The decision was reached with much opposition, especially from the advertising and marketing community. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has been the biggest force in speaking out against ICANN’s plan. It, along with 161 other organizations, formed the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO) in order to raise awareness of their concerns.

These organizations believe that the new gTLDs could be harmful to both brands and consumers. In the interview below, Doug Wood, the General Counsel for the ANA, told us ICANN’s plan was an unnecessary move.

“Consumers have no problem finding what they’re looking for on the Internet through search engine technology,” he said. “This is more of a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist, and the costs that will be incurred by brands and then, ultimately, pushed on to consumers… is going to be far in excess of any justifiable cause.”

Despite the criticism, ICANN began carrying out its plan earlier this month, a move that Dan Jaffe, the Executive Vice President of Government Relations for ANA, calls both “reckless” and “premature.”

As he explained to us, there are problems such as cyber squatting and phishing that exist in the current system. That said, he thinks that those issues need to be addressed before the floodgates are opened for new top-level domains.

“Unfortunately in the existing system, there are serious problems of cyber squatting, typo squatting, phishing, the placement of malware, [and] the inability to find out who, in fact, really owns Internet addresses,” he said. “We’re afraid unless these types of problems are resolved that suddenly opening the top-level domains to as many as 1,000 new top-level domains, which is a thousand percent increase over the existing systems, it would be very, very dangerous both to businesses and consumers. ”

ANA and CRIDO have reached out to ICANN on several occasions in an effort to get the decision reversed. The FTC and various officials in the U.S. government have also expressed their concerns, but Jaffe told us that ICANN has not responded.

One of the big concerns that these groups have is that businesses will feel pressured to spend the $185,000 or more to keep a competitor or worse from buying their domain name. ICANN, however, says that it has protections in place such as its “Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy” that protect businesses from taking defensive measures.

“They have put in several protections, but they have never run a pilot project to see if those various protections really work in the real world,” said Jaffe.

“ICANN is running some of the fundamental areas of the Internet and, therefore, we want to make sure they run them properly or ICANN’s own future will seriously be undermined,” he added.

Last week, ICANN announced that it has already approved 25 successful registrants for new domains. Jaffe told us that the full impact of the move would not be felt until April when ICANN stops accepting applications and reveals the new registrants.

In the meantime, he is hoping that the U.S. Department of Commerce uses its Affirmation of Commitments authority and its oversight of the IANA contracts to get ICANN’s attention.

“We think this is absolutely a top issue for the business community across the whole of the world,” he said. “[It] needs to be done appropriately, or it will severely undermine the trust that has begun to be built up to make the Internet one of the largest marketplaces in history, the largest marketplace in history.”

Would you prefer to see .brand or .com going forward? What do you think?

Advertisers are outraged by ICANN’s decision and have even contacted the corporation to express their concerns about the changes. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is among the groups in opposition because it believes the expanded generic top-level domains (gTLD) could be harmful to brands and consumers.

“The reality is, when we looked at the ICANN report when they adopted this, their benefits that they’re expressing are purely speculative,” said Doug Wood, General Counsel for the ANA.

As he explained, the expansion of domain names has been debated since the 1990′s, even before ICANN existed. The hope was to help consumers find information more easily. ICANN believes that this move will help to solve this problem. Wood, however, told us that this problem no longer exists since search engines and technology have become so advanced.

“Consumers have no problem finding what they’re looking for on the Internet through search engine technology,” he said. “This is more of a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist, and the costs that will be incurred by brands and then, ultimately, pushed on to consumers… is going to be far in excess of any justifiable cause.”

The costs he is referring to involve the $185,000 that brands would have to pay to simply apply for a new domain name. Many corporations have multiple brands, which means that they would need to purchase 100s of domains. Although these high costs would likely be transferred to consumers in order to make the investment worthwhile, brands believe that they would have to consider them to prevent cyber squatting and phishing.

Wood told us that it might be different if there were a shortage of domain names, but that is not the case. He said ICANN introduced new domain names including .biz and .travel a few years ago, but that they haven’t been widely adopted. Esther Dyson, who is the former board chair of ICANN, also wrote in a piece on the Australian Broadcasting Network that there was no shortage of domain names.

She opposes the move from ICANN as well and even wrote that it didn’t have any value:

The problem is that expanding the namespace – allowing anyone to register a new TLD such as .apple – doesn’t actually create any new value. The value is in people’s heads – in the meanings of the words and the brand associations – not in the expanded namespace. In fact, the new approach carves up the namespace: the value formerly associated with Apple could now be divided into Apple.computers, apple.phone, ipod.apple, and so on. If this sounds confusing, that is because it is.

ICANN justifies their action by saying that it will create new opportunities. While Wood agrees that the new domains will do this, he said that the people who would benefit from them are domain sellers, trademark lawyers, and domain consultants.

“The bottom line is simple – the Internet has matured quite well, brands have supported it from its inception, [and] consumers have used it now to increase their choices in the marketplace,” he pointed out. “They don’t need any more TLDs to accomplish that.”

“The only thing that these new TLDs will do, from what we can see, is increase the income and opportunities for consultants,” he added.

When the ANA notified ICANN of its concerns, Wood said ICANN defended its decision based on the grounds that it had debated the topic for several years.

The ANA and other organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) are continuing to fight the domain changes. According to Wood, they hope to create enough awareness that ICANN will reconsider its decision.

Do you think ICANN should reverse its expansion of domain names?

As you might remember, the transaction was announced in November, and Mark Zuckerberg made it sound rather insignificant (and funny) by stating, "The Farm Bureau has agreed to give us FB.com and we in return have agreed to not sell farm subsidies."

This afternoon, though, a Reuters article reported, "At their annual meeting in Atlanta, Farm Bureau officials on Tuesday said the organization earned $8.5 million by selling a couple of domain names but is barred from identifying the buyer."

It’s a good bet that the Facebook/FB.com arrangement was responsible for the bulk of that sum.  No other deals made headlines in the same way.

So again, although Facebook can’t be hurting (remember that it’s supposed to be worth $50 billion), Farm Bureau now has quite a bit more money than it did before, and lost nothing irreplaceable in the process.

Some farmers and ranchers may benefit as a result.

In June 2008, the FTC charged Toronto-based Internet Listing Service with sending fake invoices to small businesses and others, listing the existing domain name of the consumer’s website or a slight variation on the domain name, such as substituting ".org" for ".com." The invoices appeared to come from the businesses’ existing domain name registrar and instructed them to pay for an annual "WEBSITE ADDRESS LISTING."

The invoices also claimed to include a search engine optimization service. Most consumers who received the "invoices" were led to believe that they had to pay them to maintain their registrations of domain names. Other consumers were induced to pay based on Internet Listing Service’s claims that its "Search Optimization" service would "direct mass traffic" to their sites and that their "proven search engine listing service" would result in "a substantial increase in traffic."

The FTC’s complaint charged that most consumers who paid the defendants’ invoices did not receive any domain name registration services and that the "search optimization" service did not result in increased traffic to the consumers’ Web sites.
A federal district court judge in Chicago, Robert M. Dow, Jr., ordered a temporary halt to the deceptive claims and froze the defendants’ assets, pending trial. The settlement and default judgment orders announced today end that litigation.

The orders bar the defendants from misrepresenting: that they have a preexisting business relationship with consumers; that consumers owe them money; that they will provide domain name registration; and that they will provide "search optimization services" that will substantially increase traffic to consumers’ websites.

The settlement order, entered against defendants Isaac Benlolo, Kirk Mulveney, Pearl Keslassy, and 1646153 Ontario Inc., includes a suspended judgment of $4,261,876, the total amount of consumer injury caused by the illegal activities. Based on the inability of the settling defendants to pay, they will turn over $10,000 to satisfy the judgment.

A Hong Kong-based business known as Ashanti first acquired the Flicker.com domain name in mid-2006 for $55,000.  Then, over the next several years, Ashanti published various purchase offers, displayed photography-related ads, and began to announce site stats (you can see a box that’s currently visible on Flicker.com to the right).

Yahoo responded in 2007 by trying to buy Flicker.com for $600,000, according to Andrew Allemann, and in 2009, it took Ashanti to court for (allegedly) cybersquatting.

Now, as Michael H. Berkens first reported, the matter’s been resolved via some sort of undisclosed settlement, and Yahoo’s in control of the Flicker site.  The unusual thing is that Flicker.com isn’t yet redirecting visitors to Flickr.

Flickr should start seeing more visitors before long, though, and this move may boost Yahoo’s reputation in addition to its traffic stats, since helping people reach their intended destination isn’t such a self-serving act.

Meme has been described as a Twitter clone with random references to dogs instead of birds.  Otherwise, it’s attracted very little attention at all.

Antonio Silveira, a director of product development and engineering at Yahoo, indicated that he’d like that to change, though.  In a press release announcing the new acquisition, Silveira described the Me.me domain name as "an essential component of our online branding strategy."

Jeremiah Johnston, the COO of Sedo (which helped Yahoo purchase the domain name), also stated, "We are delighted to extend our relationship with one of the Internet’s most recognized brands, and help Yahoo! determine the best domain name strategy to fully engage its social networking audience."

It could be that Yahoo’s new ad campaign will promote Meme, then, or that Yahoo has plans to focus on the property once its arrangement with Microsoft is worked out.  Or it could just be that the press release blew the importance of this move out of proportion.  We’ll see what happens.  Hat tip goes to Joseph Tartakoff.

As Monte Cahn, Founder and President of Moniker mentioned in a recent interview with WebProNews, it’s a good idea to make sure the domain name is available when coming up with a name for your brand, or at least make sure that you are able to acquire it. Products have their own brands, and this way of thinking can also be applied to them in many cases. Cahn notes that even the big companies make mistakes in this area. For example, you would expect Apple to own iPad.com, considering the huge announcement about the device the company made this year, but someone else has that domain.

Cahn also stresses the importance of covering your brand in terms of domain names. This means getting all variations possible. Get typos, different extensions and country codes, etc. Use 301 redirects on misspells of key brands (including singular/plural versions). However, when it comes to domain names for different products, he says it’s best to build sub-sites around those with their own content, which can help drive link juice, SEO value, and traffic.

Getting the .com that reflects your company name is not always possible, unfortunately. In these cases, it may serve you well to find a different aspect of your brand to center your domain around, but this will require a greater level of promotion of that URL than a simple companyname.com. For example, if there are unique key phrases within your company’s slogan, you may find such an opportunity there.

Domains should be easy to remember, not too long, easy to spell, relevant to your brand, and avoid complicating characters such as hyphens. I think one key to a successful domain name is simplicity, although there are always exceptions to the rule.

"Unlicensed, unregulated, illegal Internet gambling poses a tremendous threat to the citizens of the Commonwealth because of its ease, availability and anonymity," said Beshear back then. "The owners and operators of these illegal sites prey on Kentucky citizens, including our youth, and deprive the Commonwealth of millions of dollars in revenue.  It’s an underworld wrought with scams and schemes."

The Kentucky Supreme Court is expected to make a decision on the case in a set of decisions on January 21.

Beshear has seen a fair amount of criticism for the move, based mostly on the fact that the state of Kentucky does not have a law in place making online gambling illegal. Furthermore, the sites in question are based overseas.

Online Casino Advisory went so far as to launch a boycotting campaign on all taxable gambling products in Kentucky:

A judge in Franklin County Kentucky court saw things Beshear’s way, but the ruling was overturned by an Appeals court before making its way to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), which has over 13,000 members in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and over a million members in the U.S. once told WebProNews that Governor Beshear’s attempt to block access to online sites in the state "is hypocritical and shortsighted."

Back in March, Attorney Clarke Walton, who owns and operates a site that is affiliated with the poker industry, talked about the case with WebProNews:

The suit is largely looked upon as a joke within the Poker community. Matthew Kredell with Poker news writes, "The lawsuit is ultimately pointless because the sites would continue to operate without their domain names. The only players who type in a domain name are the ones looking to initially download the software, and the search engines could easily be changed to recognize a new address. After the issue arose, Full Tilt Poker bought fulltilt.com as a precaution."

"By blocking online gambling sites in Kentucky, Governor Beshear is also blocking these sites for residents of other states and countries," Pappas said. "This clearly oversteps his bounds as Governor of Kentucky and likely violates several laws including the U.S. Constitution." 

In December, state lawyers said they would add names of specific (but publicly unnamed) U.S. citizens to the suit. The industry is optimistic that the KY Supreme Court will reject Beshear’s mission anyway, and that the next step in the process would be the U.S. Supreme Court, which is highly unlikely to hear the case.

Everybody may be finding out the next steps later this month. If the case doesn’t come up then, the next time it may surface would be in March, according to Kredell.

Do you think the state of Kentucky has a legitimate case? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related Articles:

> Kentucky Governor Cracks Down On Online Gambling

> A Closer Look At Kentucky’s Online Gambling Plan

> Kentucky Judge Rules: Forfeit Gambling Domains

Google submitted a complaint about a site called Groovle to the National Arbitration Forum (which ICANN lets decide domain name disputes) on November 6th of this year.  The search giant argued that Groovle is "nearly identical or confusingly similar" to its own name.

Complicating matters is the fact that Groovle markets itself as "your groovy custom search homepage," while noting on every page, "Groovle.com is not owned, operated, or sponsored, or endorsed by Google."

Anyway, a bit of back and forth ensued.  Then the National Arbitration Forum sided with Groovle, and in a document released today, it explained the decision.

"Respondent argues that the disputed domain name is not a misspelling of Complainant’s mark; Respondent asserts that the disputed domain name contains the significant letters ‘r’ and ‘v’ which serve to distinguish the sound, appearance, meaning, and connotation of ‘groovle’ from Complainant’s GOOGLE mark.  Furthermore, Respondent contends that its alterations clearly transform the predominant word of the <groovle.com> domain name to ‘groove’ or ‘groovy,’ not GOOGLE. . . .  The Panel agrees . . ."

This is a blow for Google in a symbolic sense, at least – it’s participated in 65 disputes – even if the development has no measurable effect.

Related Articles:

> Consumer Groups Ask FTC To Block Google AdMob Deal

> IBM CEO Dismisses Idea Of All-Powerful Google

> ICANN Becomes More Independent

ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce signed an agreement today supporting the model of international multi-stakeholder governance of the global Internet addressing system.

ICANN was created in 1998 to manage the Internet’s addressing system such as top-level domain-names and IP address space. The group has been criticized for being too influenced by the U.S. government.

"A decade ago the US government was a catalyst for a global discussion on how to coordinate the vital resource that is the Internet’s unique identifiers," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Chairman of the Board.

"They understood that it needed to be coordinated not controlled. That vision has been affirmed in the model of private sector leadership that ICANN represents."

The European Commission, which has called for reform of ICANN since 2005, sounded support for the latest changes.

"I welcome the US administration’s decision to adapt ICANN’s key role in internet governance to the reality of the 21st century and of a globalised world," said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that ICANN’s decisions on domain names and addresses will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone’s interests. External review panels will periodically evaluate ICANN’s performance. If effectively and transparently implemented, this reform can find broad acceptance among civil society, businesses and governments alike."

Under the agreement, the U.S. will join ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), a group that advises the corporation on publicly policy issues related to the Internet.