Launch Another Attack on .Jobs Registry — Job Boards

Monster, CareerBuilder, and others write open letter to ICANN.

The .Jobs Charter Compliance Coalition, whose membership consists of online job boards, has sent an “open letter” to ICANN regarding Employ Media’s request for arbitration over .jobs.

The Coalition states that its letter is to “address the Request’s numerous inconsistencies, omissions and mischaracterizations” in Employ Media’s request for arbitration.

The letter states:

The Coalition believes that Employ Media simply cannot provide any reasonable response that would explain away the indisputable fact that the Charter does not permit the operation of job boards that advertise job openings for multiple employers. The Charter clearly envisions internal human resource management personnel utilizing .JOBS domains exclusively for their own firms and organizations. The .JOBS domain was not meant as a forum for Employ Media and its conspiring alliance partner DirectEmployers Association (“DirectEmployers”) to operate a massive job board – which is exactly what the Dot Jobs Universe represents. The registration of tens of thousands of second-level domain names by one bulk registrant for this improper purpose is entirely inconsistent with both the intent of the .JOBS TLD and ICANN’s policies, and represents a terrible precedent for the anticipated launch of the fresh gTLD initiative.

I think this is true, although it also seems to me that ICANN’s board gave the green light to Employ Media to go forward with its universe.jobs initiative. Someone (or an entire board) was asleep at the wheel there.

The group also points out how Employ Media completely disregarded the charter by starting universe.jobs without permission. Employ Media later called it a “beta test”:

The beta test utilized noncompanyname domain name designations when that practice was clearly prohibited at the time by the Registry Agreement. Although Employ Media portrays the beta test as an experiment taken in the best interests of the .JOBS community, the more accurate explanation is that both Employ Media and DirectEmployers were conspiring to develop methods to monetize the .JOBS TLD to their own financial advantage.

You can read the full letter here (pdf).