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Username: dot-travel
Date/Time: Sun, November 12, 2000 at 11:17 PM GMT
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Subject: Dot-Travel Team Responds to Evaluation Committee Report

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        The ICANN Board Should Disregard the Evaluation Committee's Negative Recommendation on IATA's Proposal for ".travel"

The ICANN Board should accord no weight whatsoever to the recommendation of the ICANN Evaluation Committee ("Committee") in its November 10, 2000 Report ("Report") against selection of the proposal by the International Air Transport Association ("IATA") for the creation of a ".travel" TLD.  In making its negative recommendation, the Committee, among other things:

Ø Completely defied the Committee's own statement that it would not make recommendations whether to accept or reject specific proposals. 

Ø Disregarded other language in the Report that favored the adoption of the IATA proposal.

Ø Gave no credit whatsoever to the strong recommendation for IATA's proposal by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and others.

Ø Based its negative recommendation on a "criterion" -- "representativeness" - that 1) was not included in the nine criteria that ICANN announced on August 15, 2000 it would apply in selecting the new TLDs, 2) is inherently vague and ambiguous, and 3) was applied by the Committee in a discriminatory manner. 

Ø Ignored overwhelming evidence that IATA is the most "representative" and best positioned entity for the global travel community.

Ø Erroneously concluded that there is no need for the ".travel" TLD proposed by IATA.


1. The Committee completely ignored its statement that it would not make recommendations for or against specific proposals.  In the "Preface" to the Report, the Committee declared that the "[R]eport does not set forth specific recommendations specifying which new TLD proposals should, in the opinion of the ICANN staff, be selected by the ICANN Board of Directors."   (Emphasis added.)   However, the Committee completely defied this statement in its treatment of the IATA ".travel" proposal.  In a section of the Report entitled "Recommendation," the Committee recommended against the IATA proposal based solely on the Committee's belief that IATA was not a "sufficiently representative sponsor[] to merit selection" of its proposed ".travel" TLD.  This was clearly a "specific recommendation" which, by being included in the Committee's Report, placed it in a position of contradicting its own stated policy.  (The Committee inexplicably violated its own rule repeatedly with respect to many of the proposals, making negative recommendations to the ICANN Board with respect to some proposals, and positive recommendations with respect to others.)  Accordingly, the recommendation against IATA's proposal should be stricken from the Report and ignored by the ICANN Board.

2. The Committee disregarded other language in the Report that favored the adoption of the IATA proposal. The Committee's recommendation against the IATA proposal for ".travel" is contrary to other language in the Report, in which the Committee stated:  "Overall, this application could lead to a successful new TLD given its limited scope and focus."  (Emphasis added.)  Given this positive and encouraging language in favor of the IATA proposal for ".travel," it was arbitrary and capricious for the Committee to nevertheless specifically recommend against selection of IATA's proposal. 

3. The Committee gave no credit whatsoever to the strong recommendation for IATA's proposal by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School ("Harvard Study") and others.    The Harvard Study placed IATA's proposal in a tie with one other applicant for first place.  IATA received 26 out of 27 possible points in its numerical ranking.  The Harvard Study went on to select IATA as one of only six applicants that it recommended be picked to launch a new TLD.  The Harvard study described the IATA proposal as "an interesting, focused proposal in an extremely thorough application package, that would offer an innovative combination of commercial and informational public services."  In recommending that the Board not adopt IATA's proposal, the Committee improperly and inexplicably ignored the strong recommendation and favorable findings of the Harvard Study.  Similarly, one of the most highly-respected independent voices in the travel and tourism community, the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), came out in strong support of the IATA ".travel" proposal. 

4. The Committee based its negative recommendation solely on a "criterion" -- "representativeness" - that 1) was not included among the nine criteria that ICANN announced on August 15, 2000 it would apply in selecting the new TLDs, 2) is inherently vague and ambiguous, and 3) was applied in a discriminatory manner.  In recommending that ICANN not proceed with IATA's proposal for ".travel," the Committee concluded that IATA's proposal was not sufficiently "representative" of the global the travel community.  To provide a basis for this conclusion, the Report (in several places) declares that "representativeness" is one of the specific criteria adopted by ICANN on August 15, 2000 for selecting the new TLDs.  This is simply wrong.  The nine criteria listed by ICANN on August 15, 2000 (www.icann.org/tld-criteria-15aug.00htm) are as follows: 1) "The need to maintain the Internet's stability"; 2) "The extent to which selection of the proposal would lead to an effective 'proof of concept' concerning the introduction of top-level domains in the future"; 3) "The enhancement of competition for registration services"; 4) "The enhancement of the utility of the DNS"; 5) "The extent to which the proposal would meet previously unmet types of needs"; 6) "The extent to which the proposal would enhance the diversity of the DNS and the registration services generally"; 7) "The evaluation of delegation of policy-formulation functions for special-purpose TLDs to appropriate organizations"; 8) "Appropriate protections of rights of others in connection with the operation of the TLD"; and 9) "The completeness of the proposals submitted and the extent to which they demonstrate realistic business, financial, technical, and operational plans and sound analysis of market needs."  There is no stated requirement of "representativeness."  The Report appears to confirm this because it repeatedly lists the nine criteria in tables, and there is of course no reference to "representativeness."  Nevertheless, in its treatment of IATA's proposal and a few others (.fin, .union, .health), the Report makes the affirmative statement that "representativeness" is one of the criteria listed by ICANN on August 15, 2000.  It was highly arbitrary and capricious for the Committee to recommend against the IATA proposal based on a criterion that, in fact, was not among the nine factors to be evaluated by the Committee.

Nor should there be a tenth criterion of "representativeness."  The term is too vague and ambiguous to provide an objective basis for determining whether a proposed TLD has merit.  The Committee appears to have construed this criterion to mean that IATA should not be allowed to sponsor ".travel" unless it has received unanimous support from every single entity in the travel community.  That is a ridiculous and absurd standard to apply.  In a free world there are always opportunities for dissention, just as there are opportunities for those who dissent to take their business to other TLDs.  IATA has repeatedly demonstrated that its proposal to sponsor the ".travel" TLD has diverse and far-reaching support among all sectors of the worldwide travel community.  To exclude IATA as the sponsor of a ".travel" TLD simply because some commenters have expressed disagreement, without placing those comments in a proper perspective, nor examining whether there is in fact any evidence to justify the stated concerns, exemplifies arbitrariness and capriciousness.

A prime example is the situation involving the Association of Retail Travel Agents ("ARTA").  ARTA is much smaller and lesser known than its competitor, the American Society of Travel Agents ("ASTA").  To those familiar with the travel industry, it is commonly known that ARTA and ASTA are rivals and, in the past, political disputes have prevented ASTA and ARTA from presenting a united front.  The Committee makes much of the fact that travel agents or their representatives made negative comments about IATA's proposal even after the overwhelming majority of travel agents - through ASTA and other trade associations - disclosed their support for IATA and its proposal.  But the Committee failed to recognize that one of the principal negative commenters was ARTA, which indeed submitted its negative comment only after it learned that ASTA would have a place on the ".travel" Advisory Board.  (Of course, ARTA never asked to have a seat on the Board.)  The point is that it is fair to assume that ARTA would have been opposed to anything that ASTA favored.  The Committee nonetheless exploited this internecine strife among travel agent trade associations by citing it as proof that IATA did not represent the entire global travel community.  This was at best naïve and imposes an impossible, unfair and discriminatory burden on IATA.  IATA and its proposal are fully representative of the world travel community.  Simply because there are some dissenting opinions does not mean that the consumers and merchants of travel goods and services throughout the world should be deprived of the benefits of a ".travel" TLD, particularly when the dissenters have failed to produce any objective or substantive evidence in support of their stated views.

Moreover, neither ARTA nor its members would be prejudiced in any manner by the creation of the ".travel" TLD to be sponsored by IATA.  While they are free to join the TLD, and even to participate in its governance, they will also retain the option of marketing and operating with .com names, or with any of the new gTLDs ICANN is expected to authorize in this proceeding.   IATA seeks no monopoly with respect to operation of a TLD focused on the travel industry; but only the ability to compete fairly and fully in this area by offering the market a new alternative that it is confident will prove to be attractive.

The Committee also has acted discriminatorily in applying this new criterion of "representativeness" to support its negative recommendation on IATA's proposal.  Other applicants have proposed TLDs that would apply certain restrictions on domain name registration, but have not demonstrated that all potential registrants support the registration.  The Committee gave strong recommendations for applications proposing .biz without requiring the applicants to show that the entire business community of the world supported the proposals and their applicants.  Similarly the Report makes favorable recommendations for .nom and .per without any evidence that these TLDs or their applicants are supported by a substantial majority of the individuals who would qualify for names under those TLDs. 

While the Committee did reference this tenth criterion of "representativeness" in connection with its consideration of .union and .health, It applied a much more lenient standard than that applied to IATA.  In finding that each "demonstrated that it is broadly representative of the affected segments of the relevant communities to be served by the TLD(s) it proposes," the Report glossed over the fact that union members posted comments in opposition to .union, and health professionals made comments against .health.  These types of comments were deemed fatal with regard to IATA's application, but insignificant in connection with the applications for .union and .health.  This is the very essence of discrimination. The Report similarly makes favorable recommendations for .geo and .dir with no reference to the negative comments posted against those proposals. 

In short, the Committee did not disqualify most applicants solely because their proposals lacked universal support in the community that would be affected by the new TLD.  Yet the Committee applied this impossible standard to IATA.  (To the extent the Committee treated the proposal for ".fin" the same as that for ".travel," this merely compounds, and does not excuse, the Committee's improper discriminatory treatment of the "representativeness" criterion.)  Given that essentially every proposed TLD has generated some critical comments, if the Committee uniformly applied the tenth criterion of "representativeness" without discrimination, every proposal would be disqualified.   

5. The Committee ignored overwhelming evidence that IATA is the most "representative" entity for the global travel community.  In order to have responsibly conducted its evaluation, the relevant question before the Committee should not have been whether there is any dissention at all towards IATA sponsoring a ".travel" TLD (an impossible test for any candidate to meet), but whether IATA is the best suited candidate to sponsor a TLD dedicated to the travel industry.  The Committee failed to ask (and failed to answer) the following question: Who is a better candidate to operate the ".travel" TLD?  Had the Committee asked this all-important question, the only possible answer would have been that there is no one better suited than IATA. 

IATA, a non-profit organization, has demonstrated to ICANN that it has critical and diverse experience in all sectors of the travel industry, and is certainly not limited to airline travel.  Its extensive mandate and scope of responsibilities extend well-beyond aviation.  Moreover, IATA's proposal has the support of the leading travel agency trade associations, including ASTA -- the world's largest association of travel professionals representing over 26,000 travel agent members (primarily in the US) -- and the Universal Federation of Travel Agents' Associations ("UFTAA") -- the largest federation of travel agent associations worldwide representing over 48,000 travel agent members in 97 countries.    Further, the comments supporting IATA's proposal have come from a widespread cross section of the global travel community, which demonstrates the universal appeal of the ".travel" TLD and the overwhelming satisfaction of the global travel community with IATA as the TLD sponsor.  More than 75 supporting comments were filed by, among others, travel agents, travel agent associations, airlines, airline associations, airline equipment manufacturers, airports and airport authorities, e-commerce firms, hotels, railways (including Amtrak and others), travel and tourism organizations, and individuals.  The World Tourism Organisation (WTO) one of the most highly-regarded independent voices in the world tourism field said, in its comment:  "IATA has served as a neutral, trusted intermediary for decades, enabling the travel industry to efficiently meet the needs of its customers."  The Pacific Asia Travel Association, which represents nearly 2,000 government tourist offices, destination promotion boards, airlines, cruise lines, hotels, tour operators, travel agencies and other travel-related businesses, expressed its support for IATA's proposal to sponsor a ".travel" TLD, as did the largest travel consumer organization in Europe, the Federation of Air Transport User Representatives in Europe ("FATURE").  AccesRail told ICANN that "AccesRail, a rail provider, can attest to IATA showing great initiative in the development of rail services in the domain of the GDS," and that "[b]ased on this past interaction and cooperation with IATA, AccesRail believes that IATA is well-position to sponsor the '.travel' TLD."  These are but a handful of examples of the broad support for ".travel" that the Evaluation Committee simply ignored.

Finally, IATA has clarified and confirmed its commitment to ensure that the critical policies governing the administration of the ".travel" TLD will be made by an Advisory Board that reflects the input and enfranchisement of all segments of the global travel industry.  Neither IATA nor the airlines will be able to control or dominate, or exercise veto power over, the Board's decisions.  Through the ".travel" Advisory Board, the ".travel" TLD and IATA's sponsorship of it will be de jure and de facto representative of the entire world travel industry.

6.  The Committee erroneously concluded that there is no need for the ".travel" TLD proposed by IATA. The Report also makes the illogical argument that because "the on-line travel sector has experienced [substantial] growth over the past several years," there is no proven need for a ".travel" TLD.  That is akin to saying there is no need for any new generic TLD whatsoever, because the demand for .com has been overwhelming.  This logic is contrary to the very purpose of the current application process, which is to expand the number of TLDs to meet growing demand.  The relevant question is not whether there is already an interest in using the Internet to market and purchase travel-related goods and services, but whether such transactions can be enhanced through the type of security provisions connected with IATA's proposal.  The TLD proposed by IATA will help provide consumers with confidence that they are dealing with a legitimate vendor of travel services, etc., and will enable an innovative concept to be proven which may well have future applicability to other sectors of the economy.  This can only lead to even greater use of the Internet for travel transactions, and is clearly an unmet need at this time.  In particular, authorization by ICANN of the ".travel" TLD will enhance the ability of smaller and new-entrant businesses to compete with established names in the ".com" world, and set the stage for travel-related e-commerce in the developing world to take hold. 

Indeed, the comments lodged in the ICANN Public Comment Forum reflect almost unanimous agreement on the need and utility of the ".travel" TLD.  Even most of those who questioned IATA's neutrality agreed that ".travel" was an idea whose time has come, which would promote competition and consumer confidence, and thus achieve significant public benefits, as did such neutral and independent authorities as the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) and the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). 

For all of the foregoing reasons, it is clear the Committee Report is fundamentally flawed in its analysis and recommendation regarding the IATA ".travel" proposal, and should be disregarded by the ICANN Board in its decision-making. 

Respectfully submitted,
The Dot-Travel Team
Geneva, Switzerland
     

 


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