A statistical approach to the ICANN new gTLD program

Internet is facing the biggest change in its history. New brands, ideas, groups, communities,... have now found the chance to apply for their own specific space on internet naming system through ICANN’s new gTLD program.

One of the most interesting points of this courageous program was the motivation it created among communities to try to represent their specific webspace on the internet by applying for their own TLD; and among them were the religious communities as well.

Regardless of the major questions of “who the applicants are?” and “whether they have the competency to hold a religious TLD or not?”, the fact that religious communities are interested in presence on the internet made me curious about the position of the religious TLDs against each other in the future of internet, so I did a statistical investigation on the current new gTLD applications.

The results were interesting.

Among all 1930 applications, I found 17 applications related to religious concepts (please comment if I have missed something):

• TLDs categorized as main religious ones:   Christian TLDs: .BIBLE / .CHURCH (2 applications)   Islamic TLDs: .ISLAM
• TLDs related to subsidiaries of a religion:   Christian subsidiaries: .CATHOLIC / ???????. / .??????? / .??? / .CBN / .LDS / .MORMON   Islamic subsidiaries: .IMAMAT / .SHIA / .ISMAILI / .UMMAH
• Other related TLDs:   Islamic: .HALAL   Jewish: .KOSHER
This explains that Christians may own 56.25% of all religious TLDs, Muslims may have 37.5% and Jews may only have 6.25% of the share. But if we just count the main religious terms and subsidiaries, Christians will again have the majority by 66.6% of applications (60% of TLDs) in comparison to Muslims with 33.3% of applications (40% of TLDs) and Jews do not have any share in this category. I also had an investigation on the TLDs related to Islamic concepts in comparison to those contrary to Islamic values (including pornographic, gambling and alcoholic drinks’ TLDs), according to Islamic laws; and the results were even more interesting. Here are the results:
• TLDs related to pornography: 9 applications (5 TLDs)
• TLDs related to gambling: 17 applications (7 TLDs)
• TLDs related to alcoholic drinks: 8 applications (4 TLDs)

Totally 34 applications for 16 TLDs in comparison to 6…

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