Donuts filed a comment with ICANN over the ICANN Last Resort Auction Rules which were up for public comment.
Unlike Google which thinks the one year period in which is would take ICANN to hold all Last Resort Auctions is too slow, and Unregistry which think the period is too quick, Donuts thinks the timing is just about right although wants applicants who agree to have a second extension period of 3 months to resolve contention privately.
Donuts also suggests allowing other contention sets to jump ahead by asking for acceleration to take the spots of those asking for a extensions.
Here is the Donuts comment:
Auction Schedule –
ICANN now proposes to complete in one year an auction schedule with ten auction sessions of approximately twenty contention sets.
ICANN previously supported a rule whereby applicant organizations may, but would not be forced to, participate in more than five auctions in any one round.
ICANN’s stated intention was not to overwhelm any one bidder and risk causing an issue with the sanctity of the auction, thereby causing liability issues and other problems.
Some members of the community argued that if Donuts took that limitation to an extreme, we could then delay the auction process by years.
The record is abundantly clear that we have been longstanding and outspoken advocates reducing delays in processing and approving new TLD applications and delegations.
As such, we never have had any intention of delaying resolution of string contention and support ICANN’s above-referenced schedule, even though we have anywhere between 10-17 TLDs scheduled in each round.
The ICANN proposal gives to applicants something many have sought throughout the New TLD program: an acceptable level of certainty and predictability at each stage of the process. Knowing approximately when a contention set will go to auction, if it is not already resolved, is of great benefit to all applicants.
Postponements and Advancements — ICANN has proposed that if all applicants in a contention set agree, they could request one auction postponement of up to 90 days.
We think such an option should not be limited to a single request. If all members of a contention set would like a second postponement in order to finalize a private agreement, ICANN should not prohibit or discourage such efforts by mandating only one postponement.
Similarly, if an entire contention set agrees to “pull forward,” or advance a set from a later round to an earlier round, these sets should be permitted to fill any open slots in an earlier round (perhaps resulting from private resolution or postponement of other contention sets).…
