Senators, critics question ICANN's generic TLD plan

IDG News Service - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may be moving forward too fast on a plan to sell hundreds of new generic top-level domains starting early next year, several U.S. senators said Thursday.

Members of the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, along with representatives of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) of the U.S. and the Association of National Advertisers raised concerns about the plan to sell new gTLDs such as .hotel or .baseball.

The ICANN plan will force businesses and nonprofit organizations to spend significant money to register domain names on the new gTLDs in an effort to protect their brands, said Angela Williams, the YMCA's senior vice president. The plan would increase consumer confusion by allowing companies that don't own trademarks to set up websites that sell counterfeit products to consumers, she said during a hearing.

ICANN's plan will "impose severe hardship and burdens" on nonprofit groups, Williams said. "The new gTLD program compromises use of the Internet by increasing the risk of fraud, cybersquatting and trademark infringement and by significantly escalating the cost of protecting against such activities."

After a drawn-out debate about offering to sell new gTLDs, ICANN in June announced a plan to begin the process on Jan. 12. New gTLDs would cost about $185,000 for most organizations.

But entrepreneur Esther Dyson, the founding chairwoman of ICANN, questioned the plan at Thursday's hearing, saying it will lead to consumer confusion. If Marriott.hotel and Marriott.com were the same site, they would be redundant, and if they are different, "it's simply confusing," she said.

The plan creates "a profusion of new things to protect, without creating additional value because there remains only one Marriott," she said.

Kurt Pritz, ICANN's senior vice president for stakeholder relations, defended the plan, saying the organization has worked with intellectual property experts to put extensive processes in place to protect trademarks. Five economic studies on the gTLD plan have been published, and ICANN has conducted 47 public comment periods on the proposal, he said.

Trademark protections include a rapid suspension process for taking down infringing domain names, a trademark clearinghouse that will allow trademark holders to protect their brands on all new TLDs, and a new dispute procedure after a domain name has been sold, he said. ICANN also will check applicants for new gTLDs for histories of criminal behavior and cybersquatting, he said.

"Now is the time for launching the program," Pritz said. "It is the proceed of well-thought-out, thoroughly debated polices that are designed to benefit the billions of Internet users through increased competition, choice and innovation."