Hearing in DC on New gTLDs yesterday

[Kathy Kleiman]

Hi All,
I wanted to share a few thoughts on the hearing held by Congress on New 
gTLDs yesterday. Since I live here in Washington DC, I was able to hop 
the Metro and go down to see it. It was called: Hearing on “The 
Expansion of Top Level Domains and its Effects on Competition.”

There were 4 witnesses who testified: Doug Brent for ICANN, Paul Stahura 
for eNom, Richard Heath for International Trademark Assoc., and Steve 
DelBianco for NetChoice (a organization of Verisign and others). So, 2 
for new gTLDs (ICANN/eNom) and two against them (INTA/Netchoice-- 
although NetChoice wants IDNs to move forward).

Basically, the premise was that ICANN is not doing enough to protect big 
trademark owners, and who needs new gTLDs anyway?

Doug Brent properly said that expansion of the root has been part of 
ICANN's mission since the beginning. New gTLDs will help registrant 
choice, competition generally, and serve the rest of the world with 
IDNs. He said ICANN has had at least 3 studies on the New gTLD program, 
and that the additional studies being called for may or may not be 
needed; ICANN is looking into it. But he said, rightly, that at some 
point the studies have to stop and work to go forward.

Brent also said that the policies and procedures for the new gTLDs have 
been in development at ICANN for years – and came up through the GNSO 
process, with ICANN community involvement. He said that the process has 
worked.

Richard Heath, from the International Trademark Association and the UK, 
said that new gTLDs are: linked to increased crime, threaten health and 
safety, tarnish existing trademarks, and are only being done to get the 
money from defensive registrations. (Wow!)

Paul Stahura from eNom wants new gTLDs. He said that there is consumer 
demand for new gTLDs, new gTLDs will create competition in price, 
service, and offerings, and that is definitely time for ICANN to move 
forward. He also noted later that to roll out IDNs without rolling out 
new gTLDs in English would be unfair – to have a .BLOG in Chinese and 
not in English, he argued, would be unfair to eNom and others.

Steve DelBianco was interesting. He is a smooth Washington person and 
obviously has testified many times. He represents NetChoice, a group 
which includes VeriSign, and he said that no new gTLDs are needed except 
IDNs. “With almost 200 million registered domains today, it is hard to 
see how choice is constrained in any meaningful way...” He said ICANN 
should enable IDNs before expanding Latin gTLDs-- but only IDNs for 
“country-code domains controlled by governments.”

One great piece of news that came out is that the work we (NCUC) did 
over the summer is definitely helping shape the debate. As you know, 
Konstantinos and I in Washington DC and Leslie in China had long 
detailed meetings with ICANN staff in August, and made strong and 
well-researched recommendations. Our great work in Sydney – by all who 
attended and went up to the microphones to protest the IRT Report- was 
important too!

According to Doug's testimony yesterday, ICANN will be sending the IP 
Clearinghouse and URS (UDRP replacement) to the GNSO for review! The 
Globally Protected Marks List appears to be gone completely! This is 
very good news... and an important future piece of work that we (NCUC) 
should start working on right away.

That's the scoop from DC.
Best,
Kathy (Kleiman)
p.s. Sorry to miss the NCUC held at the same time!