It’s D-Day for ICANN Comments

Want to speak your mind? Today’s the day.

If you have an opinion (and you ought to) regarding the second draft of ICANN’s plans to inundate the web with more top level domain names, today is the deadline to submit comments.

As was the case last time, major corporations are waiting until the last day to submit comments. So far the trend seems to be that firms are saying “we submitted comments last time, you did nothing regarding them, so please refer to our previous comments”.

Moments ago comments from Time Warner were published. Among the firm’s comments was a criticism of ICANN’s two whitewash white papers, which I believe ICANN is trying to use in place of a full economic study of the need for fresh top level domain names. Time Warner thinks the same thing:

A second “overarching issue” is labeled “TLD Demand and Economic Analysis.” As of April 10, the only action identified by ICANN to address this issue is the issuance in March of two papers on consumer welfare and price caps. These fall far short of what is needed, which is a comprehensive economic analysis that helps ICANN identify how to structure the rollout of fresh TLDs in a manner and at a pace that is most likely to result in increased competition and consumer choice. Some of the criteria for such a comprehensive study were outlined in an October 2006 ICANN Board resolution, which called for such a study to be commissioned. It is striking that this has apparently never occurred. The papers released in March clearly did not fulfill the requirements set by the Board over two years ago; nor did they even purport to do so.

Striking, indeed.

Submit comments by sending an email to [email protected].