will be forthcoming in due course!

~

From all of us at dotSport LLC I take this opportunity to wish you and yours, wherever you may be, Season's Greetings and a healthy and prosperous 2010!


As always, if there is any further information you would like to have regarding the .sport initiative, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at my contact details noted below. You can also log on to our site: www.dotSportLLC.com to gain access to further updated information as it comes available.

Looking forward to seeing many of you again in Vancouver at the Winter Olympics!