The public comment period for the second draft of the guidebook for the new gTLD extensions closes on Monday.

What’s at stake?

Much more than just the rules for the new gTLDs. What ICANN winds up doing on these new extensions, will impact all existing extensions, including .com’s.

Why?

Because all registries want the same treatment.

You can’t even argue with this point.

If a new registry for .whatever gets a contract that says they have the right to say, charge whatever the want for each domain they issue, then all existing registries are going to want the same right.

Don’t believe me, just look at the comment on a previous blog post by a rep of Neustar, the .biz registry who says yes, he wants for his existing registry the same treatment any new registry receives under the new contracts.

Like I said, you can’t blame him.

So most problematic for all domain holders is the non-existence of price caps on new extensions.

Simply put, if price caps are allowed to be removed for the new gTLDs,  all current registries want the price caps removed for there registry

Thereby,  VeriSign could put whatever dollar figure they wanted on the renewal of each of your domains.  The better the domain, the more your annual renewal fee would be, similar to .tv pricing.

In .tv pricing, domains like sex.tv have a $1,000,000 annual fee. Business.tv I believe is $750,000. The one premium .tv domain I have is great.tv which I pay $3,000 a year to own.  Why don’t I own more .tv’s?  It’s because I can’t afford to, nor can you.

If you have no other concern about the new gTLDs you still need to comment just for the sake or protecting the domains you got from a renewal fee in the hundreds, thousands or worse.

However there are a ton of other reasons to comment on the new gTLDs.

The whole plan to allow an unlimited number of extensions, we are talking about certainly hundreds if not thousands of them, threaten the stability of the Internet.

Having hundreds, possibly thousands or tens of thousands of new extension will create mass confusion in the public, cause an unmanageable amount of trademark infringing domains, create new platforms for spam and phishing, which is already out of control.

Moreover, the process has many flaws and problems which need to be corrected.

Mr. George Kirikos has generously offered to allow anyone to use all or part of his comments to ICANN in their comments.

MarkMonitor is also seeking endorsements for their comments, so if you agree with them you can incorporate their comment into yours or simply say you support their comments.

Their comments are posted at:

http://www.markmonitor.com

I’m making the same offer.  If you want to take all or part of any part of my comment and incorporate it as your own, feel free.

No matter how you do it, you need to get a comment posted between now and Monday.

I urge you to take a few minutes to post your response.

Your comments need to e-mailed to:

2gtld-guide@icann.org

You will get an e-mail from ICANN which you must respond to to confirm your submission.  If you do not respond your comments will not be posted or considered.

To read all comments posted to date, click here.

Here are our comments:

We hereby restate our comments from comment period on first draft of the guidebook for the new gTLDs:

We note however that ICANN not only ignored the vast majority of first-round  comments, including ours, which were against the introduction of an unlimited number of new gTLDs, the removal of price caps, and other matters, but ICANN introduced  changes to the guidebook that were the exact opposite of the recommendations,  including those of the US Department of Commerce and US Department of Justice, which called for:

ICANN’s giving greater consideration to consumer interests.

ICANN carefully weighing potential consumer harms against potential consumer benefits before adding new gTLDs and renewing new gTLD registry agreements.

ICANN to establish competitive mechanisms for authorizing new gTLDs and renewals of gTLD registry agreements whereby prospective gTLD operators would compete for gTLDs by proposing registry terms, including maximum fee schedules, that would provide consumer benefits.

ICANN of course not only ignored both recommendations, but did the exact  OPPOSITE.

One can’t help but feel disturbed that ICANN can not only overlook high quality  input like that provided by the DOJ, but do the exact opposite.  If the DOJ’s comments are simply disregarded, how much weight are my comments or anyone else’s going to be afforded?

I agree with Mr. Kirikos that ICANN in the past, has erred by providing price increases to registries instead of allowing for competitive tenders and select the company that is willing and capabile of running the registry for the lowest cost to the consumer.

Why would a new extension being sought by two or more companies be awarded based on who was willing to pay ICANN the most money to run the registry rather than on the basis of who would be willing to run the registry for the lowest cost to the public?

ICANN has already stated that the application fee of $185,000 will cover ICANN costs of implementation.

What is the benefit of then giving ICANN a windfall well above its costs when its is suppose to be a non-profit corporation and has a track record of losing millions of excess funds in the stock market.

https://www.thedomains.com/2009/02/03/icann-losses-46-million-of-your-money-in-the-stock-market/

Competitive contracts should simply be awarded to the qualified company  which is willing run the registry for the lowest cost to the consumer.

That should be the tie breaker.

Not the one willing to pay ICANN the most.

ICANN has failed to explain why domain  registration costs at the wholesale level (i.e. from VeriSign, Neustar, PIR,  Afilias, etc.) are going up towards $7/yr and beyond where as the cost of other technologies have been going down and other companies have already expressed interest in running the .com registry for example, for less than 1/2 the costs currently charge.

If we have learned anything in this tough economic climate and time of political change that the days of the no bid contract is over.

The days of given out deals,  which hurt consumers,  but line the pockets of huge corporations is over.

If ICANN does not take a fair approach court challenges will mount, and most the money ICANN had to lose in the stock market will have to be spent defending its decisions.

When contracts come up for renewal Registry operators should be able to be replaced.

Contract should be opened to bid by any capable company and awarded to the lowest bidder.

Would the citizens of the world allow a government to award a contract to one company to build every road in the world, on a no bid contract with automatic renewals and no price caps?

It’s just plain silly.

We agree with My Kirikos and also urge the US government and in particular the Department of Justice to  investigate the no-bid monopoly nature of all existing gTLD registry operator  contracts.

When domain registry costs should be close to $2/yr instead of  $7/yr, and when one multiplies this by over 100 million domain names, this  represents a $500 million/yr and growing abuse of consumers through
anti-competitive behaviour. This represents a fundamental failure of ICANN, one that ICANN now desires to expand to hundreds or thousands of more extensions.

What if the study by ABC Namebank is correct and over 18,000 companies apply for their own gTLD, creating 33 Billion dollars in revenue in the first 3 years for ICANN?

https://www.thedomains.com/2008/09/17/new-study-may-be-tens-of-thousand-of-new-extensions/

At some point, and no one knows if its 100 or 500 or 5,000 extensions, but at some point the number of extensions will cause mass confusion, the DNS system will be unmanageable for users, domain holders, website owners and trademark holders.

Once you allow an unlimited number of extensions to be granted, the genie is out of the bottle and there is no stuffing her back in.

The outcry from main street on ICANN’s plan has been overwhelmingly negative.

Popular Science calls them pointless:

https://www.thedomains.com/2009/03/26/a-non-domainers-take-on-the-new-gtlds-there-pointless/

Religious groups already see the nightmare of who would control extensions of religious and generic terms like .god

https://www.thedomains.com/2009/03/05/the-pope-tells-icann-to-say-no-to-new-gtld-religious-extension/

Does ICANN really want to put itself in the position of having to auction off .god to the highest bidder, even if that group say is a pro-nazi group for example?

Francis Gurry, WIPO Director-General says ICANN plan to that would allow an unlimited amount of extensions a “nearly unmanageable task” for trademark owners to monitor abuse:

https://www.thedomains.com/2009/03/16/wipo-wants-to-expand-trademark-rights-hold-registrars-responsible/

Corporate America is widely opposed to the plan as well.  The Wall Street Journal reported Verizon Communications, Marriott International and New York Life Insurance are among the companies arguing that the new domain extensions could open the flood gates to Internet fraud and drastically increase their costs of doing business online.

https://www.thedomains.com/2008/11/04/wsj-companies-are-protesting-new-domain-extensions/

Intellectual property groups are also widely against the new proposals:

https://www.thedomains.com/2008/09/15/new-domain-extensions-intellectual-property-watch-says-no/

http://www.markmonitor.com/cta/TLDcomment/index.php

Even the Olympic committee is against the new extensions and is threatening to sue

http://domainnamewire.com/2009/04/09/olympics-to-icann-well-sue-you/

Simply put it seems almost everyone is against the new extensions except for those looking to rake in the fees produced by them.

Another problem contained in the second draft of the guidebook is that ICANN  is basically putting all Geographical domains, now and forever, in the hands of government.

In the US, don’t we have that already?  Its called the .gov extension, and it is only available by use of the federal government.

However this proposal is far more reaching as it applies not just to every state and city in the US, but every country city around the world, every City, County, Provence, or Region.

Simply put, ICANN has set up separate rules for Geo TLD extensions or those that might look like a Geo domain, but is not.

According to the Guide book:

“”ICANN will review all gTLD applications to make sure the interests of governments or public authorities in Country or Territory names, as well as other types of place names.””

This means that if you apply for any new gTLD, ICANN will summit each application to a special committee which will determine if the proposed extension might be considered a Geo domain even if you didn’t intend it to be so.

For example maybe you wanted a .mia extension for families of soldiers missing in action.

That would probably we found to be a Geo extension and fall within these special rules in the review committee.

This committee in that case would kick the application back to you and tell you it’s a Geo domain extension in their opinion, and require you to get permission from the city of Miami to give up their rights to the extension and support your use.

Good luck.

The guidebook further says:

“””The following types of applications are considered geographical names and must be accompanied by  documentation of support or non-objection from the relevant government(s) or public authority(ies):

“”An application for any string that is a meaningful representation of a country or territory.  A meaningful representation includes a representation of the country or territory name in any language.””

“”A string is deemed a meaningful representation of a country or territory name if it is:

“The name of the country or territory; or

“Part of the name of the country or territory denoting the country or territory; or

“A short-form designation for the name of the country or territory that is recognizable and denotes the country or territory.

“An application for any string that is an exact match of a sub-national place name, such as a county, province, or state.

“An application for any string that is a representation, in any language, of the capital city name of any country or territory;

“An application for a city name, where the applicant declares that it intends to use the gTLD for purposes associated with the city name.

“An application for a string which represents a continent or UN region appearing on the “Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings”

“In the case of an application for a string which represents a continent or UN region, documentation of support, or non-objection, will be required from a substantial number of the relevant governments and/or public authorities associated with the continent or the UN region.

“An applied-for gTLD string that falls into any the above categories is considered to represent a geographical name (GEO).

“In the event of any doubt, it is in the applicant’s interest to consult with relevant governments and public authorities and enlist their support or non-objection prior to submission of the application, in order to preclude possible objections and pre-address any ambiguity’sies concerning the string and applicable requirements.

“It is the applicant’s responsibility to:

1.  identify whether its applied-for gTLD string falls into any of the above categories; and

2.  determine the relevant government(s) or public authority(ies); and

3.  identify which level of government support is required.

“The requirement to include documentation of support for certain applications does not preclude or exempt applications from being the subject of objections on community grounds, under which applications may be rejected based on objections showing substantial opposition from the targeted community.

“The documentation of support or non-objection from the relevant government or public authority should include a signed letter of support or non-objection from the minister with the portfolio responsible for domain name administration, ICT, foreign affairs or the Office of the Prime Minister or President of the relevant jurisdiction.

“The letter must clearly express the government’s or public authority’s support or non-objection for the applicant’s application and demonstrate the government’s or public authority’s understanding of the string being requested and intended use.””

Why has ICANN given all of the possible new Geo gTLD’s and placed them in the sole control of the respective jurisdictions?

Sure I understand and would agree with giving a jurisdiction preference in competing Geo applications.

But to give jurisdictions absolute control over possible Geo extension seems inherently unfair.

If a jurisdiction wants to apply for its own gTLD, god bless, but if they don’t have the interest to do so, why give them veto power over private industry from doing so?

Included in the definition of a GEO domain is,”geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings.”

What does this mean? “selected economic and other groupings”.

Among the hundreds of pages that make up the guide book and attachments thereto, I cannot find a discussion, of what the term “selected economic and other groupings” might mean or include, or even an example of such a term.

Would an extension like .wallsteet, that someone might want to create for the financial community, fall within this section?

Maybe.

I certainly could make the argument that .wallstreet is a “select economic grouping” having a Geo component.

How about the “wine country” or the region in France which produces champagne?

What if you wanted to set up .champagne for that industry.  Is champagne a “select economic grouping”, as it often is referred to that region of France where French, but not all champagne, is produced? (yes I also know its a city in Illinois, that another problem discussed below).

Would you need the permission of the region to do such and extension, and if so, it appears you would have to get the permission of the majority of the jurisdictions that comprise the “champagne country” as it is called, an high improbable task.

The possibilities of what might fall within “”select economic grouping” are endless and undefined.

All you can do at this point is pony up your $185k and find out.

If you application is denied as being a Geo, whether intended or not, during after the initial review it looks like you will get $65,000 back, so it will only cost $120,000 to find out.

What if multiple cities with the same name apply for their cities gTLD?, like .springfield for which there are many in the US alone.

It appears that cities would have to go through the same process that all other applicants do.

Come to an agreement, which is impossible to do in any logical manner when it comes to a Geo extension or go through the auction process .

So the good citizens of these cities would have to pony up their tax money, and give it to ICANN to be the high bidder in an auction against other cities and their taxpayers.

According to the guidebook,  in the auction format, that you can only bid as much as you have deposited with ICANN in advance.

So each city would have to go to the taxpayers and cough up hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars just to place them into ICANN account so they could bid for their extension.

Sounds good, especially in these economic times when many city and state governments are broke.

I can hear it the city hall meeting now.  Good citizens we have to raise your property tax 1% so we can raise money to have bidding capital in applying for our domain extension.

Does ICANN really want to auction off extensions of cities and force the taxpayers of those jurisdictions which are now scrambling to keep their police and firefighters employed to cut services to the citizens to pay ICANN hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in fees, that they can then invest in the stock market?

Now for our suggestions to fix this mess:

1.  Limit new gTLD introduction to no more than 5 per year, allowing for proper absorption .

2. All new gTLD’s contracts need to be awarded to the company willing to provide the service for the least cost to the public, not to the company willing to pay the most to ICANN.

3.  All contracts should have a reasonable term of 4 years at which time the contract to run the registry goes to a competitive bid where the contract is then awarded once again to the company willing to provide the service for the least cost to the public, not to the company willing to pay the most to ICANN.

4. Eliminate any possibility of unregulated pricing, now and forever, for all existing TLDs and any future gTLDs.  This issue has been up for consideration before and does not need to ever come up again.

5. Develop a mechanism for safeguarding brand owners from massive global TM infringement defense costs. Consider allowing a trademark registration at little or no cost to holders with real well established trademarks for each new gTLD, while preventing sham trademarks on clearly non-protectable terms, from countries outside the G-20 which have issued trademarks like candy on clearly non-protectable terms,  that have been granted in the past.

6. Conduct a high-integrity study from a truly neutral company , on the potential effects of introducing new gTLDs, on internet stability and massive consumer confusion.

7. Give governments preference in applications for Geo Domains but not absolute control over them.  Fix the lack of definition and confusion discussed above for terms such as “select economic grouping” so that people do not wind up spending six figures to determine if they have interpreted the rules correctly.  Award Geo domains to the registry willing to provide the service for the lowest cost and do not make the citizens of a jurisdiction cut governmental services to pay ICANN additional fees through a bidding war with others.

8. Abandon a artificially created “timeline” for launching any new gTLD until the above concerns,  have been genuinely resolved.

Michael H. Berkens
President
Worldwide Media, Inc.

http://www.MostWantedDomains.com