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[council] From Jonathan Weinberg, Draft WG-C report
To the Names Council:
I am attaching a copy of a DRAFT Report (Part One) from Working Group C to
be presented to the Names Council before its Cairo meeting. This report is
only a draft, so that, were we less pressed for time, I wouldn't be
circulating it at this point. I've told the members of WG-C that the draft
will be rewritten in response to reactions from the list, and that they
should give me their comments as quickly as they can, and in any event no
later than midnight UTC on Tuesday, March 7. Given that schedule, though,
it won't be possible for me to distribute copies of the final version much
in advance of the NC meeting on the 8th. Accordingly, I'm distributing
this version so that the Names Council can learn the general outlines of
the report now. Although details of its discussion may change, I'm
confident that the basic conclusions will not.
Thanks very much.
Jon Weinberg
co-chair, WG-C
weinberg@msen.com
-----------------------------------------------------
Report (Part One) of
Working Group C of the Domain Name Supporting Organization, Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
This document is Part One of the Report of Working Group C. It sets out
the rough consensus of the group regarding whether there should be new
generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and if so, how quickly they should be
added to the root as an initial matter. Part Two of the Report, which will
follow, will address other issues relating to the addition of new gTLDs.
Introduction and summary
Working Group C has reached rough consensus on two issues. The first is
that ICANN should add new gTLDs to the root. The second is that ICANN
should begin the deployment of new gTLDs with an initial rollout of six to
ten new gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. This report will address
each of these issues separately. For each of the issues, it will summarize
the discussions within the working group, arguments pro and con, and
comments received from the public.
Procedural and outreach history
The Names Council approved the charter of Working Group C on June 25,
1999, and named Javier Sola as its chair. On July 29, the working group
members elected Jonathan Weinberg co-chair. The working group currently
has more than 140 members, not all of whom are active. It includes
extensive representation from each of the constituencies. (There is one
partial exception: For most of the life of the working group, no NSI
representative participated. When WG-C's co-chair solicited greater
participation from the Registry constituency, Don Telage explained that NSI
had chosen not to involve itself in the WG-C process. That
representational gap has been filled now that Tony Rutkowski — an active
WG-C member from the start — has joined NSI in a senior policymaking
capacity.)
On October 23, 1999, the Working Group released its Interim Report. That
report described the issues on which the Working Group had reached rough
consensus to date. It also included seven "position papers," setting out
alternative scenarios for the introduction of new gTLDs. On November 23,
1999, the Names Council formally requested public comment on the Interim
Report. This call for comments was publicized on a variety of mailing
lists maintained by the DNSO, including ga-announce, ga, and liaison7c
(which includes the constituency secretariats). In addition, WG-C's
co-chair spoke at the meetings of most of the constituencies at the Los
Angeles ICANN meeting, and urged constituency members to file comments.
Nearly 300 comments were filed in response to the interim report. They
included responses from leading members of all of the constituencies but
two — the record does not include comments from the ccTLD or Registry
constituencies (although ccTLD members and Mr. Rutkowski participated in
the discussions that led to the Interim Report, and WG-C's co-chair
expressly solicited the comments of both of those groups).
Issue One — Should There Be New gTLDs?
Discussions within the working group
The working group quickly -- by mid-August, 1999 -- reached consensus that
there should be new global top-level domains. There was very little
dissent from this position.
Arguments supporting the consensus position
Expanding the number of TLDs will increase consumer choice, and create
opportunities for entities that have been shut out under the current name
structure. Today, .com stands astride the name space: it has more
registrations than all other top-level domain names combined, and is ten
times the size of the largest ccTLD. Yet it has become nearly impossible
to register a new simple domain name there: Almost a year ago, in April
1999, a survey found that of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary
words, only 1,760 were free in the .com domain. Millions of additional
names have been registered in .com since then.
This situation is undesirable. It requires companies to register
increasingly unwieldy domain names for themselves, and is inflating the
value of the secondary (speculators') market in .com domain names.
Existing second-level domain names under the dot com TLD routinely change
hands for enormously inflated prices. These are legitimate trades of
ordinary, untrademarked words; their high prices reflect the artificial
scarcity of common names in existing gTLDs, and the premium on .com names
in particular.
Companies that currently have a domain name in the form of
<www.companyname.com> have an extremely important marketing and
name-recognition tool. They have an advantage over all other companies
that do not have addresses in that form, because the companyname.com firms
are the ones that consumers, surfing the Net, will be able to find most
easily. If the name space is expanded, companies will be able to get
easy-to-remember domain names more easily, and the entry barriers to
successful participation in electronic commerce will be lowered. Addition
of new gTLDs will allow different companies to have the same second-level
domain name in different TLDs. Those businesses will have to compete based
on price, quality and service, rather than on the happenstance of which
company locked up the most desirable domain name first.
Similarly, addition of new gTLDs could enlarge noncommercial name space,
and allow the creation of top-level domains designed to serve noncommercial
goals. One proposal made in WG-C, widely applauded in the public comments,
advocated the creation of a new top-level domain to be operated for the
benefit of North American indigenous peoples. Other examples are easy to
imagine.
In response to the unsatisfied demand for new gTLD names, several ccTLD
registries, including .nu, .cc, and .to, have transformed themselves into
gTLDs, marketing their names globally as alternatives to .com, .net and
.org. This is undesirable from the perspective of protecting trademark
rights, since no mechanisms are in place to ensure that these TLDs enact
the same trademark-protective procedures (such as the UDRP) now in place in
the gTLDs. The transformation of ccTLDs into globally marketed commercial
gTLDs deprives the local Internet community of the benefits of a ccTLD more
closely oriented to serving that community. To the extent that ICANN
wishes to deploy new gTLDs subject to community-determined policy
guidelines, finally, the growth of ccTLDs in response to pent-up demand for
TLDs frustrates that goal.
Creation of new generic top-level domains can be beneficial in other ways.
One proposal before WG-C, with significant support, urges the creation of
multiple registries, each capable of managing registrations for multiple
TLDs, so as to eliminate the single point of failure for the registration
process. Under this view, multiple new gTLDs are necessary to support the
multiple registries needed for stability.
Adding new gTLDs to the root, finally, is an important part of ICANN's
mandate. ICANN was created because the institutions that preceded it were
unable to resolve the intense political and economic conflicts created by
demand for new top-level domain names. The U.S. Department of Commerce's
White Paper saw the establishment of policy "for determining the
circumstances under which new TLDs are added to the root system" as one of
ICANN's fundamental goals.
Arguments opposing the consensus position
Three arguments were made, or suggested, in WG-C that cut against the
addition of new gTLDs. The first relates to trademark policing concerns:
Expansion of the domain space will create additional opportunities for the
registration of domain names that are confusingly similar to existing
trademarks. The relationship between domain names and trademark rights
presents an important and difficult issue, and is appropriately addressed
by registry data maintenance requirements, dispute resolution mechanisms
such as the UDRP, and any other device that ICANN may choose to adopt.
Trademark owners' concerns in this regard are important ones, and not to be
overlooked. The argument that ICANN should impose substantial delays on
the initial deployment of new gTLDs in the interest of adopting or
perfecting such mechanisms, however, did not win much support within the
working group except among Intellectual Property constituency members.
Second, some working group members suggested that an increase in the
number of top- level domains could confuse consumers, because it would be
harder for consumers to keep in mind and remember a larger set of top-level
domains. Notwithstanding requests, though, no working group member offered
studies or other evidence backing up this view.
Finally, some working group members suggested that the perceived need for
new gTLDs was illusory. For the reasons described above, it is the sense
of the working group that that view is incorrect.
Public comments
The comments received by the working group fell into several categories.
A few commenters questioned whether new gTLDs were indeed needed: this
group included Bell Atlantic, Marilyn Cade and John Lewis (writing on
behalf of some members of the Business & Commercial constituency).
Some commenters took no position on whether new gTLDs should be added.
Rather, they focused their comments on the position that deployment should
be delayed until after implementation of the uniform dispute resolution
procedure, improved domain name registration procedures, and protection for
so-called famous marks. These commenters included, among others, Jonathan
Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington, AOL, British Telecom, Disney, INTA,
Nintendo of America and Time Warner. Comments noting the need for caution
in deploying new gTLDs, but not explicitly referencing famous-marks
protection, were filed by the Software and Information Industry Association
(which supports adding new gTLDs, but only after the creation of a robust,
responsive whois system), John Lewis (writing on behalf of some members of
the Business and Commercial constituency), and Steve Metalitz.
A third set of comments urged the addition of new gTLDs without further
delay. These commenters included, among others, Hiro Hotta (emphasizing
that discussion of famous-mark protection should not delay the gTLD
rollout), Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility, Melbourne IT, AXISNET (Peruvian Association of Users
and ISPs), the United States Small Business Administration's Office of
Advocacy, Register.com, InterWorking Labs, Tucows.com, InterAccess Company
and PSI-Japan. Raul Echeberria filed comments urging that the
establishment of new gTLDs was important and positive, but that rules
should be devised to avoid massive speculative purchases of domains in the
new TLDs, or trademark holders simply duplicating their existing domains.
A fourth, and by far the largest, set of comments supported the creation
of a specific proposed new domain: .NAA, proposed as a new gTLD to be run
for the benefit of North American indigenous peoples.
Issue Two — What Should be the Nature of the Initial Rollout?
Discussions within the working group
In September 1999, the WG-C co-chairs made the determination that the
working group had reached rough consensus supporting a compromise proposal
that the initial deployment of new gTLDs should include six to ten new
gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. Because there had been no formal
consensus call, though, the working group held a vote in December 1999 to
reaffirm that consensus. Following the lead of Working Group B, the
working group determined in advance that a two-thirds margin would
constitute adequate evidence of rough consensus. The vote reaffirmed the
compromise position as the rough consensus of the working group, by a
margin of 44 to 20. (A substantial number of working group members did not
cast votes. In addition, some working group members, having been solicited
to vote, sent messages to the list explaining that they were declining to
take a position at that time, and listed themselves as consequently
abstaining. Neither the non-voters nor the abstainers were counted in
figuring the two-thirds majority.)
Members of the working group had expressed sharply varying positions on
the nature of the initial rollout. Some working group members urged that
ICANN should immediately announce its intention to authorize hundreds of
new gTLDs over the course of the next few years. While ICANN might
interrupt that process if it observed serious problems with the rollout,
the presumption would be in favor of deployment to the limits of the
technically feasible and operationally stable. If ICANN simply deployed a
small number of new gTLDs with no commitment to add more, they argued, the
public would have to make registration decisions based on the possibility
that the small number of new gTLDs would be the only options. This would
give the new registries oligopoly power and the ability to earn
greater-than-competitive profits; it would encourage pre-emptive and
speculative registrations based on the possibility of continued artificial
scarcity. By contrast, they urged, an ICANN decision to deploy a large
number of gTLDs would enable competition and a level playing field: If
ICANN announced an intention to add hundreds of new gTLDs over a three-year
period, no new registry could exercise market power based on the prospect
of a continued artificial scarcity of names.
Other working group members took the opposite approach. New gTLDs, they
urged, could seriously aggravate the problems facing trademark
rightsholders in the existing domain name space. Accordingly, they urged,
new gTLDs should be introduced only slowly and in a controlled manner, and
only after effective trademark protection mechanisms had been implemented
and shown to be effective.
A third set of working group members took still another approach. In the
long term, they stated, it would be desirable for ICANN to allow the
deployment of new gTLDs to the limits of the technically feasible and
operationally stable. As a short-term matter, however, the immediate
deployment of hundreds of new TLDs would not be prudent. The operationally
safer course, rather, should be to deploy a smaller number, and to follow
that deployment with an evaluation period during which the Internet
community could see what lessons were to be learned from the initial
deployment. ICANN would go on to deploy additional TLDs if no serious
problems arose in the initial rollout. The initial deployment would be a
testbed, in the sense that ICANN's decisions regarding the rollout of
subsequent gTLDs would rest on that initial experience.
The proposal that ICANN start by deploying six to ten new TLDs, followed
by an evaluation period, was crafted as a compromise position to bridge the
gap separating the three groups, and to enable a rough consensus to form in
the middle ground.
Arguments supporting the consensus position
The consensus position has the advantage of being a compromise proposal
supported by a wide range of working group members. In a bottom-up,
consensus-driven organization, broad agreement on a policy path is valuable
for its own sake. The sense of the bulk of the working group is that this
proposal strikes an appropriate balance between aggressiveness and prudence
in remedying the shortage of domain names.
Arguments opposing the consensus position
Three arguments were made in the working group against the proposal. The
first was that the contemplated initial deployment was too large; rather,
some WG members urged, it would be appropriate, following the
implementation of effective intellectual property protections, for ICANN to
roll out no more than two or three new gTLDs. Most WG members felt,
however, that this figure was smaller than caution dictated, and that such
a modest deployment would not give ICANN the information that it would need
to make sensible later decisions.
The second argument was that the contemplated initial deployment was too
small: that, as detailed above, a deployment of only six to ten, without an
upfront commitment to roll out many more, will be a half-measure that would
grant oligopoly power to the lucky registries selected for the initial
rollout. This argument has considerable force. Most of the working group
members felt, however, that an initial commitment to many more than six to
ten would not be operationally sound. Until we see the consequences for
the domain name space of adding new gTLDs, there are advantages to a more
circumspect path.
The final objection raised was that the consensus agreement answered the
wrong question: The working group, said some, should not be addressing the
number of new gTLDs at all before resolving such issues as whether the new
top-level domains should be general-purpose (like .com), special-purpose,
or some combination of the two. The working group is currently addressing
these issues (they will be discussed in Part Two of the WG's Report), and
certainly it would not have been inappropriate for it to have sought to
reach conclusions on those matters before discussing Issue Two. But most
members of the working group concluded that the path of resolving the
nature of the initial deployment first was just as valid.
Public comments
As with Issue One, public comment on this issue was divided. Bell
Atlantic and Marilyn Cade supported the introduction of just a single new
gTLD at the outset. John Lewis, on behalf of some members of the Business
& Commercial constituency, suggested the introduction of a very small
number; British Telecom and Time Warner urged the initial rollout of only a
few. Other commenters, including Jonathan Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington,
AOL, Disney and Nintendo of America, generally endorsed the statement that
the introduction of new gTLDs should be slow and controlled, and should
incorporate an evaluation period.
By contrast, Hiro Hotta, Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility, AXISNET, InterWorking Labs,
Tucows.com and InterAccess Company supported the position that ICANN
should, at the outset, announce a schedule for introducing hundreds of new
TLDs. The Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration concluded
that ICANN should start with a limited introduction of new TLDs followed by
an evaluation period, but that ICANN should announce in advance that it
would continue with a steady introduction of additional TLDs so long as
pre-announced technical criteria were met. Raul Echeberria, by contrast,
emphasized that ICANN should evaluate the operation and market acceptance
of the TLDs added in the initial rollout before creating or announcing
more. Melbourne IT, PSI-Japan and Register.com all supported the
compromise position of an initial rollout of six to ten new gTLDs followed
by an evaluation period.
--------------
A detailed summary of the public comments on Issues One and Two is
available at <http://www.dnso.org/wgroups/wg-c/Arc01/msg00490.html>.
M~
From weinberg@msen.com Thu Mar 2 12:57 MET 2000
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.20000302065608.0305be18@msen.com>
X-Sender: weinberg@msen.com
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 06:56:08 -0500
To: Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr
From: Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com>
Subject: Draft WG-C report
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by balsa.cetp.ipsl.fr id MAA19379
Elisabeth --
I would be grateful if you would transmit this message to the Names
Council. Thanks very much.
Jon.
------------------------
To the Names Council:
I am attaching a copy of a DRAFT Report (Part One) from Working Group C to
be presented to the Names Council before its Cairo meeting. This report is
only a draft, so that, were we less pressed for time, I wouldn't be
circulating it at this point. I've told the members of WG-C that the draft
will be rewritten in response to reactions from the list, and that they
should give me their comments as quickly as they can, and in any event no
later than midnight UTC on Tuesday, March 7. Given that schedule, though,
it won't be possible for me to distribute copies of the final version much
in advance of the NC meeting on the 8th. Accordingly, I'm distributing
this version so that the Names Council can learn the general outlines of
the report now. Although details of its discussion may change, I'm
confident that the basic conclusions will not.
Thanks very much.
Jon Weinberg
co-chair, WG-C
weinberg@msen.com
-----------------------------------------------------
Report (Part One) of
Working Group C of the Domain Name Supporting Organization, Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
This document is Part One of the Report of Working Group C. It sets out
the rough consensus of the group regarding whether there should be new
generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and if so, how quickly they should be
added to the root as an initial matter. Part Two of the Report, which will
follow, will address other issues relating to the addition of new gTLDs.
Introduction and summary
Working Group C has reached rough consensus on two issues. The first is
that ICANN should add new gTLDs to the root. The second is that ICANN
should begin the deployment of new gTLDs with an initial rollout of six to
ten new gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. This report will address
each of these issues separately. For each of the issues, it will summarize
the discussions within the working group, arguments pro and con, and
comments received from the public.
Procedural and outreach history
The Names Council approved the charter of Working Group C on June 25,
1999, and named Javier Sola as its chair. On July 29, the working group
members elected Jonathan Weinberg co-chair. The working group currently
has more than 140 members, not all of whom are active. It includes
extensive representation from each of the constituencies. (There is one
partial exception: For most of the life of the working group, no NSI
representative participated. When WG-C's co-chair solicited greater
participation from the Registry constituency, Don Telage explained that NSI
had chosen not to involve itself in the WG-C process. That
representational gap has been filled now that Tony Rutkowski — an active
WG-C member from the start — has joined NSI in a senior policymaking
capacity.)
On October 23, 1999, the Working Group released its Interim Report. That
report described the issues on which the Working Group had reached rough
consensus to date. It also included seven "position papers," setting out
alternative scenarios for the introduction of new gTLDs. On November 23,
1999, the Names Council formally requested public comment on the Interim
Report. This call for comments was publicized on a variety of mailing
lists maintained by the DNSO, including ga-announce, ga, and liaison7c
(which includes the constituency secretariats). In addition, WG-C's
co-chair spoke at the meetings of most of the constituencies at the Los
Angeles ICANN meeting, and urged constituency members to file comments.
Nearly 300 comments were filed in response to the interim report. They
included responses from leading members of all of the constituencies but
two — the record does not include comments from the ccTLD or Registry
constituencies (although ccTLD members and Mr. Rutkowski participated in
the discussions that led to the Interim Report, and WG-C's co-chair
expressly solicited the comments of both of those groups).
Issue One — Should There Be New gTLDs?
Discussions within the working group
The working group quickly -- by mid-August, 1999 -- reached consensus that
there should be new global top-level domains. There was very little
dissent from this position.
Arguments supporting the consensus position
Expanding the number of TLDs will increase consumer choice, and create
opportunities for entities that have been shut out under the current name
structure. Today, .com stands astride the name space: it has more
registrations than all other top-level domain names combined, and is ten
times the size of the largest ccTLD. Yet it has become nearly impossible
to register a new simple domain name there: Almost a year ago, in April
1999, a survey found that of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary
words, only 1,760 were free in the .com domain. Millions of additional
names have been registered in .com since then.
This situation is undesirable. It requires companies to register
increasingly unwieldy domain names for themselves, and is inflating the
value of the secondary (speculators') market in .com domain names.
Existing second-level domain names under the dot com TLD routinely change
hands for enormously inflated prices. These are legitimate trades of
ordinary, untrademarked words; their high prices reflect the artificial
scarcity of common names in existing gTLDs, and the premium on .com names
in particular.
Companies that currently have a domain name in the form of
<www.companyname.com> have an extremely important marketing and
name-recognition tool. They have an advantage over all other companies
that do not have addresses in that form, because the companyname.com firms
are the ones that consumers, surfing the Net, will be able to find most
easily. If the name space is expanded, companies will be able to get
easy-to-remember domain names more easily, and the entry barriers to
successful participation in electronic commerce will be lowered. Addition
of new gTLDs will allow different companies to have the same second-level
domain name in different TLDs. Those businesses will have to compete based
on price, quality and service, rather than on the happenstance of which
company locked up the most desirable domain name first.
Similarly, addition of new gTLDs could enlarge noncommercial name space,
and allow the creation of top-level domains designed to serve noncommercial
goals. One proposal made in WG-C, widely applauded in the public comments,
advocated the creation of a new top-level domain to be operated for the
benefit of North American indigenous peoples. Other examples are easy to
imagine.
In response to the unsatisfied demand for new gTLD names, several ccTLD
registries, including .nu, .cc, and .to, have transformed themselves into
gTLDs, marketing their names globally as alternatives to .com, .net and
.org. This is undesirable from the perspective of protecting trademark
rights, since no mechanisms are in place to ensure that these TLDs enact
the same trademark-protective procedures (such as the UDRP) now in place in
the gTLDs. The transformation of ccTLDs into globally marketed commercial
gTLDs deprives the local Internet community of the benefits of a ccTLD more
closely oriented to serving that community. To the extent that ICANN
wishes to deploy new gTLDs subject to community-determined policy
guidelines, finally, the growth of ccTLDs in response to pent-up demand for
TLDs frustrates that goal.
Creation of new generic top-level domains can be beneficial in other ways.
One proposal before WG-C, with significant support, urges the creation of
multiple registries, each capable of managing registrations for multiple
TLDs, so as to eliminate the single point of failure for the registration
process. Under this view, multiple new gTLDs are necessary to support the
multiple registries needed for stability.
Adding new gTLDs to the root, finally, is an important part of ICANN's
mandate. ICANN was created because the institutions that preceded it were
unable to resolve the intense political and economic conflicts created by
demand for new top-level domain names. The U.S. Department of Commerce's
White Paper saw the establishment of policy "for determining the
circumstances under which new TLDs are added to the root system" as one of
ICANN's fundamental goals.
Arguments opposing the consensus position
Three arguments were made, or suggested, in WG-C that cut against the
addition of new gTLDs. The first relates to trademark policing concerns:
Expansion of the domain space will create additional opportunities for the
registration of domain names that are confusingly similar to existing
trademarks. The relationship between domain names and trademark rights
presents an important and difficult issue, and is appropriately addressed
by registry data maintenance requirements, dispute resolution mechanisms
such as the UDRP, and any other device that ICANN may choose to adopt.
Trademark owners' concerns in this regard are important ones, and not to be
overlooked. The argument that ICANN should impose substantial delays on
the initial deployment of new gTLDs in the interest of adopting or
perfecting such mechanisms, however, did not win much support within the
working group except among Intellectual Property constituency members.
Second, some working group members suggested that an increase in the
number of top- level domains could confuse consumers, because it would be
harder for consumers to keep in mind and remember a larger set of top-level
domains. Notwithstanding requests, though, no working group member offered
studies or other evidence backing up this view.
Finally, some working group members suggested that the perceived need for
new gTLDs was illusory. For the reasons described above, it is the sense
of the working group that that view is incorrect.
Public comments
The comments received by the working group fell into several categories.
A few commenters questioned whether new gTLDs were indeed needed: this
group included Bell Atlantic, Marilyn Cade and John Lewis (writing on
behalf of some members of the Business & Commercial constituency).
Some commenters took no position on whether new gTLDs should be added.
Rather, they focused their comments on the position that deployment should
be delayed until after implementation of the uniform dispute resolution
procedure, improved domain name registration procedures, and protection for
so-called famous marks. These commenters included, among others, Jonathan
Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington, AOL, British Telecom, Disney, INTA,
Nintendo of America and Time Warner. Comments noting the need for caution
in deploying new gTLDs, but not explicitly referencing famous-marks
protection, were filed by the Software and Information Industry Association
(which supports adding new gTLDs, but only after the creation of a robust,
responsive whois system), John Lewis (writing on behalf of some members of
the Business and Commercial constituency), and Steve Metalitz.
A third set of comments urged the addition of new gTLDs without further
delay. These commenters included, among others, Hiro Hotta (emphasizing
that discussion of famous-mark protection should not delay the gTLD
rollout), Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility, Melbourne IT, AXISNET (Peruvian Association of Users
and ISPs), the United States Small Business Administration's Office of
Advocacy, Register.com, InterWorking Labs, Tucows.com, InterAccess Company
and PSI-Japan. Raul Echeberria filed comments urging that the
establishment of new gTLDs was important and positive, but that rules
should be devised to avoid massive speculative purchases of domains in the
new TLDs, or trademark holders simply duplicating their existing domains.
A fourth, and by far the largest, set of comments supported the creation
of a specific proposed new domain: .NAA, proposed as a new gTLD to be run
for the benefit of North American indigenous peoples.
Issue Two — What Should be the Nature of the Initial Rollout?
Discussions within the working group
In September 1999, the WG-C co-chairs made the determination that the
working group had reached rough consensus supporting a compromise proposal
that the initial deployment of new gTLDs should include six to ten new
gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. Because there had been no formal
consensus call, though, the working group held a vote in December 1999 to
reaffirm that consensus. Following the lead of Working Group B, the
working group determined in advance that a two-thirds margin would
constitute adequate evidence of rough consensus. The vote reaffirmed the
compromise position as the rough consensus of the working group, by a
margin of 44 to 20. (A substantial number of working group members did not
cast votes. In addition, some working group members, having been solicited
to vote, sent messages to the list explaining that they were declining to
take a position at that time, and listed themselves as consequently
abstaining. Neither the non-voters nor the abstainers were counted in
figuring the two-thirds majority.)
Members of the working group had expressed sharply varying positions on
the nature of the initial rollout. Some working group members urged that
ICANN should immediately announce its intention to authorize hundreds of
new gTLDs over the course of the next few years. While ICANN might
interrupt that process if it observed serious problems with the rollout,
the presumption would be in favor of deployment to the limits of the
technically feasible and operationally stable. If ICANN simply deployed a
small number of new gTLDs with no commitment to add more, they argued, the
public would have to make registration decisions based on the possibility
that the small number of new gTLDs would be the only options. This would
give the new registries oligopoly power and the ability to earn
greater-than-competitive profits; it would encourage pre-emptive and
speculative registrations based on the possibility of continued artificial
scarcity. By contrast, they urged, an ICANN decision to deploy a large
number of gTLDs would enable competition and a level playing field: If
ICANN announced an intention to add hundreds of new gTLDs over a three-year
period, no new registry could exercise market power based on the prospect
of a continued artificial scarcity of names.
Other working group members took the opposite approach. New gTLDs, they
urged, could seriously aggravate the problems facing trademark
rightsholders in the existing domain name space. Accordingly, they urged,
new gTLDs should be introduced only slowly and in a controlled manner, and
only after effective trademark protection mechanisms had been implemented
and shown to be effective.
A third set of working group members took still another approach. In the
long term, they stated, it would be desirable for ICANN to allow the
deployment of new gTLDs to the limits of the technically feasible and
operationally stable. As a short-term matter, however, the immediate
deployment of hundreds of new TLDs would not be prudent. The operationally
safer course, rather, should be to deploy a smaller number, and to follow
that deployment with an evaluation period during which the Internet
community could see what lessons were to be learned from the initial
deployment. ICANN would go on to deploy additional TLDs if no serious
problems arose in the initial rollout. The initial deployment would be a
testbed, in the sense that ICANN's decisions regarding the rollout of
subsequent gTLDs would rest on that initial experience.
The proposal that ICANN start by deploying six to ten new TLDs, followed
by an evaluation period, was crafted as a compromise position to bridge the
gap separating the three groups, and to enable a rough consensus to form in
the middle ground.
Arguments supporting the consensus position
The consensus position has the advantage of being a compromise proposal
supported by a wide range of working group members. In a bottom-up,
consensus-driven organization, broad agreement on a policy path is valuable
for its own sake. The sense of the bulk of the working group is that this
proposal strikes an appropriate balance between aggressiveness and prudence
in remedying the shortage of domain names.
Arguments opposing the consensus position
Three arguments were made in the working group against the proposal. The
first was that the contemplated initial deployment was too large; rather,
some WG members urged, it would be appropriate, following the
implementation of effective intellectual property protections, for ICANN to
roll out no more than two or three new gTLDs. Most WG members felt,
however, that this figure was smaller than caution dictated, and that such
a modest deployment would not give ICANN the information that it would need
to make sensible later decisions.
The second argument was that the contemplated initial deployment was too
small: that, as detailed above, a deployment of only six to ten, without an
upfront commitment to roll out many more, will be a half-measure that would
grant oligopoly power to the lucky registries selected for the initial
rollout. This argument has considerable force. Most of the working group
members felt, however, that an initial commitment to many more than six to
ten would not be operationally sound. Until we see the consequences for
the domain name space of adding new gTLDs, there are advantages to a more
circumspect path.
The final objection raised was that the consensus agreement answered the
wrong question: The working group, said some, should not be addressing the
number of new gTLDs at all before resolving such issues as whether the new
top-level domains should be general-purpose (like .com), special-purpose,
or some combination of the two. The working group is currently addressing
these issues (they will be discussed in Part Two of the WG's Report), and
certainly it would not have been inappropriate for it to have sought to
reach conclusions on those matters before discussing Issue Two. But most
members of the working group concluded that the path of resolving the
nature of the initial deployment first was just as valid.
Public comments
As with Issue One, public comment on this issue was divided. Bell
Atlantic and Marilyn Cade supported the introduction of just a single new
gTLD at the outset. John Lewis, on behalf of some members of the Business
& Commercial constituency, suggested the introduction of a very small
number; British Telecom and Time Warner urged the initial rollout of only a
few. Other commenters, including Jonathan Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington,
AOL, Disney and Nintendo of America, generally endorsed the statement that
the introduction of new gTLDs should be slow and controlled, and should
incorporate an evaluation period.
By contrast, Hiro Hotta, Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility, AXISNET, InterWorking Labs,
Tucows.com and InterAccess Company supported the position that ICANN
should, at the outset, announce a schedule for introducing hundreds of new
TLDs. The Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration concluded
that ICANN should start with a limited introduction of new TLDs followed by
an evaluation period, but that ICANN should announce in advance that it
would continue with a steady introduction of additional TLDs so long as
pre-announced technical criteria were met. Raul Echeberria, by contrast,
emphasized that ICANN should evaluate the operation and market acceptance
of the TLDs added in the initial rollout before creating or announcing
more. Melbourne IT, PSI-Japan and Register.com all supported the
compromise position of an initial rollout of six to ten new gTLDs followed
by an evaluation period.
--------------
A detailed summary of the public comments on Issues One and Two is
available at <http://www.dnso.org/wgroups/wg-c/Arc01/msg00490.html>.