Community

Q: Tell me a bit about ICANN’s history and what you’re up to now.

A: ICANN has been operating for almost 11 years. We’re a California-based not-for-profit organization that was set up by the Internet community and the U.S. government to manage the domain name system, or to coordinate it, really. It was set up with a couple of clear remits: One is security and stability. Also, one of their core values is competition.

So if you were to jump in a time machine and go back 10 years ago, you’d discover that when ICANN was set up, there was one place you could register for a domain name, and that was a company called Network Solutions, and that the cost of registering a domain name was about $55 per name, or upwards. So one of our clear missions was to introduce competition to reduce that cost for consumers. Now, fast-forwarding to the present, you discover that the cost of registering a domain name is about $6—that’s a dramatic reduction in price—and that there are many more places you can register a domain name. In fact, [there are] over 950 registrars where you can go register a name. A lot more competition and opportunity.

So we’ve been very successful in that area, I think, as an organization and one of the other things that we do is to manage the introduction—now this again is something that was part of the rationale in setting this up—of new top-level domains into the root zone or the Internet super address book. There are two categories of top-level domains: generic, things like .com, .org, .info and there are country codes—there are 21 generic top-level domains now and you have to wonder whether or not that is the most open and innovative canvas for the over 1.5 billion people, and that number’s growing, who presently access the Internet.

There’s another issue here called internationalized domain names. At the moment, everything to the right of the dot—‘.com,’ ‘.org,’ ‘.info’—can only be written or expressed in what looks like English characters. So if you’re Japanese or Russian or come from the Indian subcontinent, you discover that you have to type in characters that look like English characters. And rightly, those non-English-speaking communities are saying: ‘Why is it Latin alphabet-centric? Why can’t it be expressed in our characters?’ So as part of the expansion of gTLDs, there’s also interest in expanding those characters so that they can be expressed in internationalized form.

Q: Just as pilots use English as the international language so that they have basic words they all can use to communicate and understand warnings or directions, should there be an international language on the Internet just to connect us all so that we all can communicate?

A: Yeah, well, I think we all can communicate now. That’s the Internet addressing system. That’s what that is. This just allows people to be able to see the entirety of the name in their own language. That’s the rationale for the expansion. It’s not going to do anything to restrict internationalization or the commonality of approach. It will, in fact, enhance it, I think.

Q: Why is ICANN looking to expand from the 21 gTLDs that exist now?

A: This is not an overnight sensation. We’ve been talking about the expansion of generic top-level domains for almost 10 years—in detail, around the last three to five [years]. The reason it’s been getting a lot of publicity in recent times is because we’re now at a point where we believe it can be implemented. We can expand this.

Now, what does that mean, expanding it? Well, it means that if you are a business enterprise or you have an interest in seeing a form of expression or top-level domain that you think would be a useful thing for consumers or as a business model, then you can propose it. It won’t be up to a California not-for-profit to say there should only be 21 names. No more. Why should that be a decision when essentially it is a largely unlimited resource?

Now, we need to be careful about that. We need to be attentive to security concerns, and we are. We’ve had a number of research papers done by the Internet technical community and we’re doing more in order to determine whether or not there is any insecurity or instability. So far, so good.

Q: Before we delve further into security issues, how are you going to determine who gets ‘.apple’? What if an apple grower in Wisconsin wants to own that domain, but Apple Inc. also is interested? Is it first come, first served? I read that there’s an auction process.

A: Firstly, both applications would have to be equal to force an auction process. What I mean by that is you have to demonstrate that the apple growers of the world have as much intellectual property tied up in the name ‘apple’ as the Apple corporation.

Secondly, we’re not talking about a $6 exercise here. It’s not like I could go and apply for ‘.apple’ because I thought it was a good idea or because I was an apple grower. I could do that, but the cost to me is going to be significant. It’s going to be $185,000 in application fees alone and then a $25,000 ongoing annual registration fee—that’s the current proposal. So when you look at it that way, you realize that … you’re running a piece of the Internet’s infrastructure and I don’t think that’s something that individuals on the street will be necessarily quick to do or interested [in doing].

Q: How will you assess the possibility of fraud? What if an organization is willing to pay the application and yearly fees to buy a domain name that closely resembles a bank’s name, say, in an attempt to defraud consumers?

A: There are dispute resolution mechanisms. One of those is the intellectual property organization, for example, that has handled very successfully I think 6,000 disputes now internationally, and well-done, and in a manner that protects interests. Secondly, there’s a range of measures that we asked the intellectual property community to put together themselves that have been proposed and we are examining them—things like rapid take-down measures if there is a name that offends trademark interests and rights. A trademark registry where you can go register one time your trademark interests and applicants can draw down from that, and ICANN can draw down from that, to discover whether or not a potential name is offending a trademark interest.

We have what we call post-delegation appeal rights, so if even through this process, somehow a name gets through and it’s discovered post-implementation and application approval that this name offends your rights, there’s a process you can go through and have the name taken down. There’s a range of pretty solid protections and others that we’re considering, as I’ve said, that have been put forward by the intellectual property community already and to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

MarkMonitor has been quite balanced in their assessment in the expansion of this for brands. On the one hand, they’ve said, there are some opportunities; on the other hand, we are very concerned about aspects of this, most recently in the media saying that they believed it allows brands to use a domain name which is theirs exclusively, to build a close-knit community. And it’s possible that companies will most likely benefit, companies like Google and eBay and Amazon, because it gives them greater security out of their net presence because they’d be able to control all of the registrations against that top-level domain. I found that of interest … some useful analysis by them.

Q: What are the benefits for marketers? Do you expect companies to keep their dot-com presence if they do decide to buy into their own domain names?

A: We’re not a marketing company and we’re not doing this for a purpose other than creating the most open, innovative platform for people to use. We think that there may be some possibilities for marketers in this. … We’ve had some modest interest from brand owners. …

For example, there’s a very strong demand for people wanting geographic names. There’s a proposal for a ‘.nyc,’ a proposal for a ‘.London,’ a ‘.Paris,’ a ‘.Berlin,’ a ‘.Hamburg,’ potentially a ‘.Sydney.’ It goes on and on and on and on. The rationale there is around localization. If I’m TonysPizza, it’s a lot easier for people to find me and where I’m at if I’m TonysPizza.nyc as opposed to ‘.com,’ which could be anywhere. So it’s a more intuitive search. It’s more localized. And there’s interest around communities. For example, there’s a ‘.sport’ being proposed, and there’s a ‘.eco’ and a ‘.green’ for green issues being promoted.

Q: Would the cities get first dibs on those domain names?

A: The process is that the applicant has to get approval for use of that geographic name from the relevant government authority.

Q: How will you determine who gets first dibs for ‘.sport’ or ‘.green’?

A: Whoever puts in the first application, and if that application is successful. … [If the application makes it through ICANN’s analysis] and all the boxes are ticked, their security’s in good standing and they have the technical capacity to run a registry, all of those things and many more, and they were the only application for ‘.green,’ then they would receive the name. We’re trying to make this a platform for innovation and not limiting the scope of the domain name system.

There may well be branding opportunities. What we’re anxious for brand managers to do is to be aware of this and to make up their own minds whether or not they want to keep their existing presence, whether they want to look at whether or not a brand presence at the top level is a good idea.

Let’s say I’m a big soap manufacturer. Does my brand reside in soap.com or does it reside in dot-soap? In other words … the way we market ourselves in the online world is, at the moment, at the second level. Why doesn’t it make sense for it to be at the top level? … That’s a question that brand managers should ask themselves. How is our brand represented? Does it make sense for our brand to be represented at the top level?

All we’re advocating is an open platform. But what we are anxious to do is for businesses to be aware of it so that they don’t wake up when the expansion occurs and say, ‘Oh, I wonder what the impact on my brand will be,’ and ‘I should get my head around the protections that are afforded my brand.’

Q: This could be an interesting opportunity for big corporations that could set up addresses like Maps.Google, rather than Maps.Google.com, for example, and that might make search within that one company’s holdings more intuitive. At the same time, it seems that there will be a steep learning curve for consumers. Now that we’re all in this comfortable routine of looking for the ‘.com,’ the ‘.org’ and the ‘.edu,’ won’t companies struggle—at least initially—to let consumers know where to find them?

A: That’s a very good point. I mean, I don’t know about you; maybe I’m just a bit of a Luddite on these things, but … I go searching for an educational institution in New York, for example. I don’t [assume that it’s] ‘.edu’ for New York University.

I think where a locality top-level domain or a city-based one will be useful is if you want pizza in New York, you can type in pizza in New York now and you may well still get just general discussions about pizza in New York or [listings] connecting the two terms. But [with the new gTLD system,] if you’re searching for pizza in New York, you’ll know that the place to find it has a ‘.nyc’ address. That will be the most clear to you, so I think it could, in fact, enhance clarity rather than add confusion.

Q: So this expansion is predicated on the fact that the Internet is pretty much governed by search at this point.

A: Yeah, certainly many people use browsers for search.

I don’t think it need be confusing. People will vote with their fingers. If they want to stay with their ‘.com’ choices, that’s perfectly fine. If there’s not a thousand new names, that doesn’t worry us. If there are a thousand new names, good. We just want to make sure it’s the most open, fair process that protects rights while still encouraging innovation.

People often say to us: ‘Where’s the demand for this? Why do this if there’s no demand?’ … Firstly … there already is existing demand. … Secondly, there’s never a demand for innovation. There was never a demand for Facebook. There was never a demand for Skype. I’m old enough, unfortunately, to remember FM radio and there was active anger in the introduction of that because people were like: ‘Well, I’ve already got a radio. Why would I want to buy one that’s got two bands?’ What we do know is that innovation occurs when competition is introduced, when platforms are accessible and you have a blank canvas on which you can paint and introduce a bit of artistry.

Q: Do you think some of the concerns people have are unfounded and this really isn’t that big of a deal? A lot of the issues that people are bringing up are already happening in the Internet address space; it’s just that this is the other side of the address, the stuff to the right of the dot, rather than the left.

A: I wouldn’t say that people aren’t right to have concerns. I think, you know, whenever there’s a change of this kind, people are doing due diligence when they express their concern.

Having said that, you’re right when you say that a lot of these challenges are already occurring at the second level [meaning, the stuff to the left of the dot]. People will say: ‘What if there’s a dot-insert-your-expletive here? Wouldn’t that be an awful thing?’ Well, the fact of the matter is you go try and register an expletive in ‘.com’ now. It’s next to impossible because they’ve already been registered and the world has not fallen apart.

Yes it’s been challenging over time for a lot of brands, they have to register a whole lot of variations of their names in the second level, and that irritates them. You know, having to register mistypes of their name in different top-level domains just so that cybersquatters don’t use them and trade off them.

One, I think the introduction of new top-level domains will actually allow opportunities for us to address those things in a way that we haven’t been able to address them historically at the second level. So that’s a good thing. Secondly, as MarkMonitor says, it probably offers them greater security over their net presence because they can control all of the registrations against their TLD, so some good opportunities are arising out of this. …

I wonder whether if at the commercialization of the Internet … we’d said to companies and brand managers, listen, we’ve got this new way of doing business. It’s called the Internet, and you’re potentially going to make trillions of dollars of new business opportunity. But there’s a cost, and at least in the short term, it will mean that you have to register a lot of the misspellings and it could cost you upwards of a million dollars if you’re a big brand, what do you think the response would have been? I suspect the response would have been: ‘Really? I’m going to have to fund a business cost for this new idea? A big business cost? I’m not sure I want to do that.’

Now, that’s not me being cynical. If I were a brand manager back then or a business owner and I were presented with that opportunity, it’d be challenging. It’s a leap into the unknown. And so you probably would have said: ‘I’m not sure I want to do that. I’ve got a known system now. I’ve gotten comfortable with all of the protections I’ve got now. Let’s keep things as they are.’ Innovation is always challenging.

Q: Where do you see this going? Where are we headed as far as Internet addresses are concerned?

A: I think the first round we’ll see a bunch of country and/or city applications. They’ll be some of the first off the blocks, I think. They’ve been anxiously awaiting this arrival.

You’ll have some community names. Then there’s a whole, sort of, group of names that we won’t anticipate and we won’t know about, and I can’t imagine what they will be. But it’s likely that people will come up with innovative ideas and people will say: ‘Oh, I get it now. I see what I can do in localization or I see what I can do with my brand or I see what I can do with my city.’

And I think we’ll see initially a modest expansion, and then depending on what level of innovation and interest there is in the new names, you’ll see a more significant expansion. We don’t know what will occur, but we do know we can act to limit damage to trademark, we can address those concerns, we know we can address all those things. But what we don’t want to do is limit people’s capacity for innovation and competition.

Q: Especially with this move to make the Internet more international, do you think ICANN can remain a U.S.-based nonprofit. There has already been pushback from the international community, and you do have locations in other countries, but at some point should ICANN’s governing be handed over to or overseen by an international body of some sort?

A: We’ll always be based in the U.S. That’s where our headquarters will be. The rationale is historically that’s where we’ve always been. It’s, at the moment, where we hold the majority of our contracts with registrars. I think more than 700 of them are based in the U.S.

You’ll always get arguments about where we could be based, but in the largest democracy in the world with strong antitrust law and having a history here upon which we can build is always going to be the draw card, if you like, for us to remain here. That doesn’t mean we won’t have presences overseas. We will, but part of our nature is that we’re private sector, bottoms up, not controlled by any one government. You know, this was the original vision, and I think you’ll find that there would be very strong pushback from our community to make this a governmentally run function or one that was run by the United Nations or any other collection of governments.

Getting a little into the weeds, the IANA functions contract is this contract that we have with the States to be able to do these things. The United States Department of Commerce lets the contract called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and the acronym is IANA, and in order to run that contract to receive that contract you have to be an American-run company, a U.S.-based company. So that’s another very strong incentive for us to remain here.

The other one, and I suppose what I was trying to say earlier is better expressed by this: Our mission is about stability and security, so there is a strong argument, I think, in saying there is stability in staying exactly where we are and keeping the model as is. It’s worked successfully for almost 11 years. Everyone may well have their concerns about how different parts of it could be done better, but at core, it is a successful model that’s run successfully in support of a huge increase in Internet commerce. So we want to preserve that. We don’t want to do anything to play with it and upset that success.

[Editor’s note: In September, ICANN’s oversight agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce expired and the two parties agreed to extend oversight duties internationally by establishing advisory panels consisting of government and private-sector representatives around the world.]