[gnso-consumercci-dt] Out of scope trust and choice issues

[Evan Leibovitch <evan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

I have been generally participating in this group from afar. I have a very
deep interest in consumer (and by that I mean expressly non-registrant end
user) choice and trust, but as expressed in the last call my concerns are
with a bigger picture than the scope of this WG.

Once the registrant has decided which domain name(s) to use, there is no
more ICANN-managed choice to the end user. They either use that domain to
access the registrant's information or they don't. To the end user, the
choice is not "which TLD?" or "which registrar?" so much as "do I use a
human-parsable URL to access the provider or something else".

Innovative alternatives to direct end user typing/recollection of a
provider's domain name are many, and include:

   - URL shortening services
   - Search engines of increasing sophistication
   - Social networking corporate landing pages
   - QR codes in printed materials

(And, yes, it is true that these methods all ultimately resolve using the
DNS. However, since their user interface is controlled elsewhere, these
services could use random-string -- or too-long-to-type, or third-level
domain names, etc -- URLs, and could all be easily accommodated by existing
TLDs without requiring expansion.)

While these big-picture threats are not directly germane to the rationale
or measure of the new gTLD program, they are certainly relevant to the
overall success of the gTLD expansion program and to ICANN's sustaining
popular and political support. For example, ICANN has within its authority
the ability to provide equivalents of Twitter's "Verified
Accounts<http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/119135-about-verified-accounts>"
program. In the absence of such programs, user trust in all TLDs has the
potential to diminish -- perhaps dramatically so -- compared to other
innovative end-user means of accessing Internet-based content and services.

While I fully understand that the scope of the Board request excludes such
external factors and threats, I personally believe that without considering
them, the exercise at hand is of extremely limited value (certainly from
the PoV of the non-registrant end-user which ALAC is charged to represent).

I would ask, then, that the report to the Board of this WG indicate that
this task is incomplete -- that for ICANN to get a more realistic and
complete picture of consumer choice and trust requires an examination of
not only the choices within ICANN, but indeed consideration of ICANN's
methods of accessing Internet content as related to alternative methods.
This WG should urge the Board to continue the examination of this issue,
but within a much broader scope than is being considered here.

Thank you.

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56