Event brings together ICANN, IP interests and EFF.
American University will hold an event on Monday, February 25 to talk about Intellectual Property protection and new top level domain names.
Participants include representatives of ICANN, brand protection domain name registrars, universities and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
There will be two panels. The first will be about IP protection in new top level domains. The second is titled “Walled Gardens: Should gTLDs Become Private Platforms?”
Attendance is free but guests must register online. (Select event: 2019-02-25 – ICANN and New Top-Level Domains).
The event is sponsored by American University Washington College of Law, American University School of Communications, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and Internet Governance Lab.
Charles Christopher says
>“Walled Gardens: Should gTLDs Become Private Platforms?”
Been in this industry for 20 years and I have no clue what that title means. When I Google it I find nothing to make it more clear.
Is this about .IBM having their brand in the root?
Or is this about ICANN placing .BIZ in the root those destroying the free and independent TLD development, thus proving to the world *IT* owns the root?
Or it is about China splitting the root sometime ago via IDNS, thus finally forcing ICANN to work on IDNs at the root?
Or is it about Russia protecting itself by building out a duplicate root server system they are about to test, in case the “walled garden” of the US decides to turn off Russia’s access to ICANN’s flowers?
Which “private” platform?
Which “walled” garden?
Dave Tyrer says
I’m sure it refers to the monopolistic applications to operate some of the new gTLDs as “closed registries”.
DomainNameWire covered this in an article called:
Amazon.com won’t offer domain names to the public
“Amazon.com intends to only offer domain registrations to itself.
“Amazon.com has applied for 76 top level domain names. But don’t expect to be able to register any second level domains underneath them.
“I just reviewed eight of the company’s applications, and each one has similar language explaining who can register a second level domain under them: only Amazon.com and its subsidiaries.”
https://domainnamewire.com/2012/06/14/amazon-com-wont-offer-domain-names-to-the-public/
I campaigned against this in comments at ICANN and also on a dedicated website called SuperMonopolies.
http://www.supermonopolies.com
(best viewed on a desktop). Pardon me for quoting myself:
“The controversy: many companies have applied to operate ‘closed registries’ on generic words — that is, they want to commandeer dictionary words like ‘shop’ and ‘book’ and by owning every single domain in those extensions (like Camera.shop, Book.shop, Phone.shop, Auto.shop and Movie.shop etc) gain major monopolistic advantage.
“Everyone else will be shut out from these ‘walled garden’ private internets.”
Charles Christopher says
My post was rhetorical.
The more significant walled garden is ICANN’s, if memory serves .BIZ was the first TLD that ICANN “eliminated” through its predatory control of the root. Its “lord of the root” position is embodied in RFC 2826.
In response to ICANN’s “lord of the root” position, and refusal to address IDN TLD’s, many governments rejected ICANN’s arrogance and split the root:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/splitting_the_root_its_too_late/
And we have China:
http://domainincite.com/9474-china-proposes-to-split-up-the-dns
And Russia:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/01/russia_own_internet/
Which is about to go online:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-13/cyber-drill-russia-will-cut-itself-world-wide-web
So the real questions is, why does ICANN have monopolistic applications to operate some of the ROOT as “closed registries” ….
Its not lost on me that this discussion is taking place as Russia is about to run its tests and prove to the world, the internet does not “break” without ICANN being in charge.
Notice this thread in 2006:
“Chinese govt to allow registration of .com domains in competition with ICANN”
https://www.domainstate.com/industry-news-6/chinese-govt-to-allow-registration-of-com-domains-59393.html?highlight=idns
When its revealed that this is being implemented by a root split in China’s TLD servers, IDNS (“intent”) chimes in:
https://www.domainstate.com/industry-news-6/chinese-govt-to-allow-registration-of-com-domains-59393.html?p=287987#post287987‘
However the DNS resource records from the China TLD servers prove that China has zoned this domains inside its borders. IDNS give more hints here:
https://www.domainstate.com/showthread.html?threadid=59393&p=288039#post288039
Then here:
https://www.domainstate.com/showthread.html?threadid=59393&p=288055#post288055
“Shanghai. March 7. INTERFAX-CHINA – ICANN is under pressure to speed up the move to a multi-language Internet. China will make great efforts to encourage ICANN (the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) to support a multi-language Top Level Domain (TLD) system, a spokesperson from CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) told Interfax Tuesday.”
Which ICANN did soon after due to this political pressure by China through that root split.
So perhaps the question to be asked is why does the not for profit, with half a billion in cash, allowed the walled garden its exercise? Why is ICANN lord of the root?
And I am certainly not suggesting control be moved to an international organization like the UN. I’m suggesting more should experiment with alternative roots, as Russia is about to do in the most extreme case. Fact is none of this will ever try to overwrite say .COM, there is no point as the user experience will cause rejection of that alternative. But experimentation in TLD not in the root should be encouraged. Its the internet innovation and experimentation that made the internet what it is today, and the lord of the root ICANN has killed off.
And to finish the thought, why the special treatment for TOR’s .ONION? No application, not even zoned, is a great alt root example, and ICANN supported it:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/icann_assigns_tors_onion_tld_as_special_use_domain_name/
Time for more alternative roots, to move outside ICANN’s walled garden. Let the market choose rather than the lord of the root.
Eric Rienzie says
Is this session available to be viewed online?