[wg-c] New gTLD's

["Penman, Ian" <ian.penman@dla-law.co.uk>]

Sadly, being an Internet lawyer acting for clients who insist on buying,
selling (and suing over) domain names at ever inflating prices has prevented
me from contributing to this list before now.

That said, I have now read the Working Group C Interim Report (October 23
1999) with great interest, and would like to add a few (personal) thoughts.
Being a (relatively) new addition to the e-mail group, please accept my
apologies if you have heard any (or all) of this before.

1.	How many names?

Most of the (larger) client corporations that I deal with have expressed an
intention to register their key brands in all of the probable new gTLD's,
assuming that a figure in the region of only 6-10 are introduced.  As an
aside, many have placed orders already for new gTLD's (such as .firm and
.web for example) on the (mis)understanding that these have already been
accepted by ICANN, which is a view that is supported by a number of
registrars accepting "pre-registration" orders for these names at present.
As such, whilst I note that Position Paper ("PP") A does state that: "In the
long term, a domain name system with a large number of gTLDs seems highly
desirable", I tend to align with the authors of PP B, in that any release of
a limited number of new gTLD's without (at the very least) a firm commitment
from ICANN to add many more in the near future, will merely exacerbate the
problem of limited availability of new domains, as the larger corporations
simply "snap up" all available options relating to their brands.  As a final
thought on this issue, in my view, any "public" use of the word "testbed"
will merely confuse Internet users, who will not know whether the new gTLDs
are permanent, or are merely ICANN "testing" of the market.

2.	How fast?

Obviously, any introduction of any new gTLD's will have to be very carefully
examined from a technical standpoint before introduction is effected, so as
not to adversely affect the operation of the Internet in any way.  Not being
a "technician", I assume that as a "given", and would not propose to discuss
it further.  As such, whilst I concur in general with the thoughts of the
writers of PP C, I have my doubts as to the ability of the Intellectual
Property community worldwide to come up with a consensus based solution to
the trade mark vs. domain name debate within a time frame which works in
relation to the undoubted urgent and massive demand for new gTLD's to be
released.  As is usual with the Internet, the legal community will probably
be forced to jog along behind developments, weighed down as we are by
multi-jurisdictional trade mark (and other) laws that have been developed
over centuries before the Internet existed.  Any insistence on "waiting" for
worldwide consensus on these issues before the release of new gTLDs can only
result in hindering the development of the Internet in general and
e-commerce in particular.  That said, waiting for the report of WG-B (on
famous names) before finalising new gTLDs would seem sensible.

3.	New Registries?

As stated above, I do not present myself as any kind of technical expert,
but it seems to me that opening up the new gTLD registries to competitive
tender is the best option, provided that "pricing" and "technical ability"
are not the only criteria.  Running the registry administration efficiently
and with an easy to use publicly accessible information database would also
seem crucial.  At present, for example, it seems to be taking NSI up to 6
weeks from receipt of a notarised RNCA to amend their database.  I wonder
how long it would be before the Internet community demanded the end of a
registry's monopoly if that registry took 6 weeks to register the domain in
the first place.  Personally, I find Nominet's model far more suitable -
with a simple certificate of ownership of each domain being issued (with
transfer form printed on the back).  In the UK this "log book" system has
been applied to the ownership of motor vehicles - administered by a
Government agency (DVLA) - and has worked successfully for many years. 

4.	Which names to choose?

Personally, I find the "yellow pages" model to be the most attractive, with
ICANN delegating to each country the ability to formulate its own "g"TLD
policy (subject always to key fundamentals being put in place by ICANN),
together with the ability to choose a number of categories to add to its
"cc".  For example:

www.xxxxx.bank.uk
www.xxxxx.news.uk
www.xxxxx.weather.uk
www.xxxxx.school.uk
www.xxxxx.airline.uk
www.xxxxx.insurance.uk
www.xxxxx.lawyer.uk

This has the advantage of being intuitive to Internet users worldwide, and
would solve the issue of large corporates multi registering - I cannot
imagine that "Coca-Cola" (by way of a random example), will require
www.coke.lawyer.uk, whereas I doubt that the same could be said for
www.coke.web or www.coke.firm.

The actual operation of each "sub gTLD" could be allocated by the individual
country by way of competitive tender - again, provided always that certain
"fundamental" terms and conditions (set out by ICANN) were adhered to in
each case.  If correctly constituted, this could also allow potential
registries to suggest new "sub-domains" - reacting to (perceived) Internet
user demand in each case.

Food for thought...

Kind regards to all.


Ian Penman

Ian.Penman@dla-law.co.uk
www.dla.net

Please not that the views expressed in this e-mail are the personal views of
the writer and are not those of Dibb Lupton Alsop.