The comment period for the proposed gTLD’s has been extended until next Monday December 15th.
Yesterday in a post entitled “Why Domaining Sucks”, my friend Sahar posted as reason number 3 “We lack influence with ICANN”. I think this is common complaint.
However, as of today there are less than 100 comments posted on any of the six topics you can comment on regarding the new gTLD’s.
Certainly, if you do not comment when ICANN asks for it, you have no say.
When the last comment period was opened for changes to the registrar agreements only about 50 people commented, many from my urging, for ICANN to stop allowing registrars to warehouse domains. In response to those comments, ICANN noted they would be looking into the matter.
As for the new gTLD’s, most objection has been focused to an issue first bought to light by George Kirikos, who first reported back in October, that the new gTLD contracts allow tiered pricing by the registry, by removing price caps. Thereby the new gTLD’s can adopt a price model similar to .tv and charge different prices and renewal prices for each domain.
Mr. Kirikos correctly argues that if variable pricing is allowed for new gTLD’s, then Verisign will ask for similar treatment for .com and .net domains
This is enough reason for all domainers to comment on the proposed contracts.
This battle was fought twice already, once when the new VeriSign contract was up for renewal and then when the .org, .info and .biz contract came up for renewal in 2006. Both time the outcry from the registrant community kept ICANN from allowing variable pricing.
Now we have to speak up again.
Moreover, Mr. Kirikos argues that the whole new gTLD idea is a bad one, certain to cause tremendous confusion in the public, make an already trademark infringement problem, many times worse, increase the levels of spam and phishing attacks, create many more failed TLD’s and generally compromise the security and integrity of the Internet.
Mr. Kirikos geriously stated in his comments on the new gTLD’s that:
“””If any other individuals or organizations wish to endorse or build upon the comments below, please feel free to do so by referencing our company name and the date of our comments that we’ve submitted to ICANN.”””
Mr. Kirikos has spent a tremendous amount of time reaching the contracts throughly and given much thought and consideration to all potential problems.
I urge all of you to do, what I am going to spend some time on today. Review Mr. Kirikos comments take him up on his offer to use some of his arguement and submit my comments to ICANN objecting to these new gTLD’s.
You need to submit your comments to three different e-mail addresses set up by ICANN for this purpose.
Once you submit your comments, you will receive an e-mail from ICANN asking you to confirm your comment. YOU MUST CLICK ON THE CONFIRMATION LINK OR YOUR COMMENTS WILL NOT BE SUBMITTED.
The e-mail addresses to submit your comment are:
Great post, Michael.
I would strongly encourage all domainers to tell ICANN what’s on their mind. And to do it ASAP. My brother Michael and I are members of ICANN’s Business Constituency and we have strongly endorsed George Kirikos’s excellent paper arguing against these new TLDs.
ICANN
STOP allowing registrars to warehouse domains.
Phil
Don’t write to us, write to ICANN