Republican lawmakers want answers from ICANN

[IPB Corporation]

Well as I feared the government interest in ICANN appears to be
heating up.

Two of the House Judiciary Committee's top Republicans wrote to the
new head of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on
Tuesday to express concerns about the proposed introduction of many
new top-level domains -- such as .biz, .info, and .us -- and the
expiration later this month of a memo formally joining the Commerce
Department and the California-based entity that administers the
world's Web addresses.

In their letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, Judiciary ranking member
Lamar Smith and Courts and Competition Subcommittee ranking member
Howard Coble, R-N.C., said they are worried that a vast expansion of
domains will carry "serious negative consequences" for U.S. businesses
and consumers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of
Manufacturers and others have complained that adding hundreds of new
domains could exacerbate cyber-squatting, fraud, and overall confusion
in the Internet marketplace.

Smith and Coble said the absence of price caps in the new registry
deals could mean that legitimate businesses could be discriminated
against and asked to pay a premium for each domain they register or
renew. ICANN, which has said it plans to begin accepting applications
for new domains in early 2010, could bring in an initial $90 million
from the plan, according to some estimates. The letter argued the only
economic justification put forth so far is an ICANN-commissioned
report that has been criticized for failing to include empirical data
to support of its claim that the project will benefit consumers.

Given the late consideration of intellectual property concerns and
ICANN's "less than stellar track record," Smith and Coble said they
have "serious misgivings" about the scheduled expiration later this
month of a joint project agreement between the U.S. government and
ICANN. ICANN leaders have claimed that, after 10 years in business,
the nonprofit is ready for its independence but a number of lawmakers
-- Democrats and Republicans alike -- aren't so sure. House Energy and
Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman and Communications Subcommittee
Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., last month called for the creation of a
permanent relationship.

Smith and Coble ask Beckstrom to provide detailed answers by Sept. 22
to several questions about the domain name expansion and the
termination of the joint project agreement.

Proponents of the domain name expansion take a different view. Richard
Tindal, senior vice president of registry at eNom, argues that new
domains will be safer space for trademarks. As part of the proposed
process, safeguards are being built into the registry selection
process and the registry/registrar contracts. Additionally, ICANN is
likely to adopt significant portions of the recommendations for
trademark protections offered by a committee of trademark experts, he
said.

Tindal claims the amount of traffic and cyber-squatting won't increase
significantly with new domains and could actually decrease. "There is
only so much Internet traffic and so many cyber-squatter dollars
available at any given point in time. Doubling the number of [domains]
will not double the amount of cyber-squatting," he said. Furthermore,
the recent introduction of country code top-level domains and vanity
names (e.g. Facebook) demonstrates that once new domains are
introduced, "there will be widespread consumer adoption," he
predicted.

Reguardless of these issues the real point of interest here is the
growing interference of the
day to day operations of ICANN from the United States and it's related
parties..

At least here at GlobalDNA those that use the Internet have a
voice ;-)