ICANN

I have largely been quiet on ICANN related issues on my blog and in personal conversations I’ve had with other domain investors. Truth be told, I know about how ICANN works and what their role is as it relates to domain names, but I have very limited knowledge about the internal politics at ICANN and the history of the organization.

Whenever I see photos of ICANN events, I see a group of people who look much different than typical domain investors, and that is because they are much different. This is neither here nor there, but I feel very disconnected with ICANN, much like I am disconnected with my local politicians. Sure, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Schumer, Governor Patterson and countless other local politicians work to draft and approve legislation that will impact me, but I am not going to spend thousands of dollars lobbying and hundreds of hours becoming active in the community when the threat of any legislation will probably be minimal.

I am 100% in agreement with Mike Bekens that domain investors either don’t know or don’t care enough about ICANN. Sure, some of their policies may impact my bottom line, but honestly, whether I pay $7.60 or $10.00 for a domain registration, it won’t be impactful enough for me to spend a whole lot of time or money thinking about it. For my business, I work 15 hours a day developing my websites, negotiating to buy and sell domains, and contacting small businesses to sell advertising. With my 200+/- domain names, even a 50% increase in registration fee will cost under $1,000 per year. Even if they approve a pricing structure like .tv, it will be impactful, but the 10-15 names of mine that would be impacted aren’t worth the time and effort for me (at least in my opionion).

I also understand the potential impact of the vanity TLDs that may be approved by ICANN. However, I think companies like Verizon and Microsoft have much more to lose if/when this happens. I just don’t see a reason to spend time on this when they are fighting on the same team as me on this battle (and they are fighting). I also don’t think other extensions will have much of an impact on my holdings. If .xyz becomes the prominent extension, I will adapt my business model to make sure I am not falling behind.

Sure, this line of thinking could bite me in the ass, but I have to manage the day to day operations of my business more than outside factors. I think the Internet Commerce Association and its activities are very helpful to the domain investment community, and I will continue to support them.   I happen to think my risk exposure to some current ICANN initiatives are less important than managing my business at this point.

I will continue to listen to people like Mike (who I have the utmost respect for), and when he discusses an issue I will listen and take the time to think about the impact.   Mike is dead-on about most domain-related issues, and I support him 100% of the time.   With ICANN, I feel like the current issues will have minimal impact on my business.   Now I think the potential issue of ICANN changing jurisdiction will be impactful, but again, I think other huge corporations and the US Government will end up locking horns on that issue.

I do urge people to read up on ICANN and determine the impact it will have on their domain investments and on their business.

Much talk has been had about the new ‘top level’ domains that were approved by ICANN today in Paris. This ruling will allow companies, groups, and individuals to petition ICANN to create new “Vanity TLDs,” (term coined by David Castello) which in my opinion will end up creating considerable confusion among consumers and huge costs to companies who need to protect their trademarks. This is good news for people who have been working to pass this in an effort to launch new extensions (renewal fees), and it is also good news for .com owners, as the more extensions are created, the more consumers will navigate back to the familiar .com.

Over the past few years, many new extensions have been created – some of which I hadn’t heard of until reading up on this. Included in the list of “newer” but obviously less-used include .pro, .biz, .travel, .mobi, .asia, .jobs, .museum…etc. The entire list of current TLD can be found on ICANN’s website. In terms of usage by consumers, I don’t think there are any websites with these extensions currently in the top 20,000 websites according to Alexa (correct me if I am wrong).

With all the .com branding that’s been done by companies telling consumers to visit their .com website, I highly doubt many will jump at the opportunity to spend upwards of $100,000 to apply for a corporate Vanity TLD (vTLD), and then spend millions of dollars convincing consumers to use it. Sure, some will try it, but if nothing else, it will probably end up watering down their brand and confuse consumers.

Although ICANN is supposedly prohibiting TM-related extensions except for companies that own the TM, companies like Amazon and Apple are almost forced to spend the $100,000 application fee since one could argue that their company name is generic and not protected. Since ICANN plans to auction Vanity TLDs that have multiple bidders, Apple could conceivable pay much more to get .apple so Apple Bank or an apple grower can’t take it.

Here is an example of why using Vanity TLD will pose a problem for companies and even non-trademark related uses. Let’s use Ebay for a second. Sure, it would be cool if they had Art.Ebay, Autographs.Ebay, SportsMemorabilia.Ebay…etc. Great, right? Well, what happens when consumers confusingly type in SportsMemorabiliaEbay.com by mistake? This is going to create hundreds of thousands of additional typos, which will most certainly be grabbed by cybersquatters. While this sucks for Ebay, they are going to have to spend millions of dollars going after these cybersquatters to avoid the traffic run-off. Same thing with any other Vanity TLD. People will assume its .com.

The .com has worked for many years, and it won’t be negatively impacted. These new Vanity TLD will give people the opportunity to buy strong keywords in various extensions, but it won’t likely change web browsing habits. Companies who want to be serious will still use .com, and the values will increase as more people come online.

There are plenty of people on both sides of the fence regarding the proposal to add various TLD to the domain space. Companies, cities, and other individuals with enough financial backing may be able to apply for their own TLD. The impact on the domain industry, SEO, IP enforcement, TM protection…etc. constituencies will be enormous in some good and bad ways.
To form your own opinion, I invite you to read posts and blogs covering this topic from a few friends in the industry:   Be sure to check out Kevin’s opinion, Mike’s opinion, and Anthony’s blog for more information about this.