.mail

Status:	Cancelled
Country:	International
Type:	Generic
Category:	Technology
More information:

.mail was a proposed TLD in ICANN's New gTLD Program.

Applicants

1. Amazon - The Universal Postal Union filed a Community Objection against this application.
2. Donuts (Victor Dale, LLC) - This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here. The Universal Postal Union filed a Community Objection against this application.
3. GMO Registry
4. Google (Charleston Road Registry Inc.) - The Universal Postal Union filed a Community Objection against this application.
5. WhitePages TLD LLC The Universal Postal Union filed a Community Objection against this application, as did GMO Registry, Inc.

Former Applicants

1. 1&1 Mail & Media GmbH - This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here. It was subsequently WITHDRAWN, however the Universal Postal Union still filed a Community Objection against this application. It was the first applicant to leave the contention set.
2. Afilias - The second applicant to leave the contention set; May 2013.

GAC Early Warning

The applications from Amazon and 1&1 Mail & Media GmbH was issued a GAC Early Warning from the representative of Australia and GAC Chair, Heather Dryden. The warning system is noted as a strong recommendation on behalf of national governments to the ICANN Board that a given TLD application should be denied as it stands. Applicants are encouraged to work with objecting GAC members.

The warning states that the applicant is "seeking exclusive access to a common generic string .. that relates to a broad market sector," which Ms. Dryden notes could have unintended consequences and a negative impact on competition.

Name Collision Concerns and Cancellation

ICANN hired firm Interisle Consulting to carry out an independent investigation on the issues that may arise from new gTLDs that are identical to TLDs being used on internal networks. The publishing of the report sparked a community-wide debate that later became known as the Name Collision issue. The firm reported at ICANN 47 that the .mail, .home, and .corp gTLDs were cause for serious concern since those strings are widely in use by internal naming systems. In response to the report, ICANN labeled the three strings as "high risk" and proposed that none of the strings be delegated until it could be proven that risk is low.

In 2015, the IETF's DNS Operations committee began drafting an RFC with the intention of setting a standard of reserving .corp, .home, and .mail from general use, in deference to the exceedingly common use in intranets.

On February 4, 2018, the ICANN Board issued a resolution to cease processing of all applications for the three strings. Applicants were provided a full refund of their application fee.

Governmental Advisory Committee. Considers and provides advice on the activities of ICANN as they relate to concerns of governments, particularly matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and various laws and international agreements or where they may affect public policy issues (ICANN Bylaws).

Top-Level Domain

Internet Engineering Task Force