[wg-c] How Many gTLDs? (was: Who should vote for new gTLDs)

[Javier SOLA <javier@aui.es>]

Jon and Kent,

> So I think that convincing ICANN to authorize a lot of
> new TLDs will be a major challenge.  I don't think we should abandon that
> idea, though, if we think it's good policy.
>
>	And I think it is good policy. 

Could we say that good policy is policy that:

1) Comes out of consensus.
2) Can be actually put in place as working policy.

I am not so concerned about large corporations (who have enough money to
defend their trade-marks) as I am for a large number of smaller
corporations whose major asset are their trade-marks, and who could be
forced to spend most of their resources fighting their trade-marks.

But the real point here is that there is a constituency that considers that
they would be harmed by adding too many gTLDs. The Business world does want
more gTLDs, but not as many as to hurt their own interests. After all, it
is the same corporations. The business side pushes for business development
and the TM part ask them to establish this new business in firm TM grounds.
Therefore, I believe that the business constituency would not make a strong
case either for too many new gTLDs.

> You argue that it isn't, because the
>addition of a lot of new gTLDs will impose "incalculable" costs on
>trademark owners (or, alternatively, "billions of dollars in legal bills").
> Near as I can tell, though, the effects on trademark owners of the
>addition of new gTLDs have been vastly overblown.  Bear in mind that we
>will have an ADR procedure for cybersquatting.  We may have a "famous
>marks" procedure as well.  I see no reason to believe that the additional
>trademark policing costs attributable to new TLDs will be nearly as
>overwhelming as some of the numbers I've seen thrown around.  And I don't
>think we should deform our DNS policy simply to minimize trademark policing
>costs.

We are not deforming it, we are searching for consensus. The question to be
considered is "which" internet users would benefit from large amounts of
gTLDs and if having large amounts is so important to them that a solution
would have to be negotiated with the TM community.

> As David Maher said in a post to this list a while back: "The
>Internet is much bigger than the ‘marketplace.' We are serving everyone now
>on the Internet and those who will be.  There are other interests at least
>as important if not even more important than IP."

Of course, that is why there are many constituencies in the DNSO. David has
spent quite a lot of time looking for consensus between the TM community
and the traditional technical internet community, explaining to them the
interests of the other part.

Working on policy that might not be implemented (because it is not
consensus policy) is a good excercise, but it is not practical at this
time, in which we have to build something that we want implemented.

Javier

>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
>>
>>
>