RE: Employ Media sTLD Charter Amendment Represents Unfair Competition and Poses Monopoly Threat to Job Recruiters

["Deborah Lannon" <dlannon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

RE: Employ Media sTLD Charter Amendment

Dear Chairman Dengate Thrush and Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of The Marketing Communications Collaborative, a
small executive search firm based in Framingham, MA 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. My
organization would be directly and adversely affected by this request and
therefore opposes the unilateral expansion of the .jobs charter to encompass
regional and industry-specific second-level registrations. 

Since 1993, the community of online employment service companies--job
boards, associations, staffing firms, newspapers and other publications that
operate job posting and/or resume search databases--has effectively served
working men and women and employers worldwide. These same organizations have
also significantly improved the career prospects of veterans, minorities,
disadvantaged persons and those affected by natural disasters such as
Hurricane Katrina. 

The separate and distinct communities of employers, staffing agencies, third
party recruiters, job boards, and even career services are now threatened by
the proposed expansion of the .jobs top level domain (TLD). The charter
holder is attempting to extend the application of the TLD from its approved
community--direct employers--into the online employment services community
by introducing geocentric (i.e., Atlanta.jobs, NewYork.jobs, Athens.jobs)
and occupation specific (i..e, nurse.jobs, salesperson.jobs,
systemsanalyst.jobs) web sites. It now has a proposal to implement this plan
before the governing board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names &
Numbers (ICANN).

This proposal violates both the spirit and the letter of the charter
holder's contract with ICANN, and opens the door to a monopolization of the
recruitment process. No less important, it will grievously harm the online
employment services community and therefore my organization by confusing the
job seekers and employers who have long been the customers of the community.


Sincerely,
Deborah Bai Lannon, Principal

The Marketing Communications Collaborative

Executive Search in Marketing, Communications and Investor Relations
508-877-7645 (Office)   508-783-9543 (Cell)     Mon-Fri  8:30am - 8pm  EST

www.marcomcollab.com

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/deborah-bai-lannon/1/796/7a