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New TLDs:
Scribe's Notes AGENDA 1. What will happen this week? 2. Who are you, and why are you here? 3. What are your plans re intellectual property, UDRP, and opening-day policy? 4. Verification 5. Does your business model rely on there not being 10,000 names? 6. Q&A 7. Next year, what’s the state of affairs? How many TLDs? I. Note TLD Expo after this session – cash bar outside, meeting points within this room for each TLD applicant II. Touton: Evaluation team issued a report last week, see http://www.icann.org/tlds/report. Comments to be received on Wednesday during Public Forum. Board will deliberate on Thursday, with the hope of making a selection at that time. 44 “active” applications received. Some applications proposed multiple new TLDs, but to do so the applications had to share financial projections, etc. III. Zittrain: Note that we couldn’t have representation by all TLDs – panel is too small. So we don’t want panelists to talk about their applications per se. Want to hear about application process, experience with applications, etc. A. Forman: President of register.com. Participated in Affilias, and separately RegistryPro. Affilias open to all registrars for participation. Part of profit returned to all registrars. Discussions are open to the public. B. Ambler: CTO of Image Online Design which proposes the open, unrestricted .web TLD. .web available for five years to those who configure customized DNS. Never know what’s going to happen with the ICANN process. 1. Zittrain: Is it your sense that the Board will decide this week? Read the materials, deliberate in the open, and make a decision? 2. Optimistic that Board will do so. But staff report makes some factual inaccuracies. We’ve posted to the Public Comment Forum (http://www.icann.org/mbx/tldreport) C. Karp: Director of Swedish Museum of National History and applicant for .museum registry. If there is to be a .museum TLD, and the TLD is to operate for the benefit of the museum community, the community must operate the TLD itself. D. Metalitz: Here for the Intellectual Property Constituency of the DNSO. Posted evaluation chart (http://ipc.songbird.com/proposed_TLDs_chart_nov_00_1st_try.htm), gaining endorsements by others. 1. Zittrain: Priorities? Dispute resolution? Solving the land-rush problem E. Forman: Sensitive to intellectual property concerns. Provisions in applications address their concerns: sunrise period (for registered trademark holders to register their names before registration opened to others), round robin process for registration. 1. Will need to explain process to registrants since this has never been done before. F. Ambler: Our .web proposal would work differently. First-come-first-serve, just like RFC 1591 says. We’d maintain the 20,000 registrations accumulated over the past five years (“grandfather”). Upon approval, we’d temporarily freeze registrations and allow UDRPs against our existing registrations. G. Karp: Hope for a relative influx of registrations to .museum. We want museums to have recognizable addresses, and so our requirements specify that each domain name be obviously related to the actual name of the corresponding museum. H. Touton: If you say intellectual property community is happy with the UDRP, don’t forget that immediately after the adoption of the UDRP, the IP community went to congress and got a tough new law passed. Some ccTLDs have adopted the UDRP, or a variant of it, but they’re ultimately free to adopt whatever policy they see fit. I. Metalitz: We think about ccTLD space also, and we’d like to see UDRP or something similar apply there also. IV. Verification A. Forman: .PRO TLD would verify the credentials of the applicants. B. Metalitz: We were surprised to see so many applications for “open” TLDs, and relatively fewer chartered domains like .museum. We still question the need for more TLDs. C. Crocker: Current deliberations began with discussions five years ago. Internet Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) produced the gTLD-MoU for which I was the editor. Thanks to the Berkman Center for briefing materials. Note errata (errors?): Occasionally contains “may be confusing” language. Realize that the term “gTLD” previously (until the last one to two years) referred only to open TLDs. D. Zittrain: Some say we could have 10,000 TLDs as a technical matter (though we might not want to, for “political” or policy reasons). ICANN properly considers a number of a factors that might have effects stability construed more broadly than technical stability. There’s no technical question that we can support at least several thousand TLDs, and it remains almost unanimous that 10,000 TLDs are fine, while others allege 100,000 or a million. Questions of networks, of data transfer, etc. E. Forman: Scarcity that exists creates a distorted view of the value of domain names. F. Ambler: Our application doesn’t rely on scarcity, and we’ve been proponents of non-scarcity since the beginning. We think .web stands on its own regardless of the other options available. In response to comments on the public forum, our technical team made changes to reduce exclusive registration period to some amount of time less than 60 days, perhaps zero. V. Q&A A. Phil Berent, Affinity: It’s easy to know when your trademark is being infringed. But charters make these questions much more complicated. One .biz applicant has as its charter “you must intend to setup a business, and the domain can be taken away from you if that’s not the case.” Seems untenable. 1. Metalitz: It can be difficult to design a charter and figure out how to enforce it. But these are the sorts of challenges it seems like we’re supposed to face in this proof-of-concept phase. 2. Crocker: Many have ignored the view that this is a step along a path. Applicants should understand that more acceptances are coming later. Perhaps consider the “losers” (from this round of the process) in the next round; rather, note its weaknesses and consider it in the next round. 3. Touton: Seems OK. But keep in mind that this proof of concept at least theoretically anticipates a type of TLD that is such a failure that we’d never want to add any more like it. B. Drew Clark, National Journal: If your applicants were granted, your companies would be the exclusive or non-exclusive registries for a period or no period at all? What about the monopoly rents on the “most desirable” names (common words, etc.)? Who gets the profits there? (Can registrars raise the price? Registries?) 1. Ambler: Registry can set the registry price at market conditions. Registrar set the registrar price at market conditions. For .web, all our names cost the same. 2. Forman: In Affilias and RegistryPro, registries are exclusive. When conflicting registrations during post-trademark sunrise period, a round-robin scheme among registrars. C. Zittrain: All proposals contemplate leasing of domain names by registrants? (i.e. recurring annual fees paid by registrants?) 1. Touton: Nearly all. Perhaps not yearly. D. Zittrain: Increases of fees for well-known top-level domains? “$1million to renew amazon.com.” 1. Touton: A breach of faith to change prices the way you propose. 2. Forman: Most domain names are of the worker bee variety. E. Preference to holders of existing .com’s etc.? 1. Forman: No. F. Amadeu Abril i Abril: Have to emphasize stability. 1. Crocker: Agreed, especially in early stages. Substantial risk in choosing initial registries. Should place emphasis on business experience, finances, etc. G. Jason Hendeles (ICM Registry): ICANN report suggests that ICANN will accept additional information. But that hasn’t happened yet. Are applicants prepared to submit additional information? Is there a lot more paperwork in this last-minute rush? 1. Forman: Confidentiality agreements prevent me from saying whether or not we’ll be submitting additional information. 2. Ambler: We’ve submitted corrections to the public comment board. Have no idea what’s going to happen. The Board has an awful lot to do between last Friday and this Thursday. If another few months make this work more smoothly, fine. 3. Forman: Delay will only create other problems. 4. Ambler: Respectfully disagree. Addition of registries is totally different from addition of registrars. Stakes are much higher. H. Reidar Wasenius (Nokia): This is the beginning for a process of discussion from our perspective. I. Dimitry Dukhovny (DotYP): What will be the final analysis? What criteria for analysis? What response period, and what public comment? “We didn’t pay $50,000 to be dismissed as out of hand.” “What response to those who were dismissed in first analysis?” 1. Touton: The Board makes the decisions, not the staff. (So the staff report is only that – not dismissal, not final, still subject to reevaluation by the Board, etc.) • “Clear statement of reasons for exclusion?” • Touton: Comments received in public comment forum (and web forum). (And staff report gives reasons?) VI. Zittrain: Next year, what’s the state of affairs? How many TLDs? A. Ambler: My rose-colored outlook: All 44 applicants given one TLD each. No losers. Some have failed miserably; others succeed wildly; the Internet continues to run. We admit that we couldn’t have predicted which did well. Prices determined by market forces. And everyone is happy. B. Forman: Share many of Chris’s sentiments. Estimate 15-20 new TLDs created within the next year. Users come to affiliate themselves with certain TLDs. Substantial funds used for attracting users to TLDs, and drawing them to the Internet generally. C. Karp: Hope for more domains in 24 months than in 12. D. Metalitz: Hope for fewer TLDs than 44. Hope that some of the revenues received from TLD applications used for evaluation and enforcement. E. Crocker: Worried that those trying to block the process will do so with lawsuits, leverage with USG and California government, etc. Hopeful that we’ll have completed a second round of applications. F. Touton: Can’t speculate, but confident that the existing 253 TLDs will still be in the root in a year. CONTACT INFORMATION For additional technical information, please contact: Ben Edelman and Rebecca Nesson |