RE: Proposed amendment to .jobs charter

[Lance Haun <lancehaun@xxxxxxxxx>]

*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*

Dear Chairman Denegate Thrush and Members of the Board of Directors,

I would strongly recommend that ICANN reject the proposed amendment offered
by Employ Media and approved by SHRM. Neither one of these organizations is
looking out for the best interest of job seekers with this amendment.

The original .jobs charter was intended to help clarify job seeking for
candidates by designating employer only sites with the .jobs TLD. The
proposed amendment is a direct reversal of that clarity. It not only hurts
the very population it hopes to help, it also hurts Employ Media's current
customer significantly by diluting the .jobs TLD. It's the problem with the
.com job boards that the .jobs TLD was supposed to fix.

On the face, this looks like a cash grab by Employ Media with the collusion
with the committee in charge at SHRM. .jobs has been a commercial failure
and Employ Media is doing their best to get more money out of the deal
through monopolistic expansion of the .jobs domain. And in approving the
measure, SHRM has protected the anonymity of committee members so that none
would be held accountable for the decision that they made on behalf of all
250,000+ members of the association.

These backroom deals are not new and of no surprise to me personally. SHRM
has been the beneficiary of thousands of dollars of advertising from Employ
Media as I've seen full page spreads for .jobs in their publications as well
as at their conferences. SHRM management has been less than impartial in the
whole matter. While I would expect that Employ Media would be looking out
for their bottom live and trying to expand .jobs as much as possible, SHRM
has been as cooperative as they could be in helping .jobs to be a successful
commercial venture rather than simply a benefit to their members and job
seekers.

I have no personal interest in a job board and my employer, ERE Media, only
runs a small board for recruiters and it isn't our primary mode of business.
My biggest issue is that I've talked to several hundred job seekers who are
out of work and this amendment does nothing to help them out. In fact, there
is quite possibly more harm than good when you consider that many of these
new boards will simply have duplicates of jobs that are already advertised
elsewhere. Job seekers don't need more duplicate jobs when they are looking
for work.

SHRM has abdicated their responsibility as an impartial body on this matter.
It is my hope that ICANN will look at the broader picture, the intent of the
original charter and the actions of both SHRM and Employ Media and reject
this amendment. It would be preferable that the original charter for the
.jobs TLD remain intact or that the TLD be eliminated completely rather than
the expansion of .jobs continue as planned.

Best regards,

Lance Haun
lancehaun@xxxxxxxxx
(503) 840-8832