I strongly encourage ICANN to resolve the existing New.net .travel issue before proceeding with the Tralliance application process.
I strongly encourage ICANN to resolve the existing New.net .travel issue before proceeding with the Tralliance application process. One can argue both sides of this issue all day long, but a few things are very clear. A significant number of travel businesses have already been using the .travel tld and their sites are available to millions of internet users around the world. There is ZERO chance that these businesses will allow their .travel URLs to be stripped away from them without creating a mountain of litigation that will certainly derail or significantly delay the .travel TLD launch. Regardless of the uspto limitations on tlds, you can?t ignore the fact that many businesses have clearly established common law usage rights to their URL, particularly those who have named their business after their .travel URL and are operating their company as a legitimate travel business.
If ICANN wants to blow off New.net and ignore the fact the 175,000,000 users have already been able to use the .travel tld for years, I would suggest they move forward with a different tld for travel related sites. One that could be implemented without litigation. I am sure the internet public would be realize that hotels.tourism was a travel site and could handle typing the extra letter. One could easily argue that ?tourism? is better choice then ?travel? when the non English applications are considered anyway. Of course, Tralliance could still reserve all the popular names so they could line the pockets of those close to the process. Okay that is a cheap shot, but the notion the hundreds or thousands popular category and place names been fairly awarded, allocated of used by Tralliance is a JOKE. Has ICANN learned nothing from the fiasco of the .biz and .info tld launches? Why move forward without resolving this issue when it will certainly mean lengthy court battles? Why let Tralliance reserve popular names while denying them to legitimate travel businesses? Look at the most popular and useful .info names. After years of legal wrangling and administrative procedures a huge number of these names are still in the hands of people who obtained them illegally. No, this does not mean that we need to let the .travel name space fill up with cyber squatters. Tralliance talks a lot about their ability to make sure names will go to legitimate travel business. Great, publish those guidelines tomorrow, and then set up a process where legitimate travel businesses who are current using a .travel tld can apply to have their rights transferred to the new registry. I am sure most owners would be happy to pay a reasonable review fee, especially if it meant keeping the .travel tld reserved for legitimate travel businesses. Nor does it mean we should encourage or reward companies for setting up their own tld system. However, it seems reasonable the ICCANN should publish a list of the tlds they are planning to add in the future. It also seems reasonable as they add tlds to that list they would look at the magnitude of any potential conflicts, both from a technology and legal standpoint. Isn?t this just plain common sense? Again, I strongly encourage ICANN to resolve the existing New.net .travel issue before proceeding with the Tralliance application process.
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