"Closed Generic" gTLD Applications

[Andrew Watson <awatson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

3rd March 2013

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to register my very strong objections to proposals to give
individual companies exclusive control over generic top-level domains.

I am writing to you in a personal capacity, and not as a representative of
any organisation. I am a long-time Internet user. I was responsible for
initiating and managing my then-employer's connection to the Internet in
1990, almost as soon as commercial internet services became available in
the UK. Prior to that, I had been an internet user in academia and at
previous employers.

Openness and equal access are the very foundations on which the internet is
built, and one of the primary reasons for its success. To give an
individual organisation exclusive control over a domain called .bank or
.food (to pick two examples from the list of applications that you've
received) would be, in effect, to give those companies exclusive control
over that concept or idea.

Leaving aside any (likely) law-suits for anti-competitive behaviour in the
UK, Europe and the USA, to do this would run counter to the spirit in which
the internet was founded and developed.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Watson
72 Kimberley Road
Cambridge CB4 1HJ