[ga] VeriSign/RealNames

[dannyyounger@cs.com]

Dear Stuart,

In ICP-3 you wrote:  

“They work under the philosophy that if they get there first with something that looks like a TLD and invite many registrants to participate, then ICANN will be required by their very presence and force of numbers to recognize in perpetuity these pseudo TLDs, inhibiting new TLDs with the same top-level name from being launched through the community's processes.

No current policy would allow ICANN to grant such preferential rights. To do so would effectively yield ICANN's mandate to introduce new TLDs in an orderly manner in the public interest to those who would simply grab all the TLD names that seem to have any marketplace value, thus circumventing the community-based processes that ICANN is required to follow. For ICANN to yield its mandate would be a violation of the public trust under which ICANN was created and under which it must operate. Were it to grant such preferential rights, ICANN would abandon this public trust, rooted in the community, to those who only act for their own benefit. Indeed, granting preferential rights could jeopardize the stability of the DNS, violating ICANN's fundamental mandate.”

Today VeriSign announced that is making RealNames Keywords available to its global network of over 90 domain name registrars, enabling those registrars to sell Keywords.  The RealNames Keyword system is integrated into Microsoft Internet Explorer browser software.  This creates the prospect that “different answers” will be given to the same query depending upon the user’s choice of browser.

As ICANN has a role as a coordinator, how do you view this major product launch which utilizes a layer on top of DNS, in effect creating “something that looks like a TLD”?


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