[alac] Comment on new gTLDs TOR
As Bret notes on-blog, ICANN is taking a first round of public comments on its new gTLDs Issues Report and Terms of Reference through Friday. <http://icann.org/announcements/announcement1-28jul06.htm>. It would be great to post that to icannalac.org and invite people to send their comments. ALAC might also consider at what point we as a committee want to weigh in. I intend to file personal comments to newgtlds-comments@xxxxxxxxxx If anyone wants to join me, here's the basic substance: I object to the TOR 2.15 recommendation: "Applicants must offer a clearly differentiated domain name space with respect to defining the purpose of the application. " I believe this requirement conflicts with several of ICANN's core values, most particularly those of reliance on the market (5), competition (6), and minimization of interference (2). "Differentiation" is a barrier to competition in the market, as the essence of differentiation is to make TLDs less substitutable. Forcing new registry applicants to differentiate their offerings from those of existing registries expands the monopolies of existing registries (which start with a monopoly over the particular strings they run). ICANN's role is not the apportionment of monopoly rents to a few favored database-maintainers. ICANN cannot simultaneously reject new applications that could substitute for existing TLD strings and claim to rely on competition to regulate the behavior of gTLD registries. Since ICANN is ill-suited to regulate registries (as a matter of structure, antitrust law, and history, as demonstrated with the .com reissue), it should enable a robust market to "regulate" them by means of real, direct competition. If a potential entrant believes it can offer a similar (undifferentiated or generic) service more attractively than an existing registry, it should be permitted to do so. Competitors offering similar strings will compete on other characteristics (price, service, ancillary offerings) that give the consuming public real options, enabling the public to choose those that deliver the best value. While it might be argued that differentiated TLDs offer competition for the market, rather than in it, it is not ICANN's role to choose among flavors of competition. That choice should be left to the market actors and their experimentation. Some experiments may fail, while other may succeed at serving popular demand beyond the imaginings fo any central planner. Of course ICANN should be looking for interests the market may fail to address, but those failures are likely to be far fewer than the failures of over-regulation that are evident in the call for "differentiation." --Wendy speaking individually -- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org
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