Re: [wg-c] Who should vote for new gTLDs

[dwmaher@ibm.net]

A word or two from one of those "quiet... though very influential,
nonetheless" trademark types referred to in Kent's last paragraph. (thanx,
Kent  :-))
Kent's analysis is right on target. I don't agree with the far-out stance
of many of the trademark interests, but I have learned by painful
experience that the Internet has got to come to some kind of accomodation
with "legitimate" trademark concerns. Drawing that legitimacy line is the
problem, but one thing is clear - a theoretical approach assuming the
ability to create hundreds or millions of gTLDs (or even 20) won't get us
anywhere.
David Maher
At 07:21 PM 7/27/99 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 27, 1999 at 11:37:31AM -0400, Jonathan Weinberg wrote:
>[...]> 
>> I think it's safe to assume that in the short to medium term, ICANN will
>> authorize some number of TLDs falling in between these extreme cases: fewer
>> than 100, and more than three.  My own thoughts are that we'll be much
>> better off if ICANN aims for the high side -- that is, if it embraces a
>> "lots of TLDs" approach.  That's open to objection; in particular, some
>> folks argue that such an approach is *politically* infeasible, so we ought
>> simply to forget about it.   But I think it's useful to bring this question
>> out in the open, rather than leaving it as an unarticulated assumption of
>> various folks' positions.
>
>In my case it is certainly not an assumption -- it is a deeply
>considered position after three years of public debate -- hardly
>"unarticulated" :-).  
>
>When I started, I thought, like you, that the obvious thing to do was
>have many gTLDs, as expressed, for example, in
>http://songbird.com/kent/papers/draft-iahc-stldla-crispin-00.txt. 
>(That was written in Nov 1996, before the term "registrar" came into
>vogue.)
>
>The concrete, dollars and cents effect on TM owners of adding a
>hundred new gTLDs is, literally, incalculable.  It may be that in the
>long term the effect will be good, but in the short term it may cost
>billions of dollars in legal bills.  No bland academic assurances
>from you or Milton or Craig can dispell that uncertainty, and nothing
>you can say is going to make them look with favor on the idea of
>dumping 100 new gTLDs into the root.  
>
>If you go back to the white and green paper comments, you will find
>that there have been numberous responses from TM interests that are
>against any new TLDs at all -- the 7 proposed by the IAHC were too
>many.  Moreover, while I can't document the following assertion for
>obvious reasons, there is no real doubt that large TM interests have
>lobbied the USG directly -- they don't send their representatives to
>participate in email lists when there are millions of dollars at
>stake.  (A large company (say Disney) has thousands of trademarks.)
>
>So yes, it will be politically very difficult to sell the idea of
>adding a whole bunch of new gTLDs.  This is obvious both from the
>concrete experience of the past couple of years, but even more, from
>common sense understanding of the positions of the players. 
>
>But more than politically difficult, it would be flat out
>irresponsible public policy.  We are trading the cost to TM holders
>who have, consertively estimating, hundreds of billions of dollars
>(probably trillions) in intellectual property, against the monetary
>value of the hypothetical efficiencies to be gained by having more
>gTLDs.  They are not in the same order of magnitude. 
>
>The TM interests are not comfortable with this process, and the fact
>that they are participating as much as they are today is significant
>forward progress from the early days of the IAHC.  They are for the
>most part, I think, willing to contemplate the addition of more
>gTLDs -- a *few* gTLDs, under carefully controlled conditions.  Seven 
>may be too many.
>
>I also believe that TM interests are much more comfortable with the 
>notion of chartered TLDs -- TLDs with rules concerning membership -- 
>then they are with "open" TLDs.  So, for example, I believe that a 
>".nom" TLD with the strict, easily enforcable rule that an SLD must 
>be the same as one of the words in the name of the registrant, would 
>be trivial to approve, while a generic ".web" will be far more 
>difficult to get approved.
>
>I feel a little awkward speaking for TM people.  But they have 
>historically been very quiet in these debates, though very 
>influential, nonetheless.
>
>-- 
>Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
>kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain