Monster, CareerBuilder, and others write open letter to ICANN.
The .Jobs Charter Compliance Coalition, whose membership consists of online job boards, has sent an “open letter” to ICANN regarding Employ Media’s request for arbitration over .jobs.
The Coalition says that its letter is to “address the Request’s numerous inconsistencies, omissions and mischaracterizations” in Employ Media’s request for arbitration.
The letter states:
The Coalition believes that Employ Media simply cannot provide any reasonable response that would explain away the indisputable fact that the Charter does not permit the operation of job boards that advertise job openings for multiple employers. The Charter clearly envisions internal human resource management personnel utilizing .JOBS domains exclusively for their own companies and organizations. The .JOBS domain was not meant as a forum for Employ Media and its conspiring alliance partner DirectEmployers Association (“DirectEmployersâ€) to operate a massive job board – which is exactly what the Dot Jobs Universe represents. The registration of tens of thousands of second-level domain names by one bulk registrant for this improper purpose is entirely inconsistent with both the intent of the .JOBS TLD and ICANN’s policies, and represents a terrible precedent for the anticipated launch of the new gTLD initiative.
I think this is true, although it also seems to me that ICANN’s board gave the green light to Employ Media to go forward with its universe.jobs initiative. Someone (or an entire board) was asleep at the wheel there.
The group also points out how Employ Media completely disregarded the charter by starting universe.jobs without permission. Employ Media later called it a “beta test”:
The beta test utilized noncompanyname domain name designations when that practice was clearly prohibited at the time by the Registry Agreement. Although Employ Media portrays the beta test as an experiment taken in the best interests of the .JOBS community, the more accurate explanation is that both Employ Media and DirectEmployers were conspiring to develop methods to monetize the .JOBS TLD to their own financial advantage.
You can read the full letter here (pdf).
I’m not sure what Monster.com et all are so scared of from .jobs? Does anyone use this .jobs universe? Is itreally a threat to it’s competitors worth the money the competitors will spend to take it down?
Had organized job recruiting services the ability to have something like an ICANN block Careerbuilder and Monster.com when the old brick-n-mortar job search companies were seeing their livelihood sucked up by the technology shift to the internet boards, these companies would be vilified in a similar manner by the parties that stood to loose their market dominance.
Universe.jobs and what they’re doing seems like Evolution, just like it was evolution that built those two companies.
What is scary here is that the whole TLD process, new and old, is being slapped around by commercial interests fighting to protect their ‘turf’ as opposed to letting market forces determine the victor.
If the market uses universe, then it was smart and a good direction. If not, then it withers on the vine (ie @jp’s comment).
Very well said Jothan, it’s survival of the fittest, not survival of the fittest if they don’t compete with us.
Basically all these ‘closed charter’ extensions should be let loose of the shackles, then they will either float or sink, depending on how they perform. I can see .pro / .travel / .jobs going a completely different growth trajectory if they are set free.
After all, you can’t have different parameters for extensions, if Verisign is allowed to increase .com renewals at 7% every year because of new extensions’ “probable pricing”, then these existing extensions should get the same freedom as those that will “probably” be offered to the upcoming extensions.
Monster.com’s knee jerk reaction to universe.jobs sounds a bit – “we don’t want it, but you can’t have it either”.
Pretty much why all the established companies are leaning on their political connections to try and scuttle, or at least delay, the release of the new extensions. So they can either prevent the competition or get into the action themselves.
Perhaps, although it would be “more fair” if job boards were able to get their own new TLD at the same time .jobs is able to expand.