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Re: [wg-c] IMPORTANT: DRAFT WG-C REPORT
I feel Jon has done an excellent job in the attached document. It is concise and well
written. As I only joined Working Group C in the fall, I am assuming it is factually
correct.
I have two recommendations of which I feel very strongly. Both these recommendations
go to procedural fairness. I want to make sure whoever receives this document
(especially the Press Corps in Cairo) is not mislead as to the nature of the
document. The two recommendations are as follows:
1. The report should neither be labelled "Report (Part One) of Working Group C of the
Domain Name Supporting Organization, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers" nor referred to as "This document is Part One of the Report of Working Group
C" (first sentence of the document).
A report, in order to be labelled a report of a group, needs to have a formal vote for
adoption by that group. Working Group C has never voted to make this Working Group
C's "Report, Part One....".
Since the report was posted on Wednesday, March 1 or Thursday, March 2 (depending on
time zone) at most seven days have been allowed for comment on the report. This means
many members of Working Group C may never have reviewed this document. Certainly this
is insufficient time to allow some members to respond with detailed, thoughtful,
comments if those members disagreed with any portions of the document. This is
especially true since this is a part-time working group in which all members have
other responsibilities. The short notice is not Jon's fault (I assume he was given
this assignment on very short notice) but it does not change the fact that the time
allowed for comments is insufficient for receiving comments on a document as important
as one labelled the "Report (Part One)..." of the entire group.
If the head of any group issues a document and labels the document "Report (Part
One)" of the group, without ever seeking a vote on the Report from the group, this can
be terribly misleading. It implies the members of the group have adopted the report,
including everything exactly as stated in the document. What is in reality the report
of one individual on the progress of the group has the appearance of formal approval
of the group for the exact language as stated in the Report.
As the members of Working Group C have never voted on this Report, the cover page,
heading and first sentence of this document should be changed to read:
This is a report by the Co-Chairman of Working Group C describing the progress of
Working Group C. This is not a report of Working Group C. Working Group C has never
taken a vote approving this report.
It is also very important that the Co-Chairman in orally presenting this document
stress at all times that this document is not the Report (Part One) of Working Group
C. This will prevent anyone from believing that this document, as worded, has been
adopted by Working Group C.
2. The requirement to obtain five votes in order to submit a minority (dissenting )
statement should be eliminated. If someone wants to submit a minority or dissenting
report they should be allowed to do so. To my knowledge, Working Group C has never
adopted this procedural limitation on the expressing of one's views.
I suspect since this is a part-time working group, most members have never meet five
other members or may not have retained their e-mail addresses. Considering the
extremely short time allowed to respond to this document, the requirement to circulate
and then obtain the concurrence of five other members, effectively eliminates most
minority or dissenting opinions. This is totally unfair to any member that would like
to submit a minority or dissenting opinion.
Thank you very much for considering these recommendations. Again, Jon is to be
congratulated on the excellent work he has done in compiling this document.
Bob Broxton
broxton@erols.com
Jonathan Weinberg wrote:
> Folks --
>
> Members of the Names Council have requested that WG-C file a report
> **before the NC's meeting in Cairo next week** describing our initial
> conclusions. Accordingly, I've drafted up a document. This is a draft, to
> be rewritten in response to reactions from the list. Because time is
> short, please give me your comments as quickly as you can, and in no event
> later than midnight UTC on Tuesday, March 7. In addition to the redrafting
> process, if anybody wants to draft up a minority (dissenting) statement,
> please send it to me by midnight UTC on March 7, with the endorsement of at
> least five WG-C members, and I'll attach it.
>
> Thanks; I apologize for the short turnaround.
>
> Jon
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> Report (Part One) of
> Working Group C of the Domain Name Supporting Organization, Internet
> Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
>
> This document is Part One of the Report of Working Group C. It sets out
> the rough consensus of the group regarding whether there should be new
> generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and if so, how quickly they should be
> added to the root as an initial matter. Part Two of the Report, which will
> follow, will address other issues relating to the addition of new gTLDs.
>
> Introduction and summary
>
> Working Group C has reached rough consensus on two issues. The first is
> that ICANN should add new gTLDs to the root. The second is that ICANN
> should begin the deployment of new gTLDs with an initial rollout of six to
> ten new gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. This report will address
> each of these issues separately. For each of the issues, it will summarize
> the discussions within the working group, arguments pro and con, and
> comments received from the public.
>
> Procedural and outreach history
>
> The Names Council approved the charter of Working Group C on June 25,
> 1999, and named Javier Sola as its chair. On July 29, the working group
> members elected Jonathan Weinberg co-chair. The working group currently
> has more than 140 members, not all of whom are active. It includes
> extensive representation from each of the constituencies. (There is one
> partial exception: For most of the life of the working group, no NSI
> representative participated. When WG-C's co-chair solicited greater
> participation from the Registry constituency, Don Telage explained that NSI
> had chosen not to involve itself in the WG-C process. That
> representational gap has been filled now that Tony Rutkowski — an active
> WG-C member from the start — has joined NSI in a senior policymaking
> capacity.)
>
> On October 23, 1999, the Working Group released its Interim Report. That
> report described the issues on which the Working Group had reached rough
> consensus to date. It also included seven "position papers," setting out
> alternative scenarios for the introduction of new gTLDs. On November 23,
> 1999, the Names Council formally requested public comment on the Interim
> Report. This call for comments was publicized on a variety of mailing
> lists maintained by the DNSO, including ga-announce, ga, and liaison7c
> (which includes the constituency secretariats). In addition, WG-C's
> co-chair spoke at the meetings of most of the constituencies at the Los
> Angeles ICANN meeting, and urged constituency members to file comments.
> Nearly 300 comments were filed in response to the interim report. They
> included responses from leading members of all of the constituencies but
> two — the record does not include comments from the ccTLD or Registry
> constituencies (although ccTLD members and Mr. Rutkowski participated in
> the discussions that led to the Interim Report, and WG-C's co-chair
> expressly solicited the comments of both of those groups).
>
> Issue One — Should There Be New gTLDs?
>
> Discussions within the working group
>
> The working group quickly -- by mid-August, 1999 -- reached consensus that
> there should be new global top-level domains. There was very little
> dissent from this position.
>
> Arguments supporting the consensus position
>
> Expanding the number of TLDs will increase consumer choice, and create
> opportunities for entities that have been shut out under the current name
> structure. Today, .com stands astride the name space: it has more
> registrations than all other top-level domain names combined, and is ten
> times the size of the largest ccTLD. Yet it has become nearly impossible
> to register a new simple domain name there: Almost a year ago, in April
> 1999, a survey found that of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary
> words, only 1,760 were free in the .com domain. Millions of additional
> names have been registered in .com since then.
>
> This situation is undesirable. It requires companies to register
> increasingly unwieldy domain names for themselves, and is inflating the
> value of the secondary (speculators') market in .com domain names.
> Existing second-level domain names under the dot com TLD routinely change
> hands for enormously inflated prices. These are legitimate trades of
> ordinary, untrademarked words; their high prices reflect the artificial
> scarcity of common names in existing gTLDs, and the premium on .com names
> in particular.
>
> Companies that currently have a domain name in the form of
> <www.companyname.com> have an extremely important marketing and
> name-recognition tool. They have an advantage over all other companies
> that do not have addresses in that form, because the companyname.com firms
> are the ones that consumers, surfing the Net, will be able to find most
> easily. If the name space is expanded, companies will be able to get
> easy-to-remember domain names more easily, and the entry barriers to
> successful participation in electronic commerce will be lowered. Addition
> of new gTLDs will allow different companies to have the same second-level
> domain name in different TLDs. Those businesses will have to compete based
> on price, quality and service, rather than on the happenstance of which
> company locked up the most desirable domain name first.
>
> Similarly, addition of new gTLDs could enlarge noncommercial name space,
> and allow the creation of top-level domains designed to serve noncommercial
> goals. One proposal made in WG-C, widely applauded in the public comments,
> advocated the creation of a new top-level domain to be operated for the
> benefit of North American indigenous peoples. Other examples are easy to
> imagine.
>
> In response to the unsatisfied demand for new gTLD names, several ccTLD
> registries, including .nu, .cc, and .to, have transformed themselves into
> gTLDs, marketing their names globally as alternatives to .com, .net and
> .org. This is undesirable from the perspective of protecting trademark
> rights, since no mechanisms are in place to ensure that these TLDs enact
> the same trademark-protective procedures (such as the UDRP) now in place in
> the gTLDs. The transformation of ccTLDs into globally marketed commercial
> gTLDs deprives the local Internet community of the benefits of a ccTLD more
> closely oriented to serving that community. To the extent that ICANN
> wishes to deploy new gTLDs subject to community-determined policy
> guidelines, finally, the growth of ccTLDs in response to pent-up demand for
> TLDs frustrates that goal.
>
> Creation of new generic top-level domains can be beneficial in other ways.
> One proposal before WG-C, with significant support, urges the creation of
> multiple registries, each capable of managing registrations for multiple
> TLDs, so as to eliminate the single point of failure for the registration
> process. Under this view, multiple new gTLDs are necessary to support the
> multiple registries needed for stability.
>
> Adding new gTLDs to the root, finally, is an important part of ICANN's
> mandate. ICANN was created because the institutions that preceded it were
> unable to resolve the intense political and economic conflicts created by
> demand for new top-level domain names. The U.S. Department of Commerce's
> White Paper saw the establishment of policy "for determining the
> circumstances under which new TLDs are added to the root system" as one of
> ICANN's fundamental goals.
>
> Arguments opposing the consensus position
>
> Three arguments were made, or suggested, in WG-C that cut against the
> addition of new gTLDs. The first relates to trademark policing concerns:
> Expansion of the domain space will create additional opportunities for the
> registration of domain names that are confusingly similar to existing
> trademarks. The relationship between domain names and trademark rights
> presents an important and difficult issue, and is appropriately addressed
> by registry data maintenance requirements, dispute resolution mechanisms
> such as the UDRP, and any other device that ICANN may choose to adopt.
> Trademark owners' concerns in this regard are important ones, and not to be
> overlooked. The argument that ICANN should impose substantial delays on
> the initial deployment of new gTLDs in the interest of adopting or
> perfecting such mechanisms, however, did not win much support within the
> working group except among Intellectual Property constituency members.
>
> Second, some working group members suggested that an increase in the
> number of top- level domains could confuse consumers, because it would be
> harder for consumers to keep in mind and remember a larger set of top-level
> domains. Notwithstanding requests, though, no working group member offered
> studies or other evidence backing up this view.
>
> Finally, some working group members suggested that the perceived need for
> new gTLDs was illusory. For the reasons described above, it is the sense
> of the working group that that view is incorrect.
>
> Public comments
>
> The comments received by the working group fell into several categories.
> A few commenters questioned whether new gTLDs were indeed needed: this
> group included Bell Atlantic, Marilyn Cade and John Lewis (writing on
> behalf of some members of the Business & Commercial constituency).
>
> Some commenters took no position on whether new gTLDs should be added.
> Rather, they focused their comments on the position that deployment should
> be delayed until after implementation of the uniform dispute resolution
> procedure, improved domain name registration procedures, and protection for
> so-called famous marks. These commenters included, among others, Jonathan
> Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington, AOL, British Telecom, Disney, INTA,
> Nintendo of America and Time Warner. Comments noting the need for caution
> in deploying new gTLDs, but not explicitly referencing famous-marks
> protection, were filed by the Software and Information Industry Association
> (which supports adding new gTLDs, but only after the creation of a robust,
> responsive whois system), John Lewis (writing on behalf of some members of
> the Business and Commercial constituency), and Steve Metalitz.
>
> A third set of comments urged the addition of new gTLDs without further
> delay. These commenters included, among others, Hiro Hotta (emphasizing
> that discussion of famous-mark protection should not delay the gTLD
> rollout), Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer Professionals for
> Social Responsibility, Melbourne IT, AXISNET (Peruvian Association of Users
> and ISPs), the United States Small Business Administration's Office of
> Advocacy, Register.com, InterWorking Labs, Tucows.com, InterAccess Company
> and PSI-Japan. Raul Echeberria filed comments urging that the
> establishment of new gTLDs was important and positive, but that rules
> should be devised to avoid massive speculative purchases of domains in the
> new TLDs, or trademark holders simply duplicating their existing domains.
>
> A fourth, and by far the largest, set of comments supported the creation
> of a specific proposed new domain: .NAA, proposed as a new gTLD to be run
> for the benefit of North American indigenous peoples.
>
> Issue Two — What Should be the Nature of the Initial Rollout?
>
> Discussions within the working group
>
> In September 1999, the WG-C co-chairs made the determination that the
> working group had reached rough consensus supporting a compromise proposal
> that the initial deployment of new gTLDs should include six to ten new
> gTLDs, followed by an evaluation period. Because there had been no formal
> consensus call, though, the working group held a vote in December 1999 to
> reaffirm that consensus. Following the lead of Working Group B, the
> working group determined in advance that a two-thirds margin would
> constitute adequate evidence of rough consensus. The vote reaffirmed the
> compromise position as the rough consensus of the working group, by a
> margin of 44 to 20. (A substantial number of working group members did not
> cast votes. In addition, some working group members, having been solicited
> to vote, sent messages to the list explaining that they were declining to
> take a position at that time, and listed themselves as consequently
> abstaining. Neither the non-voters nor the abstainers were counted in
> figuring the two-thirds majority.)
>
> Members of the working group had expressed sharply varying positions on
> the nature of the initial rollout. Some working group members urged that
> ICANN should immediately announce its intention to authorize hundreds of
> new gTLDs over the course of the next few years. While ICANN might
> interrupt that process if it observed serious problems with the rollout,
> the presumption would be in favor of deployment to the limits of the
> technically feasible and operationally stable. If ICANN simply deployed a
> small number of new gTLDs with no commitment to add more, they argued, the
> public would have to make registration decisions based on the possibility
> that the small number of new gTLDs would be the only options. This would
> give the new registries oligopoly power and the ability to earn
> greater-than-competitive profits; it would encourage pre-emptive and
> speculative registrations based on the possibility of continued artificial
> scarcity. By contrast, they urged, an ICANN decision to deploy a large
> number of gTLDs would enable competition and a level playing field: If
> ICANN announced an intention to add hundreds of new gTLDs over a three-year
> period, no new registry could exercise market power based on the prospect
> of a continued artificial scarcity of names.
>
> Other working group members took the opposite approach. New gTLDs, they
> urged, could seriously aggravate the problems facing trademark
> rightsholders in the existing domain name space. Accordingly, they urged,
> new gTLDs should be introduced only slowly and in a controlled manner, and
> only after effective trademark protection mechanisms had been implemented
> and shown to be effective.
>
> A third set of working group members took still another approach. In the
> long term, they stated, it would be desirable for ICANN to allow the
> deployment of new gTLDs to the limits of the technically feasible and
> operationally stable. As a short-term matter, however, the immediate
> deployment of hundreds of new TLDs would not be prudent. The operationally
> safer course, rather, should be to deploy a smaller number, and to follow
> that deployment with an evaluation period during which the Internet
> community could see what lessons were to be learned from the initial
> deployment. ICANN would go on to deploy additional TLDs if no serious
> problems arose in the initial rollout. The initial deployment would be a
> testbed, in the sense that ICANN's decisions regarding the rollout of
> subsequent gTLDs would rest on that initial experience.
>
> The proposal that ICANN start by deploying six to ten new TLDs, followed
> by an evaluation period, was crafted as a compromise position to bridge the
> gap separating the three groups, and to enable a rough consensus to form in
> the middle ground.
>
> Arguments supporting the consensus position
>
> The consensus position has the advantage of being a compromise proposal
> supported by a wide range of working group members. In a bottom-up,
> consensus-driven organization, broad agreement on a policy path is valuable
> for its own sake. The sense of the bulk of the working group is that this
> proposal strikes an appropriate balance between aggressiveness and prudence
> in remedying the shortage of domain names.
>
> Arguments opposing the consensus position
>
> Three arguments were made in the working group against the proposal. The
> first was that the contemplated initial deployment was too large; rather,
> some WG members urged, it would be appropriate, following the
> implementation of effective intellectual property protections, for ICANN to
> roll out no more than two or three new gTLDs. Most WG members felt,
> however, that this figure was smaller than caution dictated, and that such
> a modest deployment would not give ICANN the information that it would need
> to make sensible later decisions.
>
> The second argument was that the contemplated initial deployment was too
> small: that, as detailed above, a deployment of only six to ten, without an
> upfront commitment to roll out many more, will be a half-measure that would
> grant oligopoly power to the lucky registries selected for the initial
> rollout. This argument has considerable force. Most of the working group
> members felt, however, that an initial commitment to many more than six to
> ten would not be operationally sound. Until we see the consequences for
> the domain name space of adding new gTLDs, there are advantages to a more
> circumspect path.
>
> The final objection raised was that the consensus agreement answered the
> wrong question: The working group, said some, should not be addressing the
> number of new gTLDs at all before resolving such issues as whether the new
> top-level domains should be general-purpose (like .com), special-purpose,
> or some combination of the two. The working group is currently addressing
> these issues (they will be discussed in Part Two of the WG's Report), and
> certainly it would not have been inappropriate for it to have sought to
> reach conclusions on those matters before discussing Issue Two. But most
> members of the working group concluded that the path of resolving the
> nature of the initial deployment first was just as valid.
>
> Public comments
>
> As with Issue One, public comment on this issue was divided. Bell
> Atlantic and Marilyn Cade supported the introduction of just a single new
> gTLD at the outset. John Lewis, on behalf of some members of the Business
> & Commercial constituency, suggested the introduction of a very small
> number; British Telecom and Time Warner urged the initial rollout of only a
> few. Other commenters, including Jonathan Cohen, Dr. Victoria Carrington,
> AOL, Disney and Nintendo of America, generally endorsed the statement that
> the introduction of new gTLDs should be slow and controlled, and should
> incorporate an evaluation period.
>
> By contrast, Hiro Hotta, Kathryn Kleiman, Michael Schneider, Computer
> Professionals for Social Responsibility, AXISNET, InterWorking Labs,
> Tucows.com and InterAccess Company supported the position that ICANN
> should, at the outset, announce a schedule for introducing hundreds of new
> TLDs. The Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration concluded
> that ICANN should start with a limited introduction of new TLDs followed by
> an evaluation period, but that ICANN should announce in advance that it
> would continue with a steady introduction of additional TLDs so long as
> pre-announced technical criteria were met. Raul Echeberria, by contrast,
> emphasized that ICANN should evaluate the operation and market acceptance
> of the TLDs added in the initial rollout before creating or announcing
> more. Melbourne IT, PSI-Japan and Register.com all supported the
> compromise position of an initial rollout of six to ten new gTLDs followed
> by an evaluation period.
>
> --------------
>
> A detailed summary of the public comments on Issues One and Two is
> available at <http://www.dnso.org/wgroups/wg-c/Arc01/msg00490.html>.