There’s definitely a double-standard with regard to new TLDs. Karklins’ cheerleading for IDN TLDs is in stark contradistinction to the skeptical and dour demeanor of the GAC when it comes to non-IDN new TLDs.  The trademark issues are if anything far worse with IDNs, because it’s very hard to do searches for IDN domains. 

The explanation lies in a fact that trademark apologists don’t like to admit—they’re don’t really care about all new TLDs, just some of them.  Those (like IDN TLDs) where they don’t expect there to be much commerce, are not a worry to brand owners.  Other non-IDN TLDs, which might be popular—and which are as yet unknown, adding to the fear—are seen as a threat.

So if there’s no demand for TLDs (as proponents of economic studies would have it) and if brand owners are only afraid of popular new TLDs (as their utter lack of opposition to IDN TLDs would indicate), then brand owners should have no fear of introducing more TLDs of any kind. 

But they are afraid, which pretty much translates to a vote of confidence that there really is demand for new TLDs, and that obstructing of them is obstruction of a public resource.

Antony

Hey Adrian,

You have just expressed exactly what I just wrote in my EOI comments that I will be submitting.

Here is a little excerpt:

We see a double standard in the ICANN process from the entities that are against new gTLDs. On one hand they claim that there is no economic demand and on the other hand they scream that it will be the end of the world because their IP rights will be abused. If there is no economic demand, then there is no trademark abuse, right? However, the whole community knows that there is demand for new gTLDs and trademarks should be protected. Those mechanisms are put in place that will ensure IP protection. How about the rest of the domain economy though? Why does .com, which will remain the market leader, not have this scrutiny or additional safeguards that new gTLDs will have? Additionally, how can the ICANN Board vote for the IDN ccTLD fast track without addressing the same overarching issues that are hounding the gTLD process? Why haven’t the overarching issues become an issue with the IDN ccTLD Fast Track? Don’t ccTLD IDNs have the same overarching issues? All we ask is for ICANN to be transparent and consistent. I would like a formal response by ICANN that states why ccTLD IDNs were treated differently than gTLDs despite having nearly the same overarching issues. The process has been moved multiple times because the ICANN Board was unable to make a decision on issues that could have been addressed in a faster manner. I think ICANN’s credibility is at stake here. I am personally losing faith in the whole process and how the ICANN process is being conducted, given the inconsistencies and biases that I have previously described. I hope ICANN can join me and other applicants so that we can move forward and introduce the new Internet landscape.

I have been pretty adamant about what you are describing in your article. It is just a shame that we have the political influence and biases playing a role in the whole ICANN process, coupled with big corporate interests/influence.

I believed ICANN was a body that represented the Internet community, small business and big corporations. I was quite wrong. I was under the impression that ICANN functioned as a non-profit. However the unacceptable definition of what constitutes community, oops sorry quantifies as a community, via a scoring method, pushes for the big money grabber for ICANN - the auctions. No problem with auctions but let us do them now if that is the case and stop wasting time.

I am quite amazed that both CEOs of ICANN were allowed to open offices in their respective locations and spend monies (I heard $400,000 approved by the Board) so they can be more at home and have awesome offices. Last thing I heard the headquarters were in Marina Del Rey. Nothing against new offices but everything against how monies are used when auctions or our monies are concerned. I think auction winners should choose the non-profit they can donate to as opposed to give ICANN the authority to use those monies for the supposed “stabilization of the Internet,” paying higher salaries and improving office space. If I am paying ICANN a non-profit, I certainly demand to know exactly where my monies go and how exactly they are used.

Anyways, I am steering away from the issue. IDNs. I love the fact that there will be a Greek IDN and congratulate ICANN for doing something right and not bowing down to the powers of discontent and corporate interests. Why can’t ICANN be consistent across the board? They should have had less people working on the gTLDs like they had with the IDNs. Why? There is a thing called the Law of Diminishing Returns. The more people that get involved, the noisier the process gets. Yes, I am describing the gTLD process.

Adrian I reiterate what you say and ask for answers by ICANN as well. I guess I am getting quite frustrated to read comments from all this big corporations saying the same exact thing again and again and ICANN just bowing down. Someone needs to start making decisions as opposed to ignore timelines and basic business concepts. If you are a Board on any company, you were selected to make decisions. Let us make some sound ones please and stop wasting everyone’s time and ruining your credibility.

Everyone is accountable for their decisions and I would love an answer from ICANN about the irrelevancy of the overarching issues in IDN ccTLDs and why gTLDs have been suffering from an inconsistency of treatment.

I guarantee you, ICANN will not have a response for me or you. We all know the real answer. We are all human. I doubt ICANN functions in the same manner that it did when Vint Cerf was the head. All in public interest. I strongly believe a lot of things have changed. And I am not an ICANN regular. A sophomore and counting. I sometimes wonder how people can do business in this kind of atmosphere. I guess what they say is true - that the domain world is not black or white. It is quite shady. I hope that these statements can be proven wrong.

Let us get this process moving forward. I just hate having my time wasted. I am sure many feel the same way.

Constantine Roussos
.music

I just re-read the GAC’s letter of 18 Aug opposing new gTLDs and many of their objections (including their concerns about economic studies, competition analysis, root scalability, trademarks, and malicious activity) are equally applicable to the ccTLDs they seem to have warmly embraced.

I think we need more intellectual rigour and honesty from the GAC as to why they believe their concerns are relevant to gTLDs—but not ccTLDs.  Absent that sort of rationale from the GAC I think their opposition to gTLDs has lost considerable credibility.

Any group that wields the sort of power the GAC does within ICANN needs to be both consistent and logical in its positions.  Otherwise they should not exercise this power.

Richard Tindal

Adrian has identified an ICANN “double standard” which has left me puzzled since Seoul. Why can’t we fast track resolution of the outstanding concerns and approve new gTLD implementation in early 2010?  I don’t seen any reason for delay. What’s good for IDNs is also good for new gTLDs.

Statton Hammock

They are going to cause so much trouble it will be a headache. I think it is a trick to make these news laws retro for .com and then steal all the .com domains.

Adrian, and others,

Your points are well taken.  But, you overlook one point that turns out to trump all the other considerations: so-called national sovereignty.  Governments now assert sovereignty over their ccTLDs.  ICANN has no real power, other than persuasion, to impose terms on how a ccTLD is structured and managed, other than, perhaps on technical grounds should a TLD be mismanaged to the detriment of the stability and security of the DNS.  So, overarching considerations or not, the ccTLDs can impose their own rules for registrations within their domains. 

Further, the GAC is composed of official representatives of national governments.  Have you ever known of a government servant who, given the opportunity to review a policy-relevant initiative, did not feel obliged to make at least one “constructive” suggestion for improvement?  So, popping up from the micro to the macro level, you wind up with a body that, in principle, can never be thoroughly satisfied with just about anything. (“We note great progress with respect to [you name it], but there is still room for improvement…”)  My personal observation is that Janis Karklins has been doing a masterful job of minimizing the noise that could emanate from the contributions of close to 200 (not sure of the current number) governments and ensuring that only the most cogent ones are brought forth to ICANN for consideration. 

I was the sole abstention to the approval of the IDN Fast Track resolution in Seoul.  My objection was that the delegation process did not include strong requirements for some kind of [contractual] agreement for compliance with evolving practices (such as are imposed on gTLD registries) and for payments to cover ICANN’s cost of administering the IDN ccTLDs. [To satisfy the GAC, both were made “voluntary.”  Advantage point: national sovereignty.]  From the outset, I had referred to my criteria as “No shirt; no shoes; no service!” and I reiterated that phrase when I explained the reason for my abstention.  Later that day, a fellow Board member pointed out to me that my “NS^3” criteria could be construed as meaning that poor countries would not be served.  That was not my intent.  Rather, I was referring to a poster that my wife had acquired.  It showed several people standing at a bar wearing tops and footwear of various sorts, but no skirts, shorts or trousers, and the caption was, of course, “No shirts; no shoes, no service!”  I had explained that to my fellow Board members, and they knew what I meant, but I do hope that the audience did not seize on the poor nation interpretation.

All that having been said, why did IDN ccTLD Fast Track get approved with no corresponding fast track mechanism for new gTLDs (IDN or ASCII)?  There are several partial answers, many of which are judgment calls.  I believe that one overriding reason was to break the logjam that was keeping the IDN ccTLD process from progressing (including the “NS^3” issues).  At least a few of the Fast Track prospective applicants had agreed in principle to signing agreements and to reasonable payments.  Also at least a few of those applicants were prepared to implement their own roots if action were not forthcoming, and that would of course threaten the unitary root principle of the DNS.  I believe that Russian President Medvedev had stated such an intent publicly in 2008. 

It is my personal understanding (and I stress *personal*) that ICANN’s soliciting Expressions of Interest (EOIs) for gTLDs was intended, at least in part, to help break the policy logjams in the gTLD space by gaining insight into the actual relevance of the overarching considerations to likely applications.  But, the EOI activity surfaced just before I left the Board, and I am not at all familiar with how it is playing out.

Just one more point, to address Constantine’s points: ICANN was extremely sensitive to the likely perception that it could be profiteering from auctions of gTLD strings that were in contention.  Several ideas for the disposition of possible proceeds from auctions, should auctions be adopted as the method of deciding among contenders, were discussed within ICANN, but no decisions were made other than a belief that ICANN should not retain (or use) such proceeds for its own benefit.  So, another anticipated result of the EOI was to gain insight into the likely prevalence of string contentions to guide policy formulation as to how to deal with them.  Suffice it to say that this whole area of consideration is presently inchoate.

Disclaimer: my term on the ICANN Board ended at the Seoul meeting.  I am no longer affiliated with ICANN, though I am proud and honored to have been of service.

I look at 40 applicants (out of some 250) for one or more (but not much more) scripts each and from that queue of ready operators (at various dates) I don’t see a root scaling issue, whether the root is signed before, or after. It works out to one the order of 100 units of change in a handwaving year, well within the safe area in the envelope of concerns shared by the technical community.

An honest critique of the ccTLD IDN FT attempting to apply the “four overarching issues” to that, or any similar category, must abandon the root scaling issue.

howdy richard,

(a) notice that you are asserting that root scaling for the cctld idn ft is not an issue, the point of my response to adrian, and (b) you are not addressing the rate of change problem. assuming the root grows some in the next five years, it will be easier to sign it before it grows substantially, than after. the rate of change during the anticipated (perhaps indefinitely delayed) growth may be a limiting factor, and while bandwidth and cycles are elastic commodities, root responsible technical staffing is not. if the entire dns mafia were conscripted from their mission critical tasks for ongoing operations, that could, in theory, expand the available human resource. (i) no indication is observed that icann is prepared to make heroic efforts to expand the available limiting resource, (ii) if it were preparing, rapid expansion of technical labor raises technical management issues, and (iii) icann’s review of the rsac was problematic, even adversarial, and that wasn’t useful.

i don’t think you’re simple minded, just looking for some way to work around the single inelastic factor, and distracted by abstract size claims rather than concrete incremental steps required for outcomes.

there is no magic wand. speed of light is a constant. pi resists efforts to make it an integer, or just rational. rate of change of a process which cannot be automated is gated by available competent labor, and some problems are resistant to parallelism.

from a CORE technical standard for the registries we operate:

“Configuration changes always passes the four-eyes principle.”

1k of deltas on the . zone in a year is 3 times the four-eyes principle, every day.

now do the math, staff the entire icann/doc/verisign/rootservers.net path, and indicate where the four-eyes principle, or equivalent, is waived.

i’m tired of this. i know you want to be right, but what does mere desire actually do?

From my 2 year participation in the ICANN process I have come to my own conclusions about how the ICANN organization functions and settles issues of great significance.

From an entrepreneurial perspective in regards to the organizational or the managerial approach of ICANN I have come to my personal opinions/conclusions, which I believe can summarize the inefficiencies of ICANN. If ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom or any members of the Board reads this, please correct me if I am wrong.

I think the biggest problem with ICANN is the political game that it plays. It seems that there are not many people within ICANN that are open to conflict or even conflict resolution. It seems the biggest problem with ICANN is that they do not want to deal with conflicts or are scared of resolving conflicts. This is a dangerous game because you are left with 2 or more opposing views and no swift resolution. Many promises are made for all stakeholders of the community but there are no decisions or addressing the real issues at hand. It sure seems that the safest bet from ICANN is to neglect the issues and look the other way, without making a sound decision.

The next problem I see is the issue of conflict of interest between all ICANN groups as well as personal agendas. This is natural within most influential organizations. Significant groups, countries and entities are promised things which can not be attained and the problem exacerbates. Politics is the name of the game and so is the advancement of certain groups/individuals. Again this is natural in most of these types of organizational structures.

The third problem I see is the law of diminishing returns. The more decision makers and differing interest groups you add (as well as staff), the less effective the end result becomes. It is an impossibility for everyone to agree on everything.

I look at the current domain industry and it pretty much sums up the problems. The other day I tried to go to eBay and I typed in http://www.ebay.cm. It took me to a site called salehoo.com. I decided to check out all the social sites I use and add a .cm. Lets see: facebook.cm, myspace.cm, twitter.cm. You can all figure out what was going on here. I am outraged with all this talk about trademarks. The whole .cm extension was wild redirected in the past for years and pointed to agoga.com which fed Yahoo ad feeds. Yes, Yahoo profited from typosquatting. How about gTLD critics Time Warner? I recently typed music.us wrong in the URL and it took me to a Roadrunner page with Time Warner’s services. I can go further but I am sure we see the trend here. Every corporation does what is best for the bottom line and it has nothing to do with consumers and their protection. Oh yea, did you hear about Snapnames which just fired an executive for bidding in over 50,000 auctions? I heard this is commonplace. I witnessed it with Sedo. As soon as they saw that I was bidding high for music.mobi, I was called by a representative offering to sell me mp3s.mobi for half a million bucks because they were watching my bidding behavior.

Enough said. I think ICANN needs to step up to the plate and not be scared of the “political consequences” and just do what is right. I understand sovereign nations controlling their extensions but there has to be some ramifications if the extension manager is abusing their power. There is a double standard here.

We can talk all we want about resolving the “overarching issues”. My personal opinion is that the overarching issues are just fluff. We ALL know the issues and these are not fixed or addressed in the current environment. How on earth does ICANN expect to solve these through discussions with groups such as Yahoo, Time Warner, Comcast and other big brands that have exercised their power to profit using practices that are frowned upon.

You can talk about roots, capabilities and all that economic demand stuff. In my opinion it is all bogus. Welcome to the real world. This is business. I am wondering whether ICANN will step up to the plate and clean up their organization to facilitate real conversations that address conflicts as opposed to ignore them and deal with them when the issue is too extreme to ignore.

Decisions, decisions. ICM is an example. I believe they should have launched .xxx. They could force browsers to implement parental locks with the .xxx extension which would protect minors amongst other beneficial things. However, politics was the death of .xxx. Just because the theme is controversial it does not mean it should be outlawed and closed down. It will be interesting to see what happens with .gay or a .catholic. Under the same token, they should be shot down because ICANN is scared of conflict and they need to please certain “political” stakeholders with powerful positions.

The Internet is for the people and it is open and neutral. Let us keep it that way. I am a firm believer that the overarching issues are just an excuse. All issues exist in today’s marketplace and nothing can be done to permanently eradicate them or decrease them substantially. Lawyers being paid to fight new gTLDs. They say it will cost their companies money to register across all new TLDs. Let me do the math. Let us say 100 new TLDs at $30 each. That is $3000/yr. How much have these corporations paid their lawyers to fight this? Also have all these big brands bought their domain across all existing TLDs? Why haven’t they?

Let us move forward ICANN. Better communication needs to be made within ICANN as an organization to deal with problems and conflict resolution. I think we have had enough of our time wasted because problems are pushed to the side and not dealt with.

Let’s just fix things that matter. It’s all about doing things that really matter.

Constantine Roussos
.music
.music Myspace
.music Twitter

Not that it really changes your argument, because it is still probably a drop in the bucket compared to both their lawyer costs, revenue and other advertising expenses they shell out daily, but it’s a lot more than just 1 domain per TLD that they would have to register.  There are literally dozens and sometimes hundreds to register per TLD, e.g., all common mispellings, subsidiary names, nicknames and shortcuts, and unfortunately deragatory names and slogans too like “whatevercompanysucks.TLD”.  I worked at one company where we had about 100 domains registered in the original TLDs.  So it would probably be quite a bit more than just the $3000 estimate you make.