The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon, testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Internet Subcommitteepanel, which is holding hearings on ICANN, that new gTLD’s shouldn’t be allowed unless there is a proven market demand for the names and the Internet is secure and stable.
ICANN President Paul Twomey said in his testimony in front of the same committee, “There is a demand. Geographic names like dot.NYC and dot.Berlin are being proposed along with others like dot.sport, dot.ECO and dot.green,” Twomey told the House Energy and Commerce Internet Subcommittee at a hearing.
“ICANN financially benefits from this expansion. It will bring in more than $90 million from the initial grant of applications alone,” said Sarah Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel. “As a result, however, businesses and consumers will face higher costs. This isn’t very helpful in the current economic climate.”
Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., asked Twomey how ICANN protects businesses from cybersquatting, a practice whereby individuals or companies register Web names that are variations on another company’s known brand.
If ICANN expands Internet domains, Boucher observed, “that would mean that companies would have to acquire more second-level domains. The opportunity for cybersquatting increases.”
Twomey said ICANN has a ” to settle disputes over domain names, and it’s resulted in some 36,000 decisions. ICANN is proposing a similar arbitration system for an expanded domain-name system”
Here he is of course talking about UDRP’s, which trademark groups do not agree is a “fairly cheap online arbitration mechanism”, as it costs $4K+ per.
Of course ICANN is always talking about demand from those wanting to sponsor additional extensions.
Yes there are lots of companies lining up to sponsor a new gTLD’s
But Verizon point is the same as the point we have made before, there is little to no demand from consumers; those wanting to operate websites using the one of the new gTLD extensions.
Demand from suppliers is a whole different matter than demand from consumers.
Hopefully, Congress can see that difference in their analysis, and support having ICANN drop the plan altogether, as many non-domainers have called for .
Otherwise if the plan moves forward for the new gTLD’s, the argument from the trademark groups, like Verizon made today, is playing right into the hands of the URS system we reported on earlier this week.
You should also read the ICA response to the URS proposal if you haven’t already here.
It amazes me how the dotTravel story is rarely used as an example to discredit the “public demand” for these new TLDs. With dotTravel you had all of the right ingredients for a successful new TLD: a great generic that was extremely well funded with little competition. And it tanked.
David
And continues to tank.
ICANN keeps talking about demand for the new extensions, but that demand is from the supplier side.
From the consumer side, there is no demand no cry for someone wanting to use a .eco domain or a .sport name.
Hopefully someone will be able to get this ingrained in Congress understanding of the gTLD’s
This is exactly why the rest of the world gets up in arms regarding the management of the internet by the US. ICANN is supposed to be able to operate at an arms length from Commerce’s control (simply as a sponsoring organization) and this kind of action and rhetoric is what makes ICANN impotent and weak in the eyes of the rest of the world. Great Job Verizon. Keep up your policy of searching and suing TM infringers rather than taking the more economical steps to securing your brand via registrations. Verizon tried to take VeriSign to court claiming TM infringment even though the VeriSign name is 4 years older than Verizon. Laughable! Don’t forget, Ms. Deutch is a nightmare when it comes to your rights as a domainer.
Fresh
ICANN has not proven they can be trusted to operate without the oversight of the US.
The awarding of no-bid contracts, the loss of millions of dollars in the stock market, plans to expand domain extensions without a showing of any consumer demand.
It’s would be just great to let these guys do whatever they want, however they want, with no oversight and answerable to no one.
Fresh Avails your post is so far off its not funny IMO, why should Verizon have to secure registrations in other extensions and typos in .com ? They have Verizon.com and all the tms they need they should go after every squatter and clean up the industry.
Congress were superb. Can’t imagine it having gone better. All the right questions were asked. Members zeroed in on the obvious fallacy of public “demand” for a new round of tld’s. As has been obvious, ICANN’s entire rationale for the new tld’s is built on speculation + a plan for quick, easy money.
Congress asked Twomey for more evidence of new tld demand. And when pressured to explain the underlying justification for breaking off from DOC oversight, the answer was so empty not even worthy of mention.
I think that all of the non-expansion comments are based on large investments in the current information source (.com). To think that .com will always be king or the only top level domain is rather silly. I always default to a historical analogy of Spain and being the leader of the world at one time. That too came to pass.
I don’t doubt the strength of .com as what the end consumer knows as the “now” Internet, but we must advance past this 1st or 2nd stage of the Internet into a more diversified, global source of info.
MHB I totally agree with you. ICANN and domain name registrars want to pollute the internet with new useless extensions. Why? All we know why, the reason is as simple as $$$ But who the hell needs new gTLDs? The internet would really look much better with only few gTLDs like .com .net .org .gov .info …but they want .food .betterfood .butter .vodka .wine .cheapwine .cheaperwine .xxx .soap .soap2 .garbage .junk .crap .sh*t .pieceofcrap .pieceofsh*t .and .LOL .we .will. .have .to .live .in .this .mess .god .damn .:)
Hi MHB,
We agree with a key premise in your article. New domains shouldn’t be dot com clones, or be allowed to become squatter-havens.
That’s why we’ve partnered with some of the best names in the business to ensure that doesn’t happen. It’s a solvable problem.
But your requirement of a ‘proven market’ runs contrary to basic entrepreneurial and economic thought. People can build markets, generate demand, and create useful tools if they are allowed to experiment.
How many ‘hunches’ that led to major innovations would have withered on the vine if subjected to a sea of market study requirements and closed or highly regulated markets?
A lot of people are benefiting from the artificial scarcity in this market. Like DeBeers keeping diamonds off the market to prop up their value, it’s protectionist, anti-competitive and contrary to many principles we hold dear.
In fact, many TLD proposals, including our dot eco proposal, simply use the DNS as a tool to achieve things of import for their community, like better, comparable sustainability information on domain name owners (whether they are companies, products or individuals).
The DNS, as a global database, is uniquely capable of handling these challenges.
It’s time for ICANN open up the DNS and let us get on with the serious business of creating the innovations that grow our economy.
— Jacob Malthouse
Jacob
I have no problem with ICANN approving some new extensions every year, those with viable backers, community support and proven interest from endusers to use the extension.
I have no problem with .eco and wish you guys all the best.
I do not think Icann should allow hundreds or thousands of new extensions over a short period of time as it will destabilize the net, cause massive confusion by users, and become a haven for trademark abuse, phishing attacks and all the rest.
Hi MHB,
Thanks for the clarification. We completely agree. It’s darn difficult to do these things right, especially building robust policies drumming up support and guaranteeing a do-no-harm approach to trademark owners.
What’s the best way to send that message to ICANN and registry operators in your opinion? We’ve been thinking about a set of “do-no-harm” principles that responsible existing and potential registry owners could adopt. Kind of like a ‘best-in-class’ seal for those who are really committed to doing good work.
Bottom line is we love the Internet, and don’t want to be a part of making it worse!
Jacob
There is a lot of work to do to get it right.
I think Icann should shoot for no more than 10 new extensions for the first year or two so this whole process can be tweaked and these issues resolved.
I’m don’t think there should ever be hundreds of new extensions in any given year.
Those applications that have community support, which your seems to do, and have end user support and for which there is a logical need for should be approved first.
I do not like the idea that Icann is going to award extensions to the highest bidder rather than the most qualified company with regards to community support, backing, experience of its board and cost to the consumers.
Icann should not use this process to generate a huge payday for itself.
Hi MHB,
Interesting, so you’re proposing only doing a community track as a first step, and perhaps making the community evaluation much more intensive. We’ve been following the community track process (latest PDF is here):
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/draft-comparative-evaluation-30may09-en.pdf
I think there is one more comment round left, will plan to comment along these lines. I’d like to figure out a way to help ICANN run a robust community eval that prevents gaming of the system. Thanks for your thoughts! – Jacob.
MHB’s idea that demand be “proven” by people signing up online is not going to work. There is a .music application out there that claims to have 700,000 supporters. If you believe that, I have a .bridge you might be interested in buying. Numbers of supporters is too easy to game.
As noted, there is already a pretty robust community requirement in ICANN’s rules.
Similarly, the idea of a “do-no-harm” or “seal of approval” approach is fraught with problems, not the least of which is that someone is going to have to decide who is better than whom — which is the whole point of introducing new TLDs this way instead of having a beauty contest run by the ICANN Board or staff. That’s what they’ve done in the past, giving us the unlovely and unloved .museum and so on…
Hi Anthony,
To clarify, my ‘seal-of-approval’ reference was not meant in regard to the ICANN application process. I agree this should not be driven by ICANN staff.
Rather, I was positing it as an industry led effort to define what is ‘responsible’ in this field. Defining responsible practice on a voluntary basis is a well understood soft-policy tool for of encouraging best practice within an industry.
Two well known examples where this has been effective are:
institutional investment: http://www.unpri.org/
and extractive industries: http://eitransparency.org/
It could be that a similar collaborative effort amongst registries and registrars may help assuage concerns raised by MHB and many others regarding this process.
,..] http://www.thedomains.com is one another nice source on this topic,..]