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.”

With the TAS, applicants will have to answer 50 questions, as detailed in the Applicant Guidebook. ICANN posted some important info for applicants today, regarding updates to the guidebook and financial assistance for qualifying applicants:

An updated version of the Applicant Guidebook was posted with the opening of the application window. The updated version incorporates clarifications made through responses previously published by the gTLD customer service center. Main points of clarification are on topics such as batching, background screening, the applicant support program, Continued Operations Instrument, GAC advice processes, and the registry code of conduct. Additional information and answers to previously asked questions can be found in the Program’s Supplemental Notes. These materials are not intended to introduce new requirements or criteria. Links to both the Applicant Guidebook and the Supplemental Notes can be found at the ICANN New gTLD page.

Also available now are changes to the Applicant Support Program: limited financial assistance is offered to qualifying applicants. Through this program, applicants, especially from developing economies, have access to financial assistance in the form of an evaluation fee reduction and other in-kind or community pro bono services. The financial assistance element of the program will allow a limited number of qualifying applicants to pay a US $47,000 evaluation fee instead of the full USD $185,000. This fee reduction has been made possible because ICANN’s Board of Directors has dedicated USD $2,000,000 to the program. This is a seed fund to which other organizations can donate. In response to public comment, the draft program has been updated to increase availability of refunds, make the program available to certain trademark owners, and broaden the scope for those seeking to serve the public interest.

The necessary links can be found at ICANN’s New gTLD page.

The last day to register with the TAS is March 29. April 12 will be the final day ICANN will accept applications.

In a report from Reuters today, however, ICANN President Rod Beckstrom sought to re-assure the organizations that they’re “very sensitive to those concerns” and that they’d be “responding to that letter.” He adds, “If (those who registered the domain) have no rights to that term, then you’re in a very good position. So you don’t need to apply for the term for a top-level domain because you’re concerned that someone who has no rights might apply.”

Beckstrom might as well have just come out and told the U.N. to keep their shirt on.

His mildly insouciant rebuttal of the concerns isn’t completely invalid. In the same Reuters article, Beckstrom points out that on top of the likely preventive price tag of $185,000 to register a top-level domain, additional annual fees due to ICANN will inflate the cost of owning the domain name upwards of $400,000 over the first 10 years. Cybersquatting a web domain in order to get paid out a nice ransom from governments or businesses hardly seems like even a little bit of fun when you’ll be bleeding tons of money just to hold on to the top-level domain. Cybersquatters are opportunists that like to register these domain names in order to make profits, not simply cover the astronomical cost of registering the domain in the first place.

The U.N, IMF, other international organizations and all the businesses freaking out about the possibility of someone registering a site with their likeness really need to get to know they’re neighborhood scam artists a little better. Think more Wile E. Coyote and less Lex Luthor.

Still, as fun as it might be to register face.book or lexa.pro, those site pranks will cost you a cool $185,000 a pop.

That price tag might seem like a strong enough preventive measure to keep everyday buffoons from taking advantage of the names of corporations but the U.S. government is still wary of ICANN’s new offerings. Lawerence Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information for the Department of Commerce, met with representatives from several businesses to discuss ICANN’s decision. As Bloomberg puts it, “General Electric Co. (GE), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Coca-Cola Co. (KO) are among more than 40 companies that have joined with the Association of National Advertisers to oppose the expansion, saying it will increase costs for companies, confuse customers and create new risks of Internet fraud.”

In a letter to ICANN citing concerns of potential cybersquatting of websites including brand names and increased confusion among consumers, ANA President Robert D. Liodice wrote:

The ANA and its membership regard the Program as not merely unsupportable, but potentially disastrous — exacting outrageous fees and costs, requiring massive diversion of resources, and instituting an application, evaluation and dispute resolution process that is certain to lead to increased contention and costly federal and international legal action with no demonstrable benefit to businesses or consumers. These concerns are especially heightened in an economy that day by day continues to pose ever-increasing challenges and unprecedented uncertainties for businesses and consumers worldwide. Another layer of unnecessary and unjustifiable costs is the last thing the selling and buying public needs in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Corporations already patrol the Internet for websites that they believe violate trademarks. Additionally, they don’t want you getting your rocks off at the expense of their namesake. Just try visiting microsoft.xxx, facebook.xxx, apple.xxx, amazon.xxx, or even twitter.xxx. All of these URLs present visitors with the same message:

And yeah, you barely even need to take one guess as to who the owners of those respective domains might be. Corporations have a steady practice of snatching up websites that they have zero intention of using solely to prevent the URLs from being used by cybersquatters and shady businesses.

ICANN acknowledged all of the above concerns and stated that they’re “going to go slow” in divvying out the new URLs to applicants. Regardless, Reuters reports that “ICANN has no plans to delay rollout of the top level domain expansion, a goal that is to allow more innovation in website addresses and to open the space to the non-Latin alphabets. It has pledged a quick take-down for trademark violators under the new system.”

All said, it seems a little presumptuous of businesses to assume that the average Internet user would be duped by a site like facebook.xxx. Besides, who’s to say that apple.xx wouldn’t be a legitimate site? Maybe there’s an untapped market out there for people with antediluvian fetishes that such a URL would perfectly satisfy? Besides, it’s not just anybody that’s going to fork over nearly $200K in order to create such a website. As Mr. Liodice mentioned above, the U.S. economy is still in crisis and people might wanna hold onto that money for more meaningful purposes.

What do you think? Is this brand protection overkill or do these corporations have a fair complaint for protecting their brand? Add your comments to the discussion below.

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?

“I am incredibly proud of ICANN’s achievements throughout my tenure,” said Beckstrom. “In two short years we have advanced this organization to a new level of professionalism and productivity, and turned it into a genuinely multinational organization that will serve the world community long after my time here.”

“I can summarize my time here in four words: strong execution, great team building,” he said. “We have built a world-class executive team, and elevated ICANN’s stature through strategic relationships with governments, businesses, top technology firms and international organizations.”

Actually, his time there was summarized in about 35 bullet points in this list of accomplishments.

The announcement doesn’t really delve into why Beckstrom is stepping down, but there has been a fair amount of controversy over the new ICANN gTLD program. The Association of National Advertisers, which is made up of 400 companies representing over 10,000 brands, as well as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is made up of over 500 media and tech companies, which it claims are responsible for 86% of online advertising in the U.S., have spoken out against the program.

The IAB says it could be “disastrous” to brand owners, and that it would “offer cyber squatters an opportunity to harm a brand’s integrity and/or profit greatly from their bad faith domain registrations.”

ICANN has defended against such notions, insisting that it “should not infringe the existing legal rights of others.”

More on this discussion here.

Beckstrom’s term will be completed on July 1. He’s held the position since July 1, 2009. In the meantime, he says, “I remain committed to leading this critical organization with the utmost
dedication, and to living up to our common vision: One world, one Internet.”

ICANN will start accepting applications for new gTLDs on January 12, 2012, with the application period will run until April. They’re expected to roll out late next year.

This year, Internet domain name overlords ICANN have made two important votes – first, they decided to lift almost all restrictions on generic top-level domains (gTLDs). This means that along with your basic .com, .gov, and .net, private citizens and companies are soon going to be able to register almost anything they want – .josh, .Pepsi, or .food.

Some organizations are speaking out against this decision, saying that it could lead to disaster for brand owners.

ICANN is set to start accepting applications for new gTLDs in January of 2012. The second big decision made by ICANN this year is set to go into effect much sooner. The age of dot-xxx is upon us. Although the official “sunrise” registration period doesn’t kick off until September 7th, domain operator ICM Registry is accepting early applications from organizations who wish to control their names.

It took ICM Registry over 10 years to finally convince ICANN to allow the .xxx domain. And with the new adult domain on the horizon, companies are going into defensive mode. According to Reuters, ICM Registry has received over 900,000 requests already from companies that want to preregister a .xxx domain.

Many are doing this to block others from snatching up the domains in the future. For instance, a company like Stanley Steamer or Coke would want to register StanleySteamer.xxx and Coke.xxx – not to use the sites but to make sure others do not. You don’t want grandma doing a Google search and stumbling on something that’s going to turn her off Coke forever.

MTV has apparently already requested domains like spongebob.xxx and others to prevent cybersquatting. They have no plans to actually operate the site, however.

But one high-profile organization does. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is planning on not only registering PETA.xxx, but actually running it as a pornography site. According to Reuters, they will use the new .xxx porn site to “draw attention to the plight of animals.”

Of course, this shouldn’t be too surprising. PETA has been asking celebs to strip down in support of their cause for years. Their “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign has featured notable celebs, all in the buff. A whole site dedicated to this type of advertising seems quite logical.

Yesterday, GoDaddy announced their pricing scheme for the new .xxx domains. Early registers will need to shell out $210 at first and then $100 each year in renewal costs.

PETA will probably attempt to avoid GoDaddy, however, as the two companies haven’t exactly see eye to eye in recent months. PETA called for a boycott of GoDaddy after their CEO Bob Parsons killed an elephant and threw the video online. It doesn’t look like it worked, however, as GoDaddy registrations actually went up following the elephant killing.

Would you visit a porn site run by PETA? Let us know in the comments.

Are the new domains a good idea? Tell us what you think.

ICANN is to start accepting applications for new gTLDs on January 12, 2012. The application period will run until April. They’re expected to roll out late next year.

The IAB, however, is calling on ICANN to withdraw this plan, saying it will cause “incalculable financial damage to brand owners, including the hundreds of media brands in its membership.”

The plan would allow brands to apply for domains that end in their name. Like “.webpronews” or “.pepsi” and so on. However, it would also open the door for cyber squatting, according to the IAB, as well as include what the organization calls “exorbitant fees for web publishers and brand marketers.”

The plan, the IAB says, would “come at an extremely high cost to publishers and advertisers, and would also offer ‘cyber squatters’ an opportunity to harm a brand’s integrity and/or profit greatly from their bad-faith domain registrations.”

IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg said, “ICANN’s potentially momentous change seems to have been made in a top-down star chamber. There appears to have been no economic impact research, no full and open stakeholder discussions, and little concern for the delicate balance of the Internet ecosystem. This could be disastrous for the media brand owners we represent and the brand owners with which they work. We hope that ICANN will reconsider both this ill-considered decision and the process by which it was reached.”

IAB – Interactive Advertising BureauThe IAB today called on ICANN to withdraw its controversial new domain-naming plan. Why their plan could be disastrous to media brand owners: http://ow.ly/63vMs 4 hours ago · 3 likes · 0 comments

The IAB’s words follow a similar campaign from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Earlier this month, ANA President and CEO Robert Liodice published a letter to ICANN President Rod Beckstrom outlining the organization’s concerns. In the letter, he says the plan is economically unsupportable, and likely to cause irreparable harm and damage.”

The ANA is made up up over 400 companies, which represent over 10,000 brands.

“At the same time, the Program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardizes the safety of consumers,” the letter continued. “By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the Program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace. Brand confusion, dilution, and other abuse also poses risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft, and cyber security breaches. The decision to go forward with the Program also clearly violates sound public policy and constitutes a breach of ICANN’s own Code of Conduct and its undertakings with the United States Department of Commerce as most recently embodied in the Affirmation of Commitments.”

You can read it in its entirety here. Its a 9-page document.

Are these concerns overblown?

Sean Callahan at BtoB quotes Forrester Research analyst Jeff Ernst as saying, “It is too early to tell how big the malicious threat is. $185,000 is a lot of money to spend for a cybersquatter compared to a $10 dot-com domain name at GoDaddy.”

Beckstrom responded to Liodice’s letter, saying, “The June 2011 decision to proceed with the program followed six years of inclusive policy development and implementation planning,” and “One clear directive of the consensus policy advice on which the program is built is that TLDs should not infringe the existing legal rights of others. The objection process and other safeguards eliminate the need for ‘defensive’ gTLD applications because, where an infringement of legal rights can be established using these processes, an application will not be approved.”

Liodice responded to the response, saying, “We are not surprised by ICANN’s response although disappointed that ICANN chose to defend its process and deny any doubt as to consensus. Rather, ICANN needs to respond to the real concern from the brand owner community. There is no question that this Program will increase brand owners’ costs by billions of dollars. We should not be debating if 40 or 45 comment periods were held; instead, ICANN should be justifying its economic analysis regarding the Program against the staggering costs to brands. ANA welcomes further discussions and an opportunity for further economic study to quantify the need for more TLDs and what it will mean for industry and other stakeholders, such as the public interest community who will face the same brand dilution concerns.”

ANA’s General Counsel Doug Wood of Reed Smith LLP added, “Now is not the time for either side to ‘dig in its heels’ much less defend the process, especially in a depressed economy. ANA has raised real concerns regarding economic losses, brand dilution and resultant privacy / cyber-security harms. In light of our shared goals of a safe and stable global Internet, ICANN should return to the negotiating table and work with all concerned parties, including the ANA and its members, to resolve brand owners’ legitimate concerns in a manner consistent with ICANN’s consensus obligations.”

What do you think? Do you have concerns over ICANN’s plan or are these organizations overreacting? Share your thoughts.

In a split vote, the ICANN voted to give porn sites a new home on the web. .XXX saw a long and hard battle to become a reality. It was first proposed in 2000, resubmitted in 2004, approved and then rejected in 2006, looked over in 2007 and finally approved in 2010. With each proposal, .XXX was met with opposition from conservative groups like the Family Research Council. Initially, the porn industry opposed the new domain as well, saying that it would put their industry at risk for regulation and censorship.

The initial proposition for the .XXX domain was made by ICM Registry, a registry operator sponsored by the International Foundation for Online Responsibility. When the .XXX domain was finally approved this year, ICM won the opportunity to manage it.

The new domain will be available starting on September 7th. They will cost roughly $75 a year, a rate much higher than most .com domains. It has been reported that during the initial registering period, the .XXX domains will cost much more, however, possibly even $650.

Now, according to the Register, .XXX sites will be getting their own search engine.

They talked to ICM Registry President Stuart Lawley who confirmed that the new destination, search.XXX, will index all of the porn found at .XXX addresses. Initially, the search engine will draw from about a dozen “premium” .XXX sites. It will be aided by ads and sponsorship, according to Lawley.

Of course, major search engines like Google and Bing will also index the new .xxx sites, but history has shown us that porn and Google isn’t always a match made in heaven.

Here’s what ICM has to say about the benefits of the .XXX domains –

As a trusted brand, customer confidence will be very high resulting in more traffic, greater repeat traffic, and, perhaps most importantly, greater conversion into paying customers. Holders of .XXX domains will also benefit from global marketing campaigns and greater awareness in the mainstream world. Additionally ICM is developing a traffic generation search portal for .XXX sites that will be promoted internationally leading to immediate new traffic to .XXX domains for new registrants.

The adult industry isn’t convinced. According to the Register –

Existing porn companies with large portfolios of domains in other extensions are concerned that they will be forced to spend thousands on defensive registrations or risk being cybersquatted.

Some porn publishers are also worried that .xxx domains carry the risk that ICM’s policy-setting body, IFFOR (International Foundation for Online Responsibility) may create draconian new rules that will damage their businesses in future.

ICM Registry is now in the process of finding “technology partners” for its upcoming search engine.

Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are currently limited to 22 across the internet. They include your basic .com, .org and .net as well as some more specific endings you have probably seen around the interwebs like .uk and .eu.

Now, the ICANN will be lifting almost all the restrictions on gTLDs.

Not only will domain registers be able to choose almost any word in the English language, but the ICANN will also approve domain names in any sort of characters – like Cyrillic or Kanji.

The implications of this decision are far-reaching, as not only will products and trademarks become suitable gTLDs, but so will basic, generic words. Large corporations are no doubt already scrambling to figure out strategies for the new domain names. Some of the first of these new gTLDs you see may very well be ones like .coke, .apple or even product names like .camry or .bigmac.

Or what about the generic terms? Which companies will be the first ones to register domains like .computer, .phone or .car? Imagine all the restaurants who would love to grab .food. TacoBell.food? McDonalds.food?

It will most likely be corporations filing for these new domain names, as there will be a charge of $185,000 to apply. This high cost should prevent your average Joe from just collecting inventive domain names.

“Today’s decision will usher in a new Internet age,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors. “We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.”

Not everyone agrees with this sunny outlook of creativity. According to Reuters, the lone dissenter in the vote has some major concerns about the lifting of restrictions. Dengate Thrush thinks that more time is needed to discuss the plan with government officials. He is afraid that something like .nazi could incense some groups around the world.

Nevertheless, ICANN will start accepting applications for these new gTLDs on January 12th, 2012. This application period will run until April 12th.

I, for one, am curious to see just how creative these gTLDs can be. I can only imagine the interesting ones that will emerge from the XXX world.