ICANN, Paris. New gTLDs session. Domaine.info and ICANN present Domaine.info and ICANN present Paris, France - June 2008 Workshop: New gTLDs Shaping the Future of the Internet? Monday 23rd - 16:00-18:30 Room: Utrillo Chris Disspain>>Does anyone have any thoughts whether its likely that large organizations might want to register Dot their name and use it in a different way, use it only perhaps for advertising websites and internal email structures? Would ebay consider dot ebay perhaps? Susan Kawaguchi>>Its simply something you would look at. I'm not the business person, I'm the global domain name manager. So they are looking at that, but I have no idea which way we'll go with that. Susanne Skov Nilsson>>So I would say that the fewer of these you could get, the better. If we are getting them, I fail to see the very big need for extra geographical domains because what do we get from those that we don't already have? In the country club domains, for example. My point would be if you need new TLDs maybe they should be for limited business areas. We have now dot arrow or dot museum where you could restrict the applicants to a certain area of business which would also reduce the risk of conflicts for the rights to these. Antony Van Couvering>>To me, a TLD is a question of identity and not a functional use, so any TLD that brings to light some group that was previously having difficulty being seen is good. From a company perspective it is largely kind of branding. For me, I would like to see TLDs that represent linguistic groups, people who have had a hard time being seen on the world stage, this is an excellent opportunity for them. That's the most important thing that can happen. John Berryhill>>I feel like we are having a discussion as to whether or not we should colonize new continents and I think a lot of the landowners in the old world may have felt "well, if we suddenly have more land, that makes the supply of land make the value of mine go down. The best way to predict the future is to listen exactly to what I say and do the opposite, because the internet is not very good at conforming to top down expectations and what we think might happen and what anyone thinks is a good idea. Before the web became a dominant application of the internet, we would have endless discussions about use net news groups. And whether or not we should create a news group for discussing this topic or for discussing that topic. The expectations were that if I created a space for discussion that people would want to discuss it. It didn't work out that way; it doesn't conform to the expectations, and I think that in an environment where anyone is entitled to try and where the barrier for entry is low, its much better that we let internet users sort out the winners and the losers rather than trying to impose my particular perspective or even the people in this room, however numerous we are. J. Scott>>What I've not seen is any demonstration that there's a need for new TLDs other than desire for people to make money which is a wonderful thing. I like to make money as much as the next person but I've never seen any need, and I work with a lot trademark owners who argue to me. It seems me the experiment has shown that its been a failure for most new TLDs because they have not, in any way, been successful or in any way thwarted dot com. Chris>>It seems to me that there's something from the names that have been mentioned and they're talking about the use of the names. The community based cities. areas, etcetera, seem to have quite a lot of support. There's certainly not much been said about anything else. But then, I suspect that's partly because people don't want necessarily to say what it is that they're going to try. Yes, sir? Phillip>>Hello. My name is Phillip Van Gelder from Endom. I was thinking of causes, like, DOT cancer, DOT HIV and that sort of thing. >>The main reason for applying for one would be to forward the use of the Internet in different languages and different cultures. I think that's a very valid and very important part of the Internet's use. And we've been discussing how that's been happening across the years, now. So, certainly, profit is important. The viability of a domain is important. But I think, for me, more importantly, is to promote use, especially in lesser used languages and cultures, and I think that a very important part for the Internet to play. >>The Internet is our current bookstore or library and you don't go into a library or bokstore that doesn't have categories. And I consider these top level domains to be the category that you're looking for, for information. The verticals. If you're looking for cars, then you go to DOT auto or DOT cars, etcetera. And I see it as a way to reduce the clutter, organize, and have our end-users find what they're looking for quickly and getting accurate information. Antony>>I wish that all people were reasonable. I wish that they thought logically. I wish that they would make clever decisions. But they don't do that and nor do they navigate in a way that you would wish them to. And I suspect that my colleagues here are not having a great deal of trouble with DOT coop or DOT travel, precisely because there's extremely few registrations in them and that might have something to do with the policies that are being put forward. People are not terribly rational and they will navigate as they will. It's part of our job to respond and not to dictate. Susanne>>Somebody mentioned the success or the failure of a TLD, but how do you really measure that? Because I think that for a lot of the very general and open TLD's. we see a large number of registrations. But that's simply because the right owners feel compelled to go out and register the domains in order to protect their name But they don't really register because they need the domain, but simply to protect their rights. Whereas for the very limited domains, like DOT museum or DOT arrow, you may not have so many registrations, but that's because only people that actually need the registrations will register. Chris>>I understand what you're saying, but--hold on a second. You've got your rights protected if you've got a trademark. The purpose of the trademark is so that if someone breeches it, you have protection. The method of protection is, you do something about it. But to seek to try--just because there's now a massive, greater things that can use your trademark, because now you can register domain names, whereas 20 years ago, you couldn't-- that's just a new thing that you have to deal with, isn't it? I mean, why do we have to make a systems that protects you when you're actually protected by having the trademark? J. Scott>>You have to build a system that protects me, because I represent 55 million users that come to my set a day and they don't like when a misspelling takes them to child pornography. They don't like it when they are asked to reaffirm their Yahoo mail account and their bank accounts are empty. They don't like it when they go to get their credit checked and they find out someone's bought a home. Chris>>None of that is an issue that's actually to do with the domain. J. Scott>>But they're using our domain names out of our famous trademarks to misdirect traffic for nefarious activities And it's not something that I'm making up. You can read about it in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the London papers. It happens to a segment of society that probably needs help the most.They;re the people who are unfamiliar with the Internet who have been given a computer by their children and told to do online banking and they find themselves in a morass of paperwork and lawsuits And so, we're looking out for the users. Chris>>The second question we're going to move onto is, what impact do new TLD's have on the Internet now and into the future? And, I believe there's a video. Roula Kanzotis>>New TLD's that are intuitive may make Internet searching easier and reduce the dependency on search engines. Dr. Spyros Maniatis>>We'll all go, in the beginning, to search engines until we get used to the new extensions and start using them as facilitators in a "Yellow Page" way of search. >>It would be very interesting if each family could have a web space from where they could buy and sell, communicate and interact. Susan>>Well, I do see a need for something to replace DOT com. When we roll out a new brand, we're frequently hunting for the DOT com. We can get it. Chris>>Anyone in the room got any thoughts about what would be a really good name for a new GTLD? There's one there. >>DOT Paris? Chris>>Okay. So, what would we call that at--okay, if everyone is going to clap every time someone says a name, we'll be here all day. So, that's a city name. Of course, it could be Paris, Texas. It doesn't necessarily have to be Paris, France. But, I'm assuming you mean Paris, France? Yes. Would you take registrations from Texas people, presumably? Yeah. Okay. All Paris' in the world together. Excellent. Excellent. Adrian>>Chris? Chris>> Yes? Adrian, hello. Adrian>>Adrian Kindress. I think DOT triple X would be a good one. Susanne>>I feel the consumer will be a bit confused if you have too many new extensions, especially generic names, like, if you want to communicate on nutrition and you want to communicate on value products, okay? You have DOT value, great. But then, someone is using organic and it has DOT organic and how is the consumer going to choose? If the consumer is typing "whateverDOTvalue", whateverDOTorganic", it's not the same. Chris>>But on that basis, you'd abolish at least 70% of the brands of yogurt. Because, I mean, the choice--it's impossible to know, to choose what yogurt to buy. There's so many of them. Isn't it the same thing? Consumers are confused all the time, aren't they? Susanne>>Probably. But I have the feeling-- Chris>>Isn't that how you guys make money? Susanne>>You have even more to choose from. If you have to choose the first part, before the DOT, and then the second part. You have 2 choices to make. Chris>>Okay. J. Scott. J. Scott>>I keep hearing claps and everything when somebody makes a dig at trademarks--unless it's your trademark. I mean, I've had registrees and registrars call me, furious, becuse when they were an absolute nobody, they really didn't care. But when, all of a sudden, when they had skin in the game and it's their consumer calling them because what they thought they were doing was updating an account and what they did was got rid of a domain name that was very valuable to them, and now, they've got to go through a court case to recover it-- I mean, trademarks are important for everyone and those of you that are thinking of starting new GTLD's, one day, you hope your trademark is the--to misuse a trademark--the Coca-Cola™ or Rolls Royce™--of trademarks. Chris>>Apparently, the estimate for the Fortune 500 companies is that they spend around half a million U.S. dollars a year on domain protection. That's not all of them. That's each. That's hugely low? Okay. Cool. So, you want to start with that? And then we'll see where we go? Antony>>Absolutely. I'd like to change the subject, because, although trademark concerns are interesting, especially for people who own brands, I really don't think they get to the point of what new GTLD's will do to the Internet in the future and what impact that can have. Chris>> Sure. Antony>>We heard that IDN's were brought up. I think that's an interesting case. Everything I know about the Internet says everyone in this room doesn't know anything. That, the only way you learn about what people want is by seeing what they do. And, so, to me, the biggest impact this set of TLD's could have is to give people a space to vote with their clicks, so to speak. John>>The domainers have learned to play the trademark game, too. During the launch of DOT eu, for the months leading up to that, the Benelux trademark office was clogged with trademark registration applications for every generic word under the sun--and including sun-- to the point where, I think we need to get back to looking at the law as a mechanism to remedy a harm. You have harmed me. I am going to seek a remedy for it. The way that law does not work is, I have a preemptive right. Yes, if I'm a mark owner, I do have to redress wrongs that have been done to me. But, simply because we have a technical system that allows you to assert prospective injury as a reason for constraining the operations of others, is a just not the way that law, in most countries has operated since Leviticus. Susanne>>Your comment before, about pre-rights enforcement makes me say, also, that we need to--or, I hope that new TLD owners would look very much into some efficient UDAP proceedings for the new top level domains, because this is essential if we're going to deal with all the conflicts that will necessarily follow from the new TLD's. And I say that, also even looking at the current UDAP proceedings, which, I think, have the problem that the trademark owner, right owner, will quite easily file a UDAP proceeding and also win it but the only cost is, actually, to rights owner and with the new development on pay-per-click portals and so on, infringers will, actually, register a lot of domains. They will make money off it until they are asked to deliver it back by the UDAP proceedings but it will not have cost them anything. They will have made money in the meantime and the only cost is actually on the trademark owner. So, I would like to see, also, a reform on the UDAP area. John>>Somewhere around 65 to 80% of the DOT biz, DOT proceedings were found in favor of the domain name registrant because so many trademark owners assert preemptive global rights in generic words that people are using generically. With the large scale PPC participants, one of the things that we have now, operating at the application level, is that you can eliminate all of those infringing domain names tomorrow, but the Internet service providers-- at least in the United States--if someone is a Time-Warner™ subscriber or an AOL™ subscriber, or a Verizon™ subscriber--all of the non-existent domain names resolve to parked pages, anyway. So that you could say some cyber-squatter has 100 infringing domain names, but if he doesn't have them, then, effectively, Verizon has all of them Verizon has every geometric possibility of your trademark resolving to a parked page. Kurt Pritz>>Certainly, there can't be innovation without some risk and some risk of failure. So, that needs to be taken into account. Will all the risk be mitigated? No. But there's this registry fail-over program, for one, that provides for escrow of data, mechanisms in agreements, in order to transport data over to a succeeding registry and mechanisms for awarding that data. So, that's been anticipated to a certain extent, but the risk is real. >>If we come to the recognition that we first need to address whom we are trying to serve, it then makes it a lot clearer whether the rounds of GTLD's will become successful, how and what needs to be done. The challenge we face ahead of us is the following--especially when we factor it in from an internationalization prospective--We all know there is an after-market in the domain name reselling business. I mean, only a couple of days ago, there were the auctions for domain names taking place just before the ICANN meeting was taking place. And to the concern of many--I'm sure, once they find out--there were certain names that were still available for people to go and buy. For example, you had a DOT Israel that was being auctioned and you also had a DOT Koran. Chris>>DOT com. >>and DOT com. Israel DOT com. Yes. Now, these exist in the possession of the general public. They are possessions and, you know, when they were bought, when they were sold, originally, they were probably worth about $6 bucks. I can tell you from what I was informed that Koran DOT com--the bid came to about $400 thousand, didn't reach half a million-- the asking price--and did not sell. And it had no specification on the potential use. Multiply that by a thousand potential GTLD's. Why this needs to be discussed on a very important level, is, we go back to the issue of policy making. Chris>>A slightly more upbeat question, after what are the risks. What is the biggest opportunity and who's going to apply and who should apply? Which we kind of talked about a little bit, as well, already. So, hit the button. Roula>>Many members of ICANN's current communities will apply. But I'd like to see newcomers to the process. Plus, some big brand owners doing exciting things as well as communities of interest from the developing world. Dr. Maniatis>>Speculators, domainers, navel gazers, those who suffer from delusions of grandeur, those who came second in the past and so on, will be amongst those who will apply first. At the same time, from a commercial perspective, there's a chance for trademark owners to experience the Internet as a positive, rather than a negative, challenge. And, more importantly, from a social perspective, there's a chance for communities of interest that commands respect from the societies from which they emanate, to set a signpost in the world wide web. Chris>>So, all you navel gazers out there. Let's look, first of all, at all the opportunities. What do we think is the biggest opportunity? >>I haven't heard much discussion about new business models, but there will be new business models coming. I predict, for instance, a free GTLD. And I think that they may be more respected, but, also, business-wise, different models coming out. So, more of the business community at risk. >>Because I think it's a virtual certainty that the user confusion and frustration will serve to enrich and extend the power of one of the world's most successful and dominant companies. And it's not the company you're all thinking of. Consider this example. I'm looking for a family-friendly hotel experience, in Berlin, this summer. So, under the new GTLD scheme, here, would I go to DOT travel or would I go to DOT com? Or would I go to DOT Berlin? Well, it's family-friendly, maybe I go to DOT fam. And, after trying each of those 4 sites, and their various directories, I'll have absolutely no certainty that I'm looking at all the possibilities. As a very frustrated consumer, I will be driven straight to the search engines. I'll need to go to a search engine that's big enough to handle a billion or so names, covering billions of pages of content, with a lickety-split fast reply and it needs to be free. So it has to be supported by ads. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I will be driven to the search engines. Cal>>I am very concerned about ICANN, with Mission Creep, becoming a consumer protection organization. And also, at the same time, becoming an organization that protects the interests of incumbents. For example, I have my own top level domain. It happens to be not part of the ICANN NTIA root zone. But it works by public key cryptography. You buy a name for lifetime. You pay for services. There's no Whois, no Whois possible. Registrations are anonymous. That's a new business model. Will it ever be accepted by ICANN? I doubt it. But the point I'm saying here, is, why are we so afraid of letting a thousand new ideas bloom? Customers were confused when the telephone came along. They saw this dial with numbers on it. Let's accept people learning. Let's give people the opportunity to learn. Let's let new innovations bloom, and not seal the domain name space down. Now, I've computed how many top level domains we can have. It's a number of approximately 100 digits. That's more than the number of electrons in the universe. We should be able to have 10 thousand new ones a year. Not a number of thousand, max. Old ones will fade. People will walk away from bad ideas. Let's let the consumer choose with his feet rather than having a paternalistic ICANN that tells the consumer what should be. Thank you. Chris>>Thanks, Cal. Susan>>So, we will look at all of these. We'll review them, decide-- We'll try to pick the best ones. But we're not going to register in all of them. We'll take the rest that's not registering and then enforce. That's because, otherwise, we're going to be registering millions of domain names in the scenarios that I hear today. So we won't be there as the major brand owner to provide the income in the sunrise period. Chris>>You could, of course, have solved that whole problem if you had registered DOT eBay and blitzed everything else off, instead of putting everything in eBay. You still have to protect yourself. Sure. But then, that's life. You have to do that with books. You have to do that with everything. Every time someone breeches your trademark, you have to do that. Chris>>Yes, but that's because the world's changed. Yes? Susanne>>It's why we need ICANN's help at this moment because we cannot just say, "We will enforce." Of course, it's what we will do if nothing is done at the beginning, but it's ICANN has, really, the power to say, "Okay, we will set up some requirement." Or, "You need criteria along with your new TLD's." So, it's why this is important. >>I agree, it's fascinating to experiment and open. However, if we open the Pandora box, and we go to 10 thousand, 100 thousand, a million-- then, form the architectural point of view--you remember the success of ... and the DNS system, being a hierarchical and distributed system? Here, what you are going to have-- it's a flat system. One root and a million names. Well, fine. It's another model. But beware. In 10 years, if we are not going to say, "Well, we really didn't learn the lesson when we had the DNS." Because you are losing the DNS' hierarchy And that, from an engineering point of view, has to be weighted. Thank you. >>... would be our time for the community to understand that the Internet evolves, maybe, a bit faster than various interest groups, I think, does. I have a really hard time understanding--and even believing, really--that interest groups are still fighting against the same issues. Chris>>To move on to the next bit. There will be more time for questions, but, move on to the next section which is a presentation by Kurt Pritz of the current status of the implementation plan. And because that's going to take a little while, may I ask you all to thank our panelists for their time today, Kurt>>So, this is a process flow of the very high level process flow of the application procedure. Can you just go back one, please. So, essentially, you apply and then there's an evaluation process. It's a 4-step process. And then, after that, if there are no complexities, the TLD is approved. However, like I said, there's a provision to resolve disputes if there's a formal objection that's raised to a TLD beef. Plus, it's--certain aspects of it are controversial. And there's also a provision to resolve disputes arising out of string contention. That is where 2 or more of the applications are identical or they're very, very, VERY similar. This is a depiction of the application phase. There's some detail here you may or may not be able to read. But this is--or is going to be posted shortly--on the website. So, the application period is very straightforward. It opens and it closes. The information having to do with specific applications, which strings are applied for and the details, won't be posted publicly until the application period is closed. The evaluators will ask the applicant to clarify certain aspects of the application to determine whether or not they actually go ahead and meet the criteria. So, it's sort of an appeal from failing the first inquiry. Benny>>Interesting discussion, but we seem to be forgetting what has driven a lot of the Internet, is the affordability and the flexibility to let it try to do things. We've worked with a very small set and a lot of constraints, and guess what? Some of them have really not worked out. But, if we're really trying to look at what can happen, maybe we have to expect that the results will be proportional with how affordable it is. So, people with really neat ideas, but maybe not a lot of money, can go out and try these. Now, I know it makes the IP lawyers shudder, but that's the reality of what the Internet has been. And we've been trying to pick winners and constrain it in about 80 different ways to make a whole bunch of people happy. If you want the success of what the Internet does, then you have to let the Internet do what it does. Which means, you make it available and you let people play with it. Chris>>Thanks, Benny. We have--Kyra? Right here. Bertrand>>This is Bertrand LaChapelle. First point, in relation to what was said earlier about what happens when a TLD manager disappears and so on. I am incredibly surprised and I must say, it is a bit saddening.that with all the speeches that we have about the main mission of ICANN as ensuring the stability and security of the Internet, the unruly proliferation of new TLD's is one of the major threats in terms of stability because of the very comment that was made before. Millions of people are going to register their domain name, build their business on this. And you really believe it is the best service we can make to the security and stability of the Internet, to allow the framework to have some that fail, some that don't fail? I don't believe so.That's the first point. The second point is that there is a great capacity to make distinctions between different types of TLD's and I'm afraid that, at the moment, the framework is, again, trying to find a one--size-fit-all procedure for introducing all types of TLD's. And there's no reason, really, to do this. And the last point is, in all the discussions that emerged yesterday, in the GAG GNSO discussions and earlier, there is an obvious category that is emerging--or 2, actually--which are GEO TLD's. That includes country names, actually, because ID and CC, these are country names and are GEO TLD's. Cities, regions. And there's the other dimension, which is linguistic and cultural TLD's. And many of the delicate religion issues can be solved probably by addressing it as a category of cultural, linguistic TLD's. And I would suggest that we explore the benefits and the social utility of those 2 categories as a special case. Your comments and reactions are welcome. participate@icann.org