Some comments

["Michele Neylon :: Blacknight" <michele@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Personally I welcome the advent of new gTLDs as many of the new TLDs will be 
able to serve specific cultural and social interest groups that cannot be 
served via any of the existing gTLDs or ccTLDs.

However I do have reservations with regard to pricing.

If there are no price caps on the new TLDs then it is only natural to assume 
that existing registry operators will want equitable treatment. This can and 
most likely will have a negative impact on both end users and registrars. 

While it is obviously in ICANN's interest to not attract spurious applications 
for new gTLDs setting a high monetary barrier is not in the best interests of 
end users. Ultimately ICANN's role should be to aid end users and not be purely 
self-serving ie. reducing its own workload.

Either the application and annual fees should be revised downward or the 
applications should be categorised.

It is apparent to me at least that not all applications are equal in terms of 
their financial, social and political motives and support.

A TLD that is aimed at enabling members of a specific cultural / linguistic 
community to have their own namespace should be encouraged, yet the financial 
obstacles that are being put in the way of applicants are disproportionately 
large.

While I can appreciate that  trademark holders may  have legitimate concerns 
about the introduction of new TLDs those concerns from small, specific 
usergroups should not outweigh the legitimate requests of end users. 

On more technical areas of implementation 

Other comments have mentioned whois. 

At present WHOIS is essentially broken. The rights of individuals to protect 
their privacy needs to be addressed and any registry operator who proposes a 
TLD that will differentiate between private and corporate registrations (as is 
the case with .tel and a lot of ccTLDs) should be encouraged not hampered.

Regards

Michele (posting in semi-personal capacity)


--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection
http://www.blacknight.com/
http://blog.blacknight.com/
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