ICANN ditches digital archery

ICANN announced it was suspending its "digital archery" scheme for prioritizing applications for new Internet extensions.

The scheme - which saw people click on a button as soon after a given time as possible - was widely criticized by the Internet community as being flawed and unfair.

ICANN highlighted the fact that it had been given reports demonstrating that the system was not working properly, and that only 20 percent of applicants had used the system, despite its intended close this week, as the reasons for the suspension.

The news was greeted with both relief and frustration. Many of the 1,000+ companies applying for new gTLDs had invested in automated systems to improve their changes of coming first in the process.

A replacement for the process had not yet been decided but ICANN is expected to announce later this week that it will no longer break down applications into chunks but deal with them all at one time.