[UPDATE] E-flux Supports DeviantArt’s Application for the .ART Domain

E-flux and DeviantArt are joining forces. Both entities are among the 10 finalists who want to run the soon-to-be-unveiled .ART domain. The stakes are high given the potential profit to be gained from this ownership as well as the veto power over who gets to purchase a domain name ending in .ART. Until now, there hadn’t been much crossover between the two organizations, but as the deadline approaches for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to make their final decision, there’s been a change in tactics.

A May 21, 2014 letter sent out by DeviantArt to ICANN spells out that if either art organization gets the ICANN vote, both organizations propose to jointly form a policy board of arts professionals to implement standards for the domain’s use. They are not planning to jointly operate .ART, but this way both would have some say in which domain names are approved.

DeviantArt’s letter arrives late in the application process, but it shows just how serious both DeviantArt and e-flux are about preventing any purely commercial interests from controlling .ART.

Banding together might quell some of the initial fears expressed over having a single entity run an entire corner of the Internet. Namely, that e-flux or DeviantArt would end up curating the .ART domain to reflect their specific visions. Initially, e-flux pledged to give 10 percent of the profits from .ART in the form artist grants; whether this would be the case with the DeviantArt policy board remains to be seen. It seems like the two have found some common ground by potentially broadening the definition of an art community; at the very least, they’ve found a common enemy in the eight other applicants.

Out of the 10 finalists for the .ART domain, only e-flux and DeviantArt have applied for “community designation”; the eight others are UK Creative Ideas Limited, Merchant Law Group, Aremi Group S.A., .ART REGISTRY INC., Top Level Domain Holdings Limited, Baxter Tigers, Uniregistry, and Top Level Design. DeviantArt, we should mention is a corporation; however, they have this “community designation” status. In making their case for community designation, e-flux’s endorsement letter lists nearly every living curator and critic in the world; DeviantArt lists the support of their 31 million users.

According to ICANN, organizations with a proven track record serving a community are supposed to be given priority. But in their letter, DeviantArt calls out ICANN for a “resulting and evident bias towards commercialization,” having granted the vast majority of new gTLDs to corporations.

Though the entire ICANN process is shrouded in a bit of mystery, we could hear about the winner of the .ART domain as early as this month.

I’ve included the full text of DeviantArt’s letter below. [UPDATE: We’ve also been sent e-flux’s letter stating similar aims. You can find the full PDF here.]