By John Mack Freeman
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has denied a request from gay businessman Scott Sietz’s Dotgay LLC to manage the newly approved .gay top-level domain. While Sietz had said that he would use the domain to maintain the community-focused nature of the .gay domain, ICANN’s scoring felt that Sietz’s group failed to represent a significant enough portion of the community in question.
Some are considering the Dotgay LLC denial a failure. It has previously stated that it would preserve the domain for only positive LGBT-themed sites and would deny requests for domains from anti-LGBT groups and from porn sites. However, with little oversight from the outside, what would be acceptable would have been at the whim of whoever controlled Dotgay LLC at the moment. However, with the denial, the concern is no longer moot.
The domain will now go to auction, where Sietz will be one of four corporations seeking control of the domain.
