According to the interview on Dot-Nxt [warning: payment required]:

Steve Crocker [said that the ICANN] Board will be holding a special meeting in the first week of January and that the meeting’s focus will be the launch of the new gTLD program the following week. But that meeting will not consider either a delay or a limited rollout, he stated.

Asked specifically about widespread calls for a “pilot program” that would feature only a limited number of Internet extensions, Crocker noted that the organization had already run pilot programs for expanding the top level of the Internet and argued that “we haven’t seen anything to suggest there would be value in delaying the launch.”

A highly organized campaign by lobbyists against new gTLDs, begun after the new gTLD programme was approved, has brought letters from U.S. politicians urging delay, or a limited roll-out of new gTLDs.

Meanwhile defenders of the multi-stakeholder governance model have vehemently opposed interference with ICANN’s policy development processes. Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project said in an recent article:

ICANN’s plan to open up the domain name space to new top level domains is scheduled to begin January 12, 2012. This long overdue implementation is the result of an open process that began in 2006. It would, in fact, be more realistic to say that the decision has been in the works… since early 1997. That is when demand for new top-level domain names… made it clear that a new institutional framework had to be created. ICANN was the progressive and innovative U.S. response to that need. It was created to become a nongovernmental, independent, truly global and representative policy development authority.

Now there is a cynical, illegitimate last-second push by a few corporate interests in the United States to derail that process. The arguments put forward by these interests are not new; they are the same anti-new TLD arguments that have been made since 1997, and the concerns expressed are all addressed in one way or another by the policies ICANN has developed. What is new is that U.S. corporate trademark interests are openly admitting that their participation in the ICANN process has been in bad faith all along.

To its everlasting credit, the U.S. Commerce Department, the official governmental contractor and supervisor of ICANN, has not caved in to the cynical corporate obstructionism. They realize what is at stake.

“TOP LEVEL DOMAIN HOLDINGS (TLDH): TLDH reports ‘strong international interest’ in the new top level domain programme which REMAINS ON TRACK despite grumbling from some quarters.

TLDH’s subsidiary Minds + Machines ‘has now signed, or is close to finalising, agreements with clients in the US, Canada, South America, Africa, Asia and Europe to represent them in the gTLD application process… in addition, the Company continues to make good progress on preparing applications for gTLDs on its own behalf’.

It says that ‘over 100 named-bids have already been identified by market commentators as intending to apply (of which over 40 are cities or regions) and it believes that the industry wide applications which will be made during the application window will be a significant multiple of this.’ Applications must be made by April 12th after which they will be evaluated before going live possibly in late 2012.

This is going to be a hot story in 2012 and TLDH is the ONLY way to invest in it. BUY UP TO 13p”

Among the subjects covered are the benefits of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to businesses; the effect of the new gTLDs on search engines; and the effect of issuing non-Latin-script names. Mr. Dengate Thrush also delivers a stinging rebuttal to criticisms of the introduction of gTLDs program leveled by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

The full article was published today on the Wall Street Journal’s web site.

In June, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved a program that has the potential to send shockwaves throughout the entire Internet.

Starting in January, ICANN is set to accept applications for the new domains, meaning that brand-centric domain names (think “.apple”) or industry-centric domains (“.pharm”) could spring up online very soon.

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“Today’s decision will usher in a new Internet age. We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.”This is how Peter Dengate Thrush described an end of restrictions on internet suffixes such as .com, .org and .gov.

At the time of those comments he was chairman of ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – which is the body set up to oversee domain names.

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MINDS + MACHINES is pleased to announce that it has reached an alliance with RIGHT OF THE DOT to identify and market premium domain names for Minds + Machines clients. Under the non-exclusive arrangement, Minds + Machines will refer applicants for new top-level domains (TLDs) to Right of the Dot for high-value premium domain consulting services, and Right of the Dot will refer clients seeking top-level domain registry services to Minds + Machines.

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According to the Independent.co.uk, the outgoing chairman of ICANN Peter Dengate Thrush  is joining Minds + Machines as its executive chairman.

The article quotes Antony Van Couvering, CEO of publicly traded Top Level Domain Holdings, otherwise known as Minds+Machines as saying:

“Peter is a superstar in our field. We are delighted to have him at the helm”

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