Supplemental Comments of the Association of National Advertisers to the New gTLD Program and Process

["Hines, John L." <JHines@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Mr. Twomey:
We represent the Association of National Advertisers.  Mr. Jaffe asked me to 
forward the  letter below. 
Very truly yours,
John L. Hines, Jr.


John L. Hines, Jr.
312-207-3876
jhines@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Reed SmithLLP
10 South Wacker
Chicago, Illinois  60606
Phone: 312-207-3876
Fax: 312-207-6400

Dear Mr. Twomey:
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) previously filed comments in 
opposition to ICANN's proposal to open the gTLD space (ANA letter (12/15/08), 
available at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-guide/mail2.html).   As you 
know, the ANA leads the marketing community by providing its members insights, 
collaboration and advocacy.  ANA's membership includes 400 companies with 9,000 
brands that collectively spend over $100 billion in marketing, communications 
and advertising. ANA strives to communicate marketing best practices, lead 
industry initiatives, influence industry practices, manage industry affairs and 
advance, promote and protect all advertisers and marketers.   

The ANA has reviewed the Second Draft Guidebook and Dennis Carlton's 
submissions and would like to express its continued strong reservations and 
concern about the proposal.  We repeat our assertion that implementing this 
proposal is certainly premature and highly likely to be counterproductive for 
the reasons stated in our previous letter.   

As we noted, the ANA perceives the potential harm of implementing the proposal 
as vastly outweighing any conceivable gain.  We believe the contemplated 
expansion of the top level domain space will greatly increase the costs of 
brand management and will create new opportunities for others to infringe, 
phish and engage in other deceptive practices. A multitude of new domain 
operators will be selling huge numbers of second level domains to the public 
worldwide. These second level domains, due to their proliferation, will be even 
more vulnerable to the same kinds of phishers, squatters and other fraudulent 
operators who currently abuse the existing smaller gTLD system.  This, we 
believe, will result in extensive consumer confusion in the marketplace.  Brand 
owners will find themselves forced to pay dramatically more to maintain their 
existing brand equity or simply abandon their current levels of brand hygiene 
and enforcement activities-and assume more risk.  ANA believes the potential 
costs of the new gTLD program far outweigh any perceived benefits to business 
or the general public.  

We of course will look forward to reviewing the report on trademarks from the 
Implementation Recommendation Team due later this month.  Additionally, ICANN 
must justify the need for this program in the face of its potential for harm. 
ICANN has yet to provide any meaningful data on consumer demand/need or offer a 
satisfactory consideration of the potential exposures to consumers and brand 
owners that could arise from the program's implementation.  Rather than rely on 
what appears to be self-serving "expert testimony" in the form of Professor 
Carlton's reports, we would urge ICANN to commission and publish an in depth 
and neutral scholarly analysis accompanied by thorough fact finding on all the 
key issues.  Anything less is inadequate to justify an undertaking so massively 
transformational to the Internet and world commerce-and one that presents such 
dramatic exposures to consumers and brand owners.
 Although we continue to oppose this initiative, we also ask ICANN to strongly 
consider measures to reduce the burden on trademark holders-and we again ask 
ICANN to note the five items that we highlighted at the end of our previous 
letter.
We appreciate the opportunity to comment and look forward to further discussion 
with ICANN in regard to this important matter in the future.

Daniel L. Jaffe 

Executive Vice President, Government Relations 
Association of National Advertisers  
1120 20th Street, NW, Suite 520-South 
Washington, DC  20036 
 
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