[governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

[Roland Perry]

In message 
<CAEP5zKSpPom_d-YDzrNk_ZS=Kdmk75_5t5vAb1_pof+-sOFkpw at mail.gmail.com>, at 
17:12:45 on Sun, 2 Sep 2012, Chaitanya Dhareshwar 
<chaitanyabd at gmail.com> writes
>In fact if I am to think from my point of view (a quite limited one) - 
>I don't really see any of these TLDs making any sort of impact to me or 
>people in similar positions/situations. For example the ".travel" 
>extension recently was quite a big thing for us (travel industry) but I 
>dont see any such thing happening with ".rugby" or ".health" or any of 
>them. We already have a ".travel" that has our company name on it, so 
>we wouldnt even dream of investing in something bigger (say ".banyan" 
>given that's my current company's name) - it just doesnt make sense for us.
> 
>So what reason would I (or any technology person in the same 
>situation) have to participate? (just illustrating the mindset)

The reason people should participate is because ICANN is an environment 
where they can. We hear so many complaints about environments where 
people say they can't (with various degrees of justification) that it 
seems to me that failing to contribute to the new gTLD process 
disqualifies you from ever complaining about the outcome.

But you do have to know it's possible. Maybe most people on this list 
know, but I accept there are some outsiders who don't. It was 
instructive seeing a representative from the OECD turn up in Prague in 
June to complain bitterly that the "NGO protection" for 'Red Cross' and 
'Olympics' hadn't been extended to other well known NGOs (including, but 
not limited to, the OECD). The reaction of many in the audience was 
"where have you been the last four years?"

As for whether there's a need for new gTLDS, as we say in Europe this is 
"closing the stable door after the horse has bolted". But one of ICANN's 
mission statements is to increase choice and competition at the gTLD 
level, and it's often forgotten that the ones launched piecemeal over 
the last ten years were done as a pilot study, to see what worked and 
what didn't, what was popular and what wasn't.

I think most people would agree that .cat is a success, as is .eu (which 
I prefer to regard as a 2-letter gTLD for Europe, rather than a ccTLD) 
so that bodes well for other "Regional and sub-regional" gTLDs.

On the other hand, .museum and .aero have not gained much traction, and 
.pro and .name have not attracted the following they were expected to. 
Which might indicate that it's more difficult than people think to make 
registrants self-identify with a non-geographic community.

Meanwhile, I don't see much harm in a very well known trademark such as 
.ibm being used for an organisation's email and web presence (most 
browsers will add a .com today, to make such a url resolve, so it's not 
really a new idea at all.

Time will tell how many of these new gTLDs succeed when registered, and 
which will fall by the wayside during the evaluation phase (because of 
being too similar, too controversial etc). Now's the time to give the 
ones you have objections to, a nudge towards obscurity.
-- 
Roland Perry

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