According to NextGov.com, Two of the House Judiciary Committee’s top Republicans wrote to ICANN’s CEO Rod Beckstrom, expressing their concern, that ICANN plan to add unlimited number of new gTLD”s, will carry “serious negative consequences” for U.S. businesses and consumers.
Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith, and Courts and Competition Subcommittee ranking member, Howard Coble, R-N.C., said “the absence of price caps in the new registry deals could mean that legitimate businesses could be discriminated against and asked to pay a premium for each domain they register or renew”.
“”Given the late consideration of intellectual property concerns and ICANN’s “less than stellar track record,” Smith and Coble said they have “serious misgivings” about the scheduled expiration later this month of a joint project agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN.””Smith and Coble ask Beckstrom to provide detailed answers by Sept. 22 to several questions about the domain name expansion and the termination of the joint project agreement.
Nice to see that at least two members of congress gets it when it comes to domains.
Since ICANN doesn’t seem to listen to domainers maybe they will listen to members of Congress.
Hopefully congress can tame the ICANN’t.
Thanks for sharing Mike.
Great news and post. I hope this is only the beginning of political pressure to move ICANN in a more moderate, measured, and intelligent direction. ICANN do not accept that they are off track … so it will take additional collective efforts to achieve the proper outcome.
Increaased ICANN independence is exactly the wrong thing. More oversight, stakeholder involvement, and high level accountability are the correct answer, and are completely merited based on ICANN’s performance record.
Hallelujah!
First, the Obama Administration hits them and now this from two Republicans. Well, at least ICANN can get credit for finally getting both parties to agree on something.