Rejection of dot-jobs domains for non-company names

["Don Firth - JobsInLogistics.com" <don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NEWJILlogo300x60

July 13, 2010

 

Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman
Members of the Board of Directors
International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601  USA

 


RE: Employ Media sTLD Charter Amendment

Dear Chairman Dengate Thrush and Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of JobsInLogistics.com 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 concern is for the job board industry as well as companies
being mislead into using sites that have no credentials, but very attractive
sounding names to market their services. 

For 10 years JobsInLogistics.com has been the leading job board for the
logistics industry. As such we have more than half a million registered
logistics candidates. Creating a site listed as Logistics.jobs, which will
have little or no targeted candidates, will affect our business and waste
many companies' advertising dollars.  In turn this will devalue the use of
all job boards as it will give the industry a bad name. It is bordering on
illegal to create a monopolistic use of the dot-jobs names to benefit a
single organization so that it can alone compete unfairly against
established job boards, many of which have spent many years building up
successful services for their clients. Accordingly, we recommend that Icann
rejects this 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. They have, in every respect, acted as "the Sources of
Success," the trademark of the International Association of Employment Web
Sites (http://www.employmentwebsites.org), their only industry trade
association.

This community is 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 (e.g.
logistics.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. 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,

 

Don

 

Don Firth

President / CEO

JobsInLogistics.com

(305) 956-2228

don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx