[bc-gnso] Question for the Board during new gTLD discussion today: contention between Singulars and Plurals

[Steve DelBianco]

Zahid — in case you have an opportunity in this session with the Board, please ask about their reaction to the perplexing results on String Similarity:

The results of ICANN's String confusion panel were that singular and plurals of the same string were not placed in the same contention sets.  Concerns include:

1. Consumer confusion.  Particularly when they hear a TLD in conversation or in the media, then can't remember if it was singular or plural.

2. Defensive registrations in 25 additional TLDs

3. Terrible Precedent: applicants in future rounds could propose plurals of established TLDs (.nets, .books, .apps )

4. Reflects poorly on the gTLD expansion

Background: After several months of careful study, ICANN's experts published their contention sets on 28-Feb. (link<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-26feb13-en.htm>)

They "identified" 230 "exact match contention sets" where multiple applicants sought the exact same string.

And they found just 2 "non-exact match contention sets"  (unicom and unicorm; hoteis and hotels )

Unbelievably, they did not consider the singular and plural versions of key words to be confusingly similar.

This means we will get new TLDs for both the singular and plural versions of keywords such as:

ACCOUNTANT ACCOUNTANTS
AUTO  AUTOS
CAR CARS
CAREER CAREERS
COUPON COUPONS
CRUISE CRUISES
DEAL DEALS
FAN FANS
GAME GAMES
GIFT GIFTS
HOME HOMES
HOTEL HOTELS
HOTEL HOTELES
KID KIDS
LOAN LOANS
MARKET MARKETS
NEW NEWS
PET PETS
PHOTO PHOTOS
REVIEW REVIEWS
SPORT SPORTS
TOUR TOURS
WEB WEBS
WORK WORKS


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