An Assault on Competition: The Registries Latest Policy Paper
Repeatedly invoking the interests of the user community, the latest paper from the ICANN Registries Constituency is an attack on the principle of competition. The document, available as an attachment to this URL -- http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg04928.html -- seeks to mandate TLD differention in the IDN sphere so that "brand fragmentation" will not occur. These registries seek to avoid IDN equivalents of .com and .net so that the entire world will lose the benefit of .com and .net alternatives. They seek to entrench their monopolies to the nth degree by foisting a policy upon us that would mandate differention. I don't know, about you, but I have no problems with the concept of someone launching .commercial and its equivalent forms in a multitude of scripts -- it sure won't confuse me or any other average user -- we will all understand that the days of VeriSign's market dominance are coming to a fitting end. When the Registry Constituency states: "RyC believes that a key means of avoiding this problem [fragmenting the Internet and isolating users] is to allow all manifestations of a given top level domain to be managed by a single entity", they want nothing less than to stifle competition ensuring North American market dominance for the next century. Here's hoping that the ALAC observers at today and tomorrow's GNSO LA session will choose to fight for a competitive TLD environment. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Danny, Since "differentiation" is synonymous with lack of competitive substitutability, it's not clear how this recommendation would benefit domain name registrants in whose name it claims to speak, though it's not surprising that incumbent registries support barriers to new entry. Consumers, such as purchasers of domain names, benefit from the availability of more competitive substitutes to drive prices down, not from restrictions that protect market segments as monopolies and keep prices up. This document helps to make clear that several of the items in the GNSO's New gTLD Recommendations are justified primarily as restraints on market competition -- which it would be entirely inappropriate for ICANN to sanction. I would further challenge the document's claim that top-level domains have acquired trademark rights. The typical end-user does not understand the TLD extension to denote registry-source-identification. I'm sure Ma Bell would have loved to claim trademark rights in "212," but even when you could only get telephone numbers from the monopoly telephone company, that gave them no rights to the area code. --Wendy Danny Younger wrote:
Repeatedly invoking the interests of the user community, the latest paper from the ICANN Registries Constituency is an attack on the principle of competition. The document, available as an attachment to this URL -- http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg04928.html -- seeks to mandate TLD differention in the IDN sphere so that "brand fragmentation" will not occur.
These registries seek to avoid IDN equivalents of .com and .net so that the entire world will lose the benefit of .com and .net alternatives. They seek to entrench their monopolies to the nth degree by foisting a policy upon us that would mandate differention.
I don't know, about you, but I have no problems with the concept of someone launching .commercial and its equivalent forms in a multitude of scripts -- it sure won't confuse me or any other average user -- we will all understand that the days of VeriSign's market dominance are coming to a fitting end.
When the Registry Constituency states: "RyC believes that a key means of avoiding this problem [fragmenting the Internet and isolating users] is to allow all manifestations of a given top level domain to be managed by a single entity", they want nothing less than to stifle competition ensuring North American market dominance for the next century.
Here's hoping that the ALAC observers at today and tomorrow's GNSO LA session will choose to fight for a competitive TLD environment.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
c. No one, other than Versign, could have a TLD (ascii ot IDN) that means the same as .com
I don't understand why this issue is coming back. The GNSO IDN WG Report has made it clear that "confusing similarity" is limited to visual and phonetic, not extending to the so-called semantic (meaningful) similarity. I always believe melting IDNs into the new gTLD hot pot will screw up all the well-established principles. Hong On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:38 AM, Wendy Seltzer <wendy@seltzer.com> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Danny,
Since "differentiation" is synonymous with lack of competitive substitutability, it's not clear how this recommendation would benefit domain name registrants in whose name it claims to speak, though it's not surprising that incumbent registries support barriers to new entry.
Consumers, such as purchasers of domain names, benefit from the availability of more competitive substitutes to drive prices down, not from restrictions that protect market segments as monopolies and keep prices up.
This document helps to make clear that several of the items in the GNSO's New gTLD Recommendations are justified primarily as restraints on market competition -- which it would be entirely inappropriate for ICANN to sanction.
I would further challenge the document's claim that top-level domains have acquired trademark rights. The typical end-user does not understand the TLD extension to denote registry-source-identification. I'm sure Ma Bell would have loved to claim trademark rights in "212," but even when you could only get telephone numbers from the monopoly telephone company, that gave them no rights to the area code.
--Wendy
Danny Younger wrote:
Repeatedly invoking the interests of the user community, the latest paper from the ICANN Registries Constituency is an attack on the principle of competition. The document, available as an attachment to this URL -- http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg04928.html -- seeks to mandate TLD differention in the IDN sphere so that "brand fragmentation" will not occur.
These registries seek to avoid IDN equivalents of .com and .net so that the entire world will lose the benefit of .com and .net alternatives. They seek to entrench their monopolies to the nth degree by foisting a policy upon us that would mandate differention.
I don't know, about you, but I have no problems with the concept of someone launching .commercial and its equivalent forms in a multitude of scripts -- it sure won't confuse me or any other average user -- we will all understand that the days of VeriSign's market dominance are coming to a fitting end.
When the Registry Constituency states: "RyC believes that a key means of avoiding this problem [fragmenting the Internet and isolating users] is to allow all manifestations of a given top level domain to be managed by a single entity", they want nothing less than to stifle competition ensuring North American market dominance for the next century.
Here's hoping that the ALAC observers at today and tomorrow's GNSO LA session will choose to fight for a competitive TLD environment.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
participants (3)
-
Danny Younger -
Hong Xue -
Wendy Seltzer