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Accountability for Enforcing Rules for Coming Branded TLDs to Be 'Bottom Up'

Warren's Washington Internet Daily

SAN FRANCISCO -- Prominent players in domain-name policy debated the absence of formal ICANN mechanisms for holding the sponsors of impending new branded top-level domains (TLDs) to promises about the standards for registering specific sites in them. From the audience at the .Nxt conference late Thursday, Steve DelBianco, the executive director of NetChoice, challenged speakers promoting the new domains as benefiting the credibility and reliability of Web information about how a sponsor of such a group, including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund seeking to run .eco, will be held accountable for the way they uphold stated principles for registrations.

"Centralized enforcement ... is antithetical to the ICANN model," replied Elliot Noss, CEO of registrar Tucows. The set-up for the wide-open TLD category coming to the Web next year envisions "bottom-up enforcement," he said. Co-founder Jacob Malthouse of Big Room --organizing the Greenpeace .eco bid against would-be competitors and in parallel with .green efforts -- said his effort created a council of 13 organizations two years ago to enforce its standards. A "coal.eco" wouldn't be allowed, because it would be confusing, he said. .Eco "is for the sustainability community," Malthouse said. Real-estate industry players involved in a bid for .mls, as in "multiple listing service," "will kick our board out" if it doesn't stick to its promises, said organizer Brian Larson, the president of Larson/Sabotka Business Advisors.

"The market determined" that "there shouldn't be any requirements" imposed on sponsors by ICANN, said Peter Dengate Thrush from the audience. He was ICANN chairman until June. The accountability framework for sponsored top-level domains "is the wrong model," said Dengate Thrush, now chairman of Minds + Machines, a consultant on TLDs.

The new category of TLDs will give Internet users "a clear, consistent way" to find information about subjects such as sustainability in the face of the proliferation of sites from content farms and other efforts to game Google search results, Malthouse said. Dot-com is "a library without a Dewey Decimal System," he said. With .mls, the real-estate industry "can recover some of what we lost when we allowed 'MLS' to become generic," opening to any registrant the use of specific domain names including the initials, Larson said.

"MLS" is a trademark in Canada, Larson said, so his group wouldn't allow site-name registrations there without permission. Malthouse solicited advice from the International Trademark Association and other experts about best practices for protecting marks.

The new domains won't be a sure thing, speakers said. "The people that think they're going to be the dot-com killer are probably crazy," Larson said. Noss said "most TLDs in the dot-whatever space will be unsuccessful." He said creating hits will require innovation, like .mls names lasting only the length of a property listing or a .vip domain that imposes premium prices for a limited number of names and gives the first few to superstars at no charge. -- Louis Trager