what problem are we solving? (was Re: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs)

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
21

Out of curiosity, what are the problems you feel ICANN should be spending its time on?

For starters, has Verisign ever been sanctioned by ICANN for it's business practices,

You mean like Sitefinder?

with stupid stuff occurring as late as what, this past February (the front running debacle)?

I suspect you've confused VeriSign with Network Solutions here (and I can't comment on the NetSol stuff because ICANN was named in a lawsuit on the topic).

If ICANN is supposed to be encouraging competition, et cetera, why is Verisign still in business?

Well, for one reason, people continue to register their names in (say) .NET... (:-)).

Also, show me a single registrar that actually gaurantees their service.
[concerns about registrars]

You have commented on the revision to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (ICANN | Archives | Consultation on Registrar Accreditation Agreement Amendments) I presume?

How does an entire class of business truly serve the consumer with these kinds of policies?

Read a software EULA recently?

With that said, personally, I agree that more attention should be spent on the welfare of the registrants. Unfortunately, given I work for ICANN, my providing comments in the RAA public consultation along those lines would be a bit ... awkward.

I'll be the first to admit there's been progress made on the front of preventing domain theft and other shenanigans, but when it comes down to it, running a domain registry doesn't seem to be in the best interests of the primary consumers of such a product.

I'm not sure I follow this (did you mean registrar?), but I suspect it depends on the registry.

So, other than slapping VeriSign and making registrars liable for more stuff, what should ICANN be spending its time on? This is a serious question (not saying I can fix anything, but I can push internally). One of the personally frustrating things about ICANN processes is the lack of input from the network operations community. One of the reasons I'm spamming the NANOG list is to try to stir up folks from this community to actually participate in ICANN processes because, as should be apparent, it actually does matter...

Regards,
-drc
(speaking only for myself)

22

While doing the groceries, I got to think about this issue.

There have been complaints in the past about difficulty in getting new
legitimate TLDs approved by ICANN. (image of ICANN being too USA centric
etc etc etc).

So I understand a move towards a more documented and "logical" process
to get new .TLDs approved adn setup.

Right now, whethere real or not, there is an image that the .TLDs have
been vetted and are operated by reputable people and used for legitimate
purposes. (yeah, that image might be tarnished in some circles).

But my uneducated opinion is that this current project appears to let
the .TLD loose and this will result in top level domains being
meaningless, without any trust.

There should have been an evolution from a tightly controlled small set
of TLDs towards alowly growing set of TLDs done fairly and openly. Going
whole hog on auctioning anything and everything is a bit too much fo a
revolution in my opinion.

The way I see it from quick read, by default you can get anything
registered as a .TLD unless someone else justifies why you shouldn't get
it, or if it is truly obscene.

There should have be a "in between" where people still have to justify a
new .TLD and only allow TLDs that are generic and allow many different
entities to participate. (as opposed to using a private trademark as a
.TLD where only one company can participate).

23

David Conrad wrote:

With that said, personally, I agree that more attention should be
spent on the welfare of the registrants. Unfortunately, given I work
for ICANN, my providing comments in the RAA public consultation along
those lines would be a bit ... awkward.

Would you agree with Danny Younger (I believe this is his position) then that there should be a
properly constituted & recognized registrants constituency?

joly

24

Oh, that's quite straightforward: insufficient registrar revenue.

---Rsk

25

But my uneducated opinion is that this current project appears to let
the .TLD loose and this will result in top level domains being
meaningless, without any trust.

Given the complexity of the new gTLD process, I think it safe to say that there will be quite significant vetting of pretty much all aspects of new TLD applications. The press reports that say 'the floodgates have been opened' simply aren't true.

There should have been an evolution from a tightly controlled small set
of TLDs towards alowly growing set of TLDs done fairly and openly.

There has been. There was an initial set of 7 new TLDs (biz, info, name, museum, coop, aero, pro) back in 2002. There was much (justifiable IMHO) unhappiness about the process that created these TLDs. ICANN went back to the drawing board and came up with a new process ('sponsored' TLDs) which resulted in travel, cat, jobs, mobi, tel, and post (xxx was in this crowd but was shot down). There was much (justifiable IMHO) unhappiness about the process that created these TLDs. ICANN went back to the drawing board and came up with a new process. And here we are. I'm sure ICANN got it exactly right this time... (OK, maybe not :-)).

Regards,
-drc

26

Obviously speaking personally, conceptually I agree, but the challenge here has always been how do you "properly constitute and recognize registrants" in a way that doesn't allow for capture. For example, you could say 'only folks who have domain names can be part of that constituency', but in reality, the majority of domain names are held by registrars. You could add the restriction that 'registrants' must be natural persons, but how would one verify this across the entire planet? It obviously isn't impossible, but people already complain about how big ICANN is -- I can't see how having some mechanism to validate a registrant constituency won't make ICANN _much_ larger...

However, lacking this, I personally believe there should be strong explicit registrant protections built into the RAA. But that's just me.

Regards,
-drc

27

One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion
of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new
gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs
on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.

Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?

Frank

28

One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion
of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new
gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs
on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.

Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?

  I think the point some people are trying to make is that a person could
pony up the fees, get a new TLD, and then EXPECT ${FORTUNE_XXXX_COMPANY} to buy
theirname.NEWTLD . Instant market. Might even be able to make the investment back
the first year, and nice profit the subsequent ones just for companies keeping
their name protected.

    Tuc/TBOH

29

One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion
of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new
gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs
on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.

Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?

I own iecc.com. A group of educators in Minnesota own iecc.org. A
speculator in the UK owns iecc.net. Which, if any, of us gets first
dibs on iecc.thisisgreatstuff?

On the other hand, there is a school of thought voiced by the
trademark lawyers that the main goal of new TLDs is to shake down
trademark owners, who are advised by their lawyers that they have to
buy defensive registrations in every new domain. ICANN helps this
along by mandating a sunrise period for each new domain in which the
trademark crowd can make their claims before the hoi polloi are
allowed in.

In any event the question of to what extent a domain name is a
trademark or other identifier with scope beyond the DNS has been
argued and litigated for over a decade, and we're not going to resolve
it here.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.

30

In article <!&!AAAAAAAAAAAuAAAAAAAAAKTyXRN5/+lGvU59a+P7CFMBAN6gY+ZG84BMpVQcAbDh1IQAA
AATbSgAABAAAAAP+1+63SBGRYYQR0hFiqgsAQAAAAA=@iname.com>, Frank Bulk - iNAME <frnkblk@iname.com> writes

One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion
of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new
gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs
on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.

Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?

perry.com
perry.net
perry.org
perry.eu (etc...) and one of mine:
perry.co.uk

All have different registrants.

Now, what I did think this week in Paris, listening to all this stuff, was that maybe there could be one big race/auction for something like mytrademark.sunrise, and then all the sunrise periods of all the other new tlds should automatically import as a reserved name, all the mytrademarks (but if the registration wasn't taken up by the end of the sunrise period, it could be thrown back in the pot).

31

That's the phrase I was thinking of -- "sunrise period".

All of you would get first dibs -- I don't have a good idea how it would
actually be doled out or purchased. But at least you three would be first
in the ring, before speculator xyz had a chance.

Frank

32

That's the phrase I was thinking of -- "sunrise period".

All of you would get first dibs -- I don't have a good idea how it would
actually be doled out or purchased. But at least you three would be first
in the ring, before speculator xyz had a chance.

But in my case, iecc.net already belongs to a speculator. Why would we give him preference?

In any event, ICANN's sunrise rules work adequately well, and they're not likely to change.

R's,
John

33

In article <alpine.BSF.1.10.0806281702530.19430@gal.iecc.com>, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes

In any event, ICANN's sunrise rules work adequately well, and they're not likely to change.

Sunrise rules differ for each tld, it's one of the things that differentiates them. In Paris this week there was a short talk aimed at future tld applicants, describing what "did and didn't work" about the sunrise periods of a selection of recent new tlds.

http://par.icann.org/en/node/116

34

John Levine wrote:

I own iecc.com. A group of educators in Minnesota own iecc.org. A
speculator in the UK owns iecc.net. Which, if any, of us gets first
dibs on iecc.thisisgreatstuff?

Well, that would depend on whatever policies the owner of
"thisisgreatstuff" has.

More importantly, who gets first dibs at .iecc ??? Based on what I
read, it will be the highest bidder. I have not seen wording that says
that in cases of legitimate conflicts from existing domains, the .tld
will be made unavailable period.

Speculators won't be too happy with the busines potential for
registering .iecc because in the end, only 3 customers will be
interested in registering domains in that .tld, and if none of those
have deep pockets, none of them will be interested in buying the .tld
itself from the speculator.

But conflicts will arise you have multiple legitimate owners of a
trademark in different countries, and one of them has much deeper
pockets than the others and will get the .tld for their trademark, thus
devalueing/infringing on your trademark.

I think that IANA should have long ago become quite strict with domain
name registrations. .COM should have been only to companies operating
worldwide.

Websites that have portions of their site limited to local IPs (for
instance BBC, and the USA networks like ABC CBS NBC, should be forced to
use a "local" .TLD of their own country since they are no longer "world
wide web". aka: www.abc.us instead of www.abc.com . If you want ".com"
you need to be accessible worldwide.

bbc.co.uk is fine because when you access it, you are aware it is a site
designed for UK residents so when they tell you you can't access parts
of their web site, you understand. But they shouldn't have "bbc.com" for
that web site.

Similarly, IANA could have setup rules so that new .TLDs would be handed
out only when they have global scope, or if the tld defines a region
(such as .asia or .europe). In other words, prevent a pizza place in
dubai from buying the whole .PIZZA tld unless its goal is to make it
available to all pizzerias around the world.

35

a message of 32 lines which said:

what problem is ICANN trying to solve with this
proposal? What about the current system that's broken, does this new
system fix?

ICANN is simply responding to demand. Some people want to create a
TLD. The existence of a TLD is not a problem for the other TLDs. If
the new TLD is stupid or useless (like ".aero" or ".pro"), it will
fail. So what? That's the normal life of projects.

Why ICANN should evaluate the new TLD applications, apart from some
simple technical checks? If something is wanted and causes no harm for
the others, then why in hell ICANN should refuse it?

I did not suspect that the idea of central regulation of business,
with a state-like committee examining business ideas and allowing them
or not, was an idea so popular among Nanog members :slight_smile:

36

a message of 47 lines which said:

I think that IANA should have long ago become quite strict with
domain name registrations. .COM should have been only to companies
operating worldwide.

Wow, ".fr", like many ccTLDs, spent a lot of time and money in this
Soviet-style regulation a long time ago. We checked business records,
asked customers for more paper, refused applications...

As an obvious result, many people choosed ".com" over ".fr".

In several steps (2000, 2004 and 2006), ".fr" relaxed its rules so,
now, there is no human checking. Most other ccTLDs did the same at
this time or before.

Should ".com" had rules like the one you suggest (how do you check a
business record from a company in Thailand? Or in Tadjikistan?) ".fr"
would have had been in better position against it :slight_smile:

37

David Conrad wrote:

... part of that constituency', but in reality, the majority of domain names are held by registrars. ...

I didn't know that. Can you point me to some data?

Eric

38

Oh, ick. No, it's just dumb.

Could someone, anyone, anywhere, point me to *any case law in any
jurisdiction whatsoever* which tends even to *suggest* that the mere
purchase and deployment of a domain name *in itself* in any way
constitutes infringement upon the rights of some holder of a trademark
to some component of that domain name?

or else shut the hell up about it, already?

Cheers,
-- jra

39

I don't see that, and I don't see why a holder of pastry.com would have
any valid reason at all to block a .pastry TLD registry -- let's
remember; we're talking about registries here, not registrars.

Cheers,
-- jra

40

In article <20080630210640.GH8195@cgi.jachomes.com>, Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes

Could someone, anyone, anywhere, point me to *any case law in any
jurisdiction whatsoever* which tends even to *suggest* that the mere
purchase and deployment of a domain name *in itself* in any way
constitutes infringement upon the rights of some holder of a trademark
to some component of that domain name?

Several at this website, I recommend starting with the "MARKSANDSPENCER.COM" case (as I remember it taking place).

http://www.domainhandbook.com/dd2.html