The notion of “implicit” policy is anathema to a body whose legitimacy depends on open, transparent, and participatory decision-making. But in reality, the paper presented a slanted and one-sided history of the issue, suggesting incorrectly that closed generics were “implicitly” allowed under previous ICANN policies. It claimed to be a “framing paper” on the proposed dialogue. The Board’s letter was followed up a few days later by a paper from ICANN’s paid staff. The Board hasn’t voted on the issue, so it’s not clear how many members actually support moving forward. That’s where things sat until early this year, when the Chairman of the ICANN Board, out of the blue, asked two bodies who don’t normally make policy to conduct a “dialogue” on closed generics: the ICANN GNSO Council (which oversees community policymaking for generic TLDs) and the ICANN Government Advisory Committee (a group of government representatives which as its name indicates, only “advises”). Both the supporters and opponents of closed generics tried to find some middle ground, but there was none to be found that protected competition and prevented monopolization of basic words. but not one business.)Ī working group within the ICANN community continued to debate the “closed generics” issue, but the working group’s final report in 2020 made no recommendation. pharmacy are restricted to a particular kind of business. hyatt were given to the companies that own those brands as their exclusive domains, and some like. (Some TLDs that are non-generic brand names like. Representatives of domain name registrars, small businesses, non-commercial internet users, and even Microsoft urged ICANN to deny these applications.įortunately, ICANN heeded the public’s wishes, telling the applicants that they could operate these top-level domains only if they allowed others to register their own names within those domains. The outcry was fierce, and ICANN was flooded with public comments. Most of the applicants were among the largest players in their industries (like Amazon for. video, plus similar terms written in Chinese characters. In 2012, during the first round of applications to operate new gTLDs, some companies asked for complete, exclusive control over domains like. mil) to the 1,400 or so in use today, like. The context of this fight is the “new generic top-level domains” process, which expanded the list of “gTLDs” from the original six (.com. Closed Generics Rejected and Then Resurrected And for one additional reason-defenders of open competition and free expression should not have to fight the same battle a third time. This is a terrible idea, for all of the same reasons it has failed twice already. In a nutshell, closed generics are top-level domain names using common words, like “.car.” But unlike other TLDs like “.com,” a closed generic TLD is under the control of a single company, and that company controls all of the domain names within the TLD. Alas, ICANN (the California nonprofit that governs the global domain name system) seems intent on taking domains in a more absurd direction by revisiting the thoroughly discredited concept of “closed generics.” org, and so on) would follow the same obvious rule. We would find it preposterous if a single airline claimed exclusive use of the word “air,” or a broadband service tried to stop its rivals from using the word “broadband.” Until this year, it seemed settled that the internet’s top-level domain names (like. No business can own the generic word for the product it sells.
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