Jarrko and all,
I don’t disagree with your rationale
for brands being ‘good stewards’ and, more importantly, I was not
suggesting brands go to the end of the queue. Having listened closely at the
BC Washington meeting presentation on ‘Brands as gTLDs’ by Fred
Felman, Debbie Hughes and Kristina Rossette and correlating that to the discussions
that we have had on this topic within the Vertical Integration Working Group
(VIWG), the realization of what needs to be done before the we will see brand
names in the root became very clear to me. Hence my recommendation to establish
a separate, parallel path for brands to address the issues that abound
in that ‘segment’ of potential applicants.
Two key aspects formed the basis for my recommendation,
as follows:
Moreover, I am not personally
aware of anyone on the VIWG who supports allowing brands to queue up in the ‘standard’
or ‘community-based’ application lines to submit their documentation
like any other applicant. My understanding is that it is not simply a question
of whether brands will accept the ICANN principle of equal access for all
registrars to sell all domain names; rather brand name gTLDs is a new addition
to the heretofore categories of ‘generic’ and ‘country code’
TLDs and therein lays the issue.
Without a budget in place
and determined executive suite leadership, very few brands will tread into
ICANN waters when the application window for new gTLDs opens, in my view. A
few, perhaps like Nokia, who have long been involved in the ICANN community and
therefore can draw on that experience, may be prepared to go forward. However,
most brands, in my view, will wait and watch to learn from the experience of
those few companies that step forward when the time comes.
Having participated for the better part of
a year on the VIWG, the overall position that I have come to with regard to new
gTLDs is that:
I trust that my blog post with regard to
brands falls in line with that position.
I hope that this rather long posting adds
more clarity to the matter, but am happy to discuss this further should you so
wish.
Kind regards,
RA
Ronald N. Andruff
President
RNA Partners, Inc.
220
+ 1 212 481 2820 ext. 11
From:
owner-bc-gnso@icann.org [mailto:owner-bc-gnso@icann.org] On Behalf Of jarkko.ruuska@nokia.com
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010
2:59 AM
To: randruff@rnapartners.com;
bc-gnso@icann.org
Subject: RE: [bc-gnso] Blog post
Thanks Ron for
sharing this.
The blog post was a
pretty accurate and thorough description of what has been going on lately with
ICANN and the gTLD program. I agree with you for the most part, but some things
you wrote didn’t make any sense to me and left me in state of confusion.
More specifically
the topic related to the brand TLDs was the one that caught my eye. You stated
that the schedule of so called brand TLDs should be pushed further compared to
the regular TLDs. And the reason for this would be the unfinished work with the
definition of SRSU and other brand TLD related issues.
I really fail to see
the logic in this. Let me list a couple of reasons why brand TLDs should be
delegated first rather than be put to the end of the queue.
1)
The
companies behind brand TLDs are usually in good financial standing and can
afford well-known back-end registry service provider or skilled enough people
to run the registry properly thus posing no threat to stability or security of
the root
2)
The
brands by definition have a reputation to maintain. That thing alone guarantees
that the TLDs are properly operated to avoid any negative publicity.
3)
The
requirement of having to use registrars (Which SRSU model is supposed to fix)
is nothing but a small inconvenience and cost item for big corporations.
Nothing really keeps them from applying a standard TLD and bear the added minor
financial impact of contracting a registrar.
4)
ICANN
can’t really say no to the money these kind of easy and safe TLD
applications would bring on the table (it is estimated that there would be at
least 50-150 of them, $185,000 each, you can do the math).
5)
Last
but not least ICANN could be facing legal implications of delaying the brand
TLDs as the big corporations might find it as a discriminatory approach
Thanks,
-jr
JARKKO
RUUSKA
Head of
Internet Domain Initiatives
Compatibility and Industry Collaboration
Nokia
Corporation
Visiokatu 1, 33720 Tampere, Finland
Tel: +358 50 324 7507
E-Mail: jarkko.ruuska@nokia.com
From:
owner-bc-gnso@icann.org [mailto:owner-bc-gnso@icann.org] On Behalf Of ext Ron Andruff
Sent: 23. lokakuuta 2010 0:53
To: 'bc - GNSO list'
Subject: [bc-gnso] Blog post
Dear all,
As it may have relevance to members of the BC, I thought I
should make you aware of a blog post I made on CircleID regarding the long
delays and long timelines that lay ahead vis-à-vis new gTLDs [ http://www.circleid.com/posts/and_then_there_was_the_issue_of_time/
].
The October 12th BC meeting in Washington,
particularly the session on “brands as gTLDs” that Fred Felman
chaired, was extremely valuable in fleshing out the complexities around brands
as TLDs and got me to thinking more about how ICANN best handle this important
aspect. I recommend that members go back and read the transcripts or
listen to the MP3 to learn more if they didn’t participate
remotely. It got me to thinking more about what still needs to be done
and how we should address that. In my post, I suggest putting all brands
on a separate path towards gTLDs until such time as the issues around SRSU and
the like have been properly considered and appropriate recommendations are put
in place. I believe that this would address a number of concerns from
different groups and build institutional confidence in ICANN.
Kind regards,
RA
Ronald N. Andruff
President
RNA Partners, Inc.
220
+ 1 212 481 2820 ext. 11