All the things ICANN failed to think about before launching new gTLDs

When ICANN decided to do internet domain name public policy based primarily on the competing private, profit-making motives of  registry applicants who could "pay to play" at the rate of $185,000 per new gTLD, with limited input from mostly self-selected so-called multi-stakeholders who collectively form the "junket culture" within ICANN, or as some call it, the "gravy train," as ICANN has done with its new gTLDs domain names program, and in the process completely disregard the public interest -- ignoring objections and warnings from governments, businesses, trademark holders, and others -- ICANN should at least have thought through all of the ramifications, pitfalls, conflicts, and other problems now resulting. Instead, thanks to ICANN, we now have a multi-million-dollar boondoggle and corruption of the internet domain name space. Here's just one example, of many, of the disaster ICANN has created as a result of its new gTLDs process --

https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/roussos-to-crocker-et-al-01jul14-en.pdf (pdf)

240 pages all about just one new gTLD! Multiply that times 1300+ (the total number of new gTLDs to be launched in the "first phase") and you begin to get an idea of the magnitude of chaos and confusion ICANN has irresponsibly unleashed on the global Internet community. There was a better way and there is no excuse nor justification for what ICANN has done. ICANN, its Board of Directors, staff, and all others responsible, should be held accountable. But ICANN is "a monopolistic, hardly accountable private organisation that exercises public authority and power," with no membership and controlled by an "unelected, self-interested, self-legitimised corporate board, answerable, when it really comes down to it, only to itself." The remedy therefore is to replace ICANN.


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Slate: ICANN's "new gTLDs are a solution in search of a problem, a multi-million-dollar boondoggle"

Marc Naimark, a "LGBTQ activist with a particular interest in sport and the internet," has written several articles in Slate about ICANN's new gTLD domain names program, particularly about .gay, and .lgbt. His latest article is at the link below (excerpt follows, emphasis added):

dotHIV: Can the new .hiv domain turn ICANN's boondoggle into an opportunity to do good?: "“You are creating a business, like derivatives on Wall Street, that has no value,” Esther Dyson, the founding chairwoman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, once said about ICANN's project to create hundreds of new generic top level domains, known as gTLDs. Aside from the opportunity to use non-Latin alphabets, the new gTLDs are a solution in search of a problem, a multi-million-dollar boondoggle, generating income of more than $300 million in ICANN application fees alone. (Paradoxically, this may result in only minimal net revenue for the corporation.) That sum does not include the operating costs of the hundreds of applicants seeking to become the registry for a given gTLD ... nor the ongoing costs to brand owners, who are already seeing the negative consequences they feared at the launch of the program. These new gTLDs offer real risks to the LGBTQ community. I have written here and here  about the travails of dotgay LLC in its attempts to secure the .gay gTLD. After granting a commercial operator the rights to .lgbt, ICANN will soon decide whether dotgay LLC's community priority application will succeed for .gay, or whether the string will be awarded to the highest bidder for purely commercial operation. If the latter comes to pass, both .gay and .lgbt, the two names under consideration of the greatest interest to the LGBTQ community, will be operated solely to benefit commercial interests, with no protection against possible abuse of these names, no community involvement, and no funds returning to the community. But there is a third gTLD that also concerns many in the LGBTQ community: .hiv. It has enjoyed a much better fate than .gay and offers some good from the ill wind ICANN has been blowing on the web...." (read more at link above)


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