[council] Comments from gTLD Constituency on Current gTLD Committee draft
All,
The gTLD
Constituency would like to first thank Philip Sheppard for taking the lead on
drafting this initial paper. We will be submitting a separate statement on
the subject of new gTLDs in the next few days, but we wanted to provide some
constructive feedback on the March 7th gTLD Committee Report (http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20030307.gTLDs-committee.html).
More specifically, this note addresses the Section entitled "Points of Common
Agreement and Points for Future Debate." Our comments will correspond to
the numbered points contained within that specific section.
Goals of
Expanding the Name Space.
Numbers 2
and 5: The gTLD Constituency supports the goals that are set
forth in this section. Our only comment relates to numbers 2 and 5.
We note that with respect to IDN generic top-level domains (i.e., IDN.IDN),
ICANN should try to ensure that the ASCII translation of any new generic
IDN top-level should not be confusingly similar an already
existing generic ASCII top-level domain (also known as transliterations of
existing names) so as to confuse net users.
Drivers of
Expansion.
Number 6: The gTLD Constituency
believes that this section as currently worded is ambiguous. What does it
mean is meant by "Demand-driven?" Does this mean that a potential
applicant needs to demonstrate to the ICANN that there is already existing
demand for the space? Who "judges" whether there is demand for a
particular new gTLD -- Is it the ICANN Board, Staff, or the GNSO? Do any
of these parties have the expertise to make such determinations? Also,
doesn't the fact that someone applies to manage the new gTLD namespace
demonstrate in and of itself that demand exists for the new name space? If
there is an applicant willing to invest in the space and take on the risks
associated with introducing a namespace, should that not be enough? In
addition, is it not possible to have an applicant propose to create demand by
investing in its registry?
Number 7: We are in agreement with
the first two clauses, but we would like more clarification on what is meant by
the following sentence: "However, in order to meet the goal on
competition, this flexibility will need to be limited to the extent that it
might lead to barriers to entry."
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