The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have given differing views as to whether they believe ICANN should forge ahead with its proposal to introduce new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), with the former supportive and the latter opposed.
However ICANN CEO and president, Rod Beckstrom, responding to a recent Washington Post editorial on the subject said the introduction of new gTLDs "has been anything but rushed" and has taken "more than six years of thoughtful discussion, debate and study involving governments and intellectual property experts from around the globe. About 60 technical papers and independent reports, plus analysis of 2,400 comments, informed seven versions of carefully crafted rules that will govern the award of a new TLD."
In remarks given by Lawrence E. Strickling, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information at the NTIA to the PLI/FCBA Telecommunications Policy & Regulation Institute on 8 December, Strickling supported the multistakeholder process that ICANN has used to develop the new gTLD guidelines.
Strickling said "the United States strongly supports the use of a multistakeholder process as the preferred means of addressing Internet policy issues."
Commenting specifically on new gTLDS, Strickling was supportive of the ICANN process saying it "involved global stakeholders from the business community, civil society, registries, registrars, and governments. At NTIA, we worked throughout the process to make sure that ICANN adequately addressed government concerns and we have also spent significant time the last two years pushing for overall improvements in ICANN's accountability and transparency to the global Internet community."
"Nonetheless, we are now seeing parties that did not like the outcome of that multistakeholder process trying to collaterally attack the outcome and seek unilateral action by the U.S. government to overturn or delay the product of a six-year multistakeholder process that engaged folks from all over the world. The multistakeholder process does not guarantee that everyone will be satisfied with the outcome. But it is critical to preserving the model of Internet governance that has been so successful to date that all parties respect and work through the process and accept the outcome once a decision is reached. When parties ask us to overturn the outcomes of these processes, no matter how well-intentioned the request, they are providing "ammunition" to other countries who attempt to justify their unilateral actions to deny their citizens the free flow of information on the Internet. This we will not do. There is too much at stake here.
Strickling also said that the NTIA will monitor concerns such as those addressed by US government senate committees and that the NTIA "will closely monitor the execution of the programme and [the NTIA is] committed to working with stakeholders, including U.S. industry, to mitigate any unintended consequences."
However the FTC took a different tack, sending a letter last week to ICANN with concerns that closely mirrored complaints by American advertisers. The letter expressed "concern that the organisation's plan to dramatically expand the domain name system could leave consumers more vulnerable to online fraud and undermine law enforcers' ability to track down online scammers."
The FTC is concerned that the introduction of new gTLDs as the programme currently stands "could create a 'dramatically increased opportunity for consumer fraud,' and make it easier for scam artists to manipulate the system to avoid being detected by law enforcement authorities. The Commission urged ICANN - before approving any new gTLD applications - to take additional steps to protect consumers, including starting with a pilot programme to work out potential problems."
"A rapid, exponential expansion of gTLDs has the potential to magnify both the abuse of the domain name system and the corresponding challenges we encounter in tracking down Internet fraudsters," the Commission's letter states.
The FTC wants ICANN to make some changes before approving any new gTLD applications with the FTC urging "ICANN to:
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- implement the new programme as a pilot programme and substantially reduce the number of generic top level domains that are introduced as a result of the first application round;
- strengthen ICANN's contractual compliance programme, in particular by hiring additional compliance staff;
develop a new ongoing programme to monitor consumer issues that arise during the first round of implementing the new gTLD programme; - assess each new proposed generic top level domain's risk of consumer harm as part of the evaluation and approval process;
- improve the accuracy of Whois data, including by imposing a registrant verification requirement."