Congressmen Concerned Over ICANN TLD Process

Wary of the review process of new top-level domain names, Reps. Edward J.
Markey, D-Mass., and Lois Capps, D-Calif., this week sent a letter to Assistant
Secretary of Commerce Gregory L. Rohde asking that he put a stay on any
action the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) suggests.

The representatives said in the letter that they want the Department of
Commerce and the public to review ICANN’s process, which has already sparked
concerns through its rejection of recommended TLDs such as .kids and .xxx.

Rohde was specifically addressed because he is President Bill Clinton’s
principal adviser on the advancement of technology and telecommunications
policies. Markey and Capps said their primary concern was that the process
seems to reinforce what is largely perceived by pundits as a monopoly by
Network Solutions Inc., a member of Afilias Group, which is one of three
groups vying for the rights to the .web TLD. Network Solutions controls
.com, .net and .org.

The two feared that ICANN was not paying attention to the fact that Network
Solutions’ participation would not “move the internet domain name system
away from its monopolistic antecedents.” They also decried the fact that the
incoming ICANN board members would not be voting on the new TLD matters.

The fact that every member of Afilias holds an equal share of 5.25 percent,
with no one member allowed to own more than 11 percent, and that Network
Solutions does not have a seat on the executive committee nor the 13-person
board of ICANN, does little to assuage the concerns of the representatives or other applicants.

Image Online Design Inc. is one of the firms going head-to-head with the
Afilias consortium. The firm is upset because although it has used .web for
the last four years and has more than 20,000 .web domain name holders, ICANN
seems to be bearish on certain details of its application despite the fact
that it passed the threshold requirement.

Chief Technology Officer of Image Online Chris Ambler has said that his firm
has not gotten fair
consideration from ICANN’s preliminary reports, which he thinks means
the organization might be leaning toward awarding .web to Afilias Group.

Image Online spokesperson Michael Powell spoke even more strongly Thursday.
He said it was proper for Congress to play watchdog to ICANN’s
heavily-debated review process, something it hasn’t done much of in the
past.

“It’s perfectly appropriate for [Congress] to review the process that ICANN
has put in place here,” Powell said. “[ICANN] has a tendency to choose big
conglomerates; they seem to have a bias against smaller registries and in
doing so they violate the spirit of what they laid out. They’re trying to
promote competition and promote diversity of proposals and the very people
in the final cut aren’t going to achieve any of that.”

Aware of such concerns, ICANN Board Chairwoman Esther Dyson said
Thursday that the board was very much in
“risk reduction mode,” adding that they want to choose only those TLDs that will
work. But this will do nothing to soothe rejected applicants’ anger should
their final proposals be nixed: Each applicant shelled out $50,000 to get in
the door of the process.

Applicants were allowed a final three-minute pitch each. ICANN will most likely make its final decisions Friday.

InternetNews Radio host Brian McWilliams contributed to this story.