ICANN Email Archives: [jobs-phased-allocation]

[Steve Rappaport <srappaport@xxxxxxxxxx>]

July 14, 2010

Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman
Members of the Board of Directors
International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601
USA

RE: Opposition to Employ Media Request to Change sTLD Charter

Dear Chairman Dengate Thrush and Members of the Board:

The Advertising Research Foundation is a membership organization of over 400 
leading companies drawn from five categories: major national advertisers (e.g. 
P&G, Unilever), media companies (Google, Time Warner, CBS), agencies (creative 
and media agencies), research companies (e.g. Nielsen, Kantar), and academia 
and associations. The ARF Career Center is the industry's preeminent job board 
exclusively for advertising, market and media research professionals.

I am writing on behalf of the The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) to urge 
you to reject Employ Media's request for authority to permit second level 
registration of strings that do not correspond to an employer's name in the 
.jobs sponsored top level domain. The ARF's Career Center job board would be 
directly and adversely affected, opposes the unilateral expansion of the .jobs 
charter to encompass regional and industry-specific second-level registrations.

Under the terms of ICANN's request for proposals for new sTLDs dated 15 
December 2003 (the "sTLD RFP"), applicants - including Employ Media - were 
required to demonstrate that the proposed sTLD addresses the needs and 
interests of a clearly defined community (the Sponsored TLD Community). In 
addition, applicants were required to demonstrate that the policy-formulation 
procedures for the sTLD operate primarily in the interests of the Sponsored TLD 
Community, and that the proposed sTLD enjoys broad based support of the 
Sponsored TLD Community.[1]

In its application, Employ Media proposed to serve the needs of human resources 
professionals responsible for human resources management in the corporate 
setting, and pledged to maintain .jobs as "a name space for employers."[2] The 
limited nature of the .jobs Sponsored Community is reflected by the applicant's 
commitment to limit registrations to the legal name of an employer and/or a 
name or abbreviation by which the employer is commonly known. According to the 
sTLD Application, "due to restrictions set forth in this proposal, a 
registration in the .jobs sTLD will be associated with an employer,"[3] and 
Employ Media committed to prohibit registration of occupational and industry, 
and geographic identifiers." The bottom line is that as proposed by Employ 
Media and approved by ICANN, the .jobs sTLD is intended to serve HR 
professionals and recruiting firms representing direct employers only, in each 
case by using the legal name of such employers as a registration at the second 
level. That community does not include online employment services providers 
like The ARF Career Center, nor did Employ Media demonstrate the support of 
online employment services providers in connection with the .jobs sTLD 
Application.

Employ Media's current request for authority to permit the "registration, use, 
and promotions of domains that are not the company names of the registrant"[5] 
would fundamentally alter the Sponsored Community for the .jobs sTLD and 
eliminate its pledge not to create second level registrations of regional and 
industry-specific job boards. Employ Media did not attempt to demonstrate the 
support of online employment services providers and their vendors, and in fact 
went out of its way to avoid contacting job board operators about the proposed 
expansion.[6] This is not surprising, given that Employ Media intends to add 
second level registrations that will be confusingly similar to established job 
boards.

As a material change to the .jobs Registry Agreement, this request must be 
reviewed by the ICANN Board based on applicable criteria from the sTLD RFP. 
Under those criteria, the request should be rejected as an attempt to "route 
around" the sponsorship eligibility requirements in the sTLD RFP and the 
protections built into the .jobs Registry Agreement to prevent "abusive 
registration activities and other activities that affect the legal rights of 
others."[7] Approval of the .jobs Phased Allocation Program would threaten the 
integrity of the RSEP process and undermine the credibility of ICANN's 
commitments in connection with the introduction of new top level domains in 
general.

Sincerely,

Stephen D. Rappaport
Knowledge Solutions Director
The Advertising Research Foundation
____________________

[1] 
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/new-stld-rfp/new-stld-application-parta-15dec03.htm
2 sTLD Applicant responses to request for further information, at page 48 of 
177 http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/stld-apps-19mar04/PostAppC.pdf
3 Id.
4 Id.
5 http://www.icann.org/en/registries/rsep/jobs-proposal-09jun10-en.pdf 
(hereinafter, Employ Media RSEP Request")
6 Id.
7 .jobs Registry Agreement, Appendix S Part VII: Other Provisions (2. 
"Community Value Criteria").
____________________