Congressmen Quiz ICANN on New TLDs, Price Caps and Independence
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Congressional pressure mounts on ICANN.
Two republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have written a letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, quizzing him on plans to introduce new TLDs and the expiration of ICANN’s Joint Project Agreement, reports NextGov.
Lamar Smith and Howard Coble say they are worried that the rapid expansion of new top level domain names will have “serious negative consequences” for U.S. businesses and consumers.
They also address a major concern of domain registrants — the lack of price caps on new TLDs. According to the article, “Smith and Coble said the absence of price caps in the new registry deals could mean that legitimate businesses could be discriminated against and asked to pay a premium for each domain they register or renew.”
Smith and Coble also question the expiration of the JPA later this month:
Given the late consideration of intellectual property concerns and ICANN’s “less than stellar track record,” Smith and Coble said they have “serious misgivings” about the scheduled expiration later this month of a joint project agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN.
The two congressmen ask Beckstrom for answers to specific questions by September 22.
The article also mentions that eNom is a big proponent of new top level domains and the registrar thinks worries are overblown.
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Congressmen Quiz ICANN on New TLDs, Price Caps and Independence – http://tinyurl.com/ox8vpn
wow…republicans doing something right! Congrats!
[...] Congressmen Quiz ICANN on New TLDs, Price Caps and Independence Andrew Allemann [...]
ICANN started its policy development process for the introduction of new gTLDs back in 2005 and has still not published a fixed date for the application period – this is not exactly “rapid”, and the process was not in any way secret, either.
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Johannes – they’re referring to the policy development process regarding IRT
I’ve come to find out from dealing with enom and their subsidaries like BuyDomains that they play dirty ball.
They could care less about the integrity of the naming system. They just want cash at any expense to anyone but themselves.
Cindy, I’m not going to defend Enom.
But your point that BuyDomains is subsidary of Enom is incorrect. BD is a division of NameMedia.
http://www.buydomains.com/info/corporate-overview.jsp
“I’ve come to find out from dealing with enom and their subsidaries like BuyDomains that they play dirty ball.”
They don’t own BuyDomains.