Recommend Against PDP to Create Special Privileges for Red Cross groups, Olympic Committees and IGO's (global exclusive licensing rights to words exist no where in law, ICANN shouldn't create such an expansive new right for tlds)

[Robin Gross <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As there are already robust mechanisms in place in existing ICANN new gtld 
policy to protect these interests, there should be no new ICANN Policy 
Development Process (PDP) at this time to create new privileges for the Red 
Cross groups, Olympic Committees, nor other Inter-Governmental Organizations 
(IGO's).  

Most notably, these groups have not shown why the existing mechanisms baked 
into ICANN new gtld policy are insufficient to protect their legitimate 
interests.  Their main argument is that they don't want to pay to exercise 
their rights and file objections should anyone actually put down the $185,000 
filing fee to apply for a tld these groups are exclusively entitled to.  No 
organization anywhere wants to pay filing fees or consultant fees to protect 
their interests, so these groups are in no way unique with that rationale for 
their request.  The first round of applications demonstrated the fears of abuse 
of these groups' rights to be entirely overblown and unsubstantiated as no 
applications contained words claimed to be the property of these groups.  

Creating special privileges for these groups at the second-level represents a 
significant departure from previous longstanding ICANN policy and should not be 
done without giving serious consideration to the implications of such a 
dramatic shift in burden and responsibility for the content of domain names 
onto third parties.  Such a policy would undermine an open Internet and create 
rights that exist no where in law.  No special rights to second-level domains 
should be undertaken by a PDP at this time.  Mechanisms such as the UDRP, the 
URS, the Trademark Clearinghouse, etc. already provide robust tools to rights 
owners to protect their legitimate rights.

What these groups are really asking ICANN for are special privileges that do 
not exist anywhere in actual law.  Numerous organizations around the world 
legally use the mark "olympic", "red cross", and names of other IGO's in the 
course of their operation without any violation of these groups' rights.  One 
of the reasons is because these rights are, indeed, not exclusive; and most 
often are not global in their reach, nor do they extend to preventing others 
who use the marks in ways that do not cause confusion among consumers, such as 
for criticism or to provide entirely unrelated goods or services.   Others have 
made the important distinction and point that rights to olympic symbols are not 
the same as rights to words.  In 2007, the GNSO voted against special 
protections for IGO's, and various reserved names working groups and the like 
over the last 7-8 years have rejected doing exactly what these groups now ask 
for (again).

So the proposed creation of worldwide exclusive licensing rights to certain 
words in domain names for these select groups is a MAJOR expansion of existing 
legal rights that has not been thoroughly considered by those on the verge of 
granting the request and creating those unprecedented rights for online speech.

Furthermore, there are far more important and pressing issues for scarce ICANN 
energy and resources to be devoted to than creating special privileges for 
arbitrary, albeit politically-connected, fundraising interests.

For the reasons provided above, I recommend against the creation of a PDP to 
consider further privileges for any of these groups at this time.

Thank you,
Robin Gross
IP Justice