June 26, 2008

.confusion: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs

Link: .confusion: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs.

Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng offers one of the rare insightful stories on the subject:

"What we're effectively doing is opening up huge amounts of online real estate," ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey told the Wall Street Journal before the vote took place.

Not every zany TLD will be immediately available to anyone who want to
register a domain, however. Businesses must apply to register the TLD
first, then go through a review process to ensure that it isn't
offensive and doesn't infringe on anyone's intellectual property. If
approved, registering the TLD will cost anywhere from $100,000 to
$500,000, ICANN says, and the business or organization must prove that
they are either capable of managing the TLD or can reach a deal with a
company that will.

... ICANN has been debating the issue for some time now, and the committee involved has considered a number of issues that could become points of contention. For example, TLDs that represent countries or places may need to be restricted—if someone were to register .lat for Latin America, should anyone be able to use it for commercial purposes? What about .paris? Should it be limited to Paris, France, Paris, Texas, or should both share the same TLD? If .arab gets registered, should it apply to a geographic region or the more generalized culture?

Another major concern brought up during this week's debates was whether opening up the TLD system to a Wild West rush would only lead to frustration for consumers. "I am looking for a family-friendly hotel experience in Berlin this summer. So under the gTLD scheme here, would I go to dot travel? Would I go to dot com? Or would I go to dot Berlin? Well, it's family friendly, maybe I will go to dot fam. And after trying each of those four sites in the various directories I will have absolutely no certainty that I am looking at all the possibilities," said NetChoice director Steve Delbianco during Monday's discussions. "As a very frustrated consumer, I will be driven straight to the search engines."

Posted by Anupam Chander on June 26, 2008 at 03:00 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

BBC NEWS | Technology | Internet overhaul wins approval

Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Internet overhaul wins approval.

Posted by Anupam Chander on June 26, 2008 at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 23, 2008

Ten Reasons Why ICANN Should Not Create New Domain Name Rush

Link: ICANN to vote on new Internet domain names | Tech news blog - CNET News.com.

ICANN will vote on Thursday on whether to allow companies to purchase Top Level Domain names of their own choosing, at a cost of an estimated $50,000 apiece, with disputes settled through auctions.

I have not reviewed the details of the proposal, but the reports are alarming. This seems like a poor idea for many reasons, including the following:

1. It will impose enormous costs on trademark holders, who will now have to police yet larger virtual spaces, including, for the first time, TLD spaces. Companies will have to enter into auctions to claim their names.

2. It will increase web-surfer bewilderment, unnecessarily complicating a system to which surfers have become accustomed.

3. It will create enormous profits for the few who have the capital to invest in this space--profit that results not from creating something useful, but just by gaining the right to hand out (secondary) domain names.

4. What does ICANN plan to do with the enormous revenues this will generate?

5. A go-slow approach behooves ICANN; radical changes to the domain name system will only generate confusion and ill-will.

6. Current investors in domain names may find the value of their investments eroded by the enormous increase in the supply of domain names (though they will argue that the ".com" TLD, for example, will remain a marquee space).

7. The increase in the amount of speculative activity will be immense; the litigation that will ensue is likely to occupy courts for many years to come.

8. ICANN can increase domain name space in far more measured terms.

9. The number of controversial TLDs will be enormous--who will own ".Jesus" or ".America" or ".Islam"?

10. The expansion is likely to generate significant international conflicts.

Update: ICANN's board unanimously approved the measure. Newer reports suggest that the price of admission may be half a million dollars or more, not $50,000, as the earlier reports indicated.

Posted by Anupam Chander on June 23, 2008 at 09:17 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

McCain Disses Patents, Private Market; Proposes $300 Million Prize for Electric Car Battery

Link:

John McCain 2008 - John McCain for President
.

John McCain Will Propose A $300 Million Prize To Improve Battery Technology For Full Commercial Development Of Plug-In Hybrid And Full Electric Automobiles. A $300 million prize should be awarded for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. That battery should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs. At $300 million, the prize is one dollar for every man, woman and child in this country -- and a small price to pay for breaking our dependence on oil.

Posted by Anupam Chander on June 23, 2008 at 12:40 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 03, 2008

China Disbars Lawyers Who Offered to Defend Tibetans

Link: China Disbars Lawyers Who Offered to Defend Tibetans - NYTimes.com.

Posted by Anupam Chander on June 3, 2008 at 04:25 PM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack