Eighty-seven major national and international business associations and companies have joined forces with the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), forming the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO) to oppose the rollout of ICANN's top-level domain expansion program. more
While Occupy Wall Street and other groups representing the so-called 99% are getting most of the press, the 1% is raising its profile as well, at least when it comes to gTLDs. They are complaining that introducing global choice and competition to the Internet will cost them money. The chief of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) now says that it has "spent the last few months" considering the new gTLD program, and has found it lacking. They want ICANN to shut the whole thing down. more
In a move that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the EU Commission has given a rather mixed welcome to the IANA bid. While they obviously like a lot of what they are seeing, they're also not overly impressed with the contract only being open to US companies. more
In politics, as in Internet policy, the most effective weapons are also the oldest. So when it came time for hard-line intellectual property advocates to make a desperate last stand against the new gTLD program, it came as no surprise they turned to the atomic bomb of rhetorical devices: FUD. FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and it is the tool of last resort when change is coming and you want to stop it. The theory is simple: the human response to fear is to cling to what's familiar and oppose what's new. So if you can scare enough people about the potential effects of a new policy or law, you stand a pretty good chance of preventing it from ever going into effect. more
It's approximately 2 months to go before the grand application process for the new gTLDs begins, ICANN the international internet body made a revolutionary announcement in June that is going to change the entire internet namespace. With the current 21 gTLDs, the world is bracing for a surge of close to 500 new applications. Among the domains of my interest is the .Africa gTLD. more
In a conference hosted by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) on Tuesday, discussions were held concerning ICANN's upcoming new gTLD Program. CADNA President Josh Bourne said: "ICANN has an image problem. Businesses are outright angry with ICANN because of the way that this program has been structured. We are not trying to derail the rollout of new gTLDs altogether, but rather, we are proposing an opportunity for ICANN to make this Program much less detrimental to brands and businesses..." more
Applying for a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) will be expensive and complex. ICANN's Applicant Guidebook comprises 350 pages of dense instructions, spelling out the procedures to apply for a gTLD and to comment or object to the gTLDs applied for by others. Hidden among the forest of criteria and procedures is a problem that, unless solved, could deny good faith applicants the fair notice they deserve. more
Advertisers have given Verisign a free gift worth billions of dollars over the past 10 years. Sports Stadiums provide a great analogy... What do office supplies have to do with basketball? What does oil have to do with football? Yet, Staples will pay the Lakers $116 million dollars and Lucas Oil will pay the Indianapolis Colts about the same (over 20 years) to associate their company names with these stadiums. more
With the application launch period scheduled to begin in less than three months, everyone wants to know just how many new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) applications will be submitted. In terms of the number of applications to be submitted, I've seen estimates putting the figure as low as 500. But just last week, an industry insider told me that he thought the number could go as high as 3,500. more
For those interested in encouraging innovation in the domain name space -- which presumably includes the ICANN community currently convening in Dakar -- the recent episode in which VeriSign proposed, and then quickly withdrew, a bundle of new services (the VeriSign anti-abuse domain use policy) raises important issues that will be revisited as new gTLDs are introduced. Some of those issues are referenced in a recent blog post by Milton Mueller, but his emphasis on "due process" suggests a regulatory framework that is not friendly to innovation. more
There may be no better illustration of how far we've come in Internet governance, than this: twice in the past 30 days, the global Internet community has gathered in sub-Saharan Africa to plot a path to bring the Internet to its next billion users. Just weeks after wrapping up the sixth annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Kenya, Internet stakeholders from around the world traveled back to Africa for ICANN's 42nd meeting in Dakar, Senegal. more
As a seasoned internet user, even an old 'Domainer', I was there when ICANN launched the first round of New TLDs. I remember the criticism we received from the media back then. We were invited to countless roundtable discussions, press conferences, and local internet events at which we were expected to answer the key media question: "Why are new TLDs necessary?" Dot BIZ, .INFO, and four more were the test bed new TLDs -- I represented .BIZ in EMEA. more
As each day passes, I spend more time immersing myself with prospective clients who are weighing up our offering over those of alternative providers. The more I become entrenched in this competitive process, the more it becomes increasingly clear that many of the competing RSPs pitching their wares to hopeful applicants are misleading them by hiding critically important information in fine print disclaimers or feeding them rubbish in order to whittle down the competition. Competition is a great thing; it just needs to be on the same playing field. Make sure you are comparing apples with apples. more
Too many techies still don't understand the concept of due process, and opportunistic law enforcement agencies, who tend to view due process constraints as an inconvenience, are very happy to take advantage of that. That's the lesson to draw from Verisign's proposal and sudden withdrawal of a new "domain name anti-abuse policy" yesterday. The proposal, which seems to have been intended as a new service to registrars, would have allowed Verisign to perform malware scans on all .com, .net, and .name domain names quarterly when registrars agreed to let them do it. more
There has been considerable debate on whether the Internet needs new Top Level Domains. Advertising advocacy groups have objected to the expense of re-investment in online branding. There's a lot of work involved in telling the world .BEYONCE is where you will now find all official Beyonce related information. I'm wondering, why would anyone object to some order being applied to the internet? more
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