Following criticisms from two American advertising associations of the ICANN proposal for new generic Top Level Domains, two more advertising groups, one on each side of the Atlantic, have come out voicing their criticisms. In the US, three groups – the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and most recently the American Association of Advertising Agencies(4A) – have come out strongly against the plan. And in the UK the Direct Marketing Association has added its voice the chorus. However it would appear they have left it too late. Chris Combemale, executive director of the DMA UK, said that “the creation of new internet real estate will come at a cost to businesses that could outweigh any potential benefits.” “Creating a tranche of new internet domain names will be extremely costly to businesses. As well as the associated costs of registering new domain names and spending money to attract customers to multiple domains, businesses face the legal and financial headache of having to contend with cybersquatters grabbing specific domains. “Customised domain names won’t offer brands any enhanced marketing possibilities because consumers can easily search for specific information with the current domain name system.” Combemale adds: “Companies are already hard pressed to find cost savings in these tough trading times; adding a further financial burden that won’t reap any commercial benefits cannot be justified.” DMA UK say they will respond formerly to ICANN with a request to revise or withdraw its new rules. Meanwhile back in the US, 4A complained about the new gTLD plans saying that “if adopted [new gTLDs] would allow applicants to claim virtually any word, generic or branded as a domain name, resulting in confusion of brand identity and dilution of brand history and value.” “We are very disappointed in the position taken by ICANN concerning the assignment and sale of new domain names,” said 4A’s President and CEO Nancy Hill. “These changes would cost brand owners billions of dollars, severely, if not irreparably, diluting the value of trusted and respected brand names, as well as abrogate the good work 4A’s members have done on behalf of their clients.” “All marketers share the goal of a stable global marketplace, served by an Internet system that consumers can rely on to accurately reflect the quality and history of a product or service. ICANN’s actions would remove that trust and place consumers at a significant disadvantage in making marketplace choices and decisions.” The complaints by the advertisers have been aired many times and dealt with by ICANN. ICANN has been consulting with intellectual property groups, people involved in domain names including potential applicants, lawyers and anyone else who is interested for over five years, yet the American, and now British, advertising groups have seemingly only just realised the significance of the changes. Not only that, as Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s CEO and President, pointed out in a letter to the ANA in 2008 the ANA had complained to ICANN about new gTLDs, something seemingly overlooked by the ANA in their complaints. With ICANN board having approved the applicant guidebook at its Singapore meeting in June, and having announced a three month application window commencing 12 January, it would appear that advertising associations on both sides of the Atlantic have been asleep at the wheel.

One must wonder what America’s Association of National Advertisers has been doing for the last five years or so. As ICANN has been consulting about the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains, they have seemingly said nothing. Not a peep. Well, not until July this year anyway. And then it becomes a flood. And now a letter to ICANN’s CEO and President Rod Beckstrom where the ANA criticises ICANN for its lack of a bottom-up input process involving the global Internet community, insufficient research and guidance from expert authorities, inadequate oversight by the U.S. Department of Commerce and potentially disastrous consequences if the program is implemented in January 2012, as planned. While ICANN’s process has not been without criticism, it’s difficult to take seriously the ANA’s comments. I mean, what were all those ICANN meetings, the long drawn out process that has gone close to pushing to the limit some of the early parties interested in new gTLDs. The ANA argues that implementation of the ICANN program is economically unsupportable and is likely to cause irreparable harm and damage to its membership and the Internet business community in general. At the same time, according to the ANA, the program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardises the safety of consumers. “By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the ICANN top-level domain program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace,” says Bob Liodice, President and CEO, ANA. “Brand confusion, dilution and other abuses also pose risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft and cyber security breaches. The decision to go forward with the program also violates sound public policy and contravenes ICANN’s Code of Conduct and its undertakings with the United States Department of Commerce.” So OK, the ANA raises some points, but points that have been debated interminably. And where was the ANA? Apparently not at the meetings and now they have woken up and demand the process be stopped. Give me a break. The ANA is a professional organisation that, so they say has more than 400 companies as members, representing in excess of 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing, communications and advertising each year, presumably in the US. So with all these members and all this support, why have they only now woken up to the new gTLD process? To read more of the ANA’s criticisms and a link to their letter, see the news release on their website at www.ana.net/content/show/id/21790 .

Centralnic’s GB.COM is no longer pointing to their nameservers reports Michele Neylon on his Internet News website. Neylon also says that any domains in the zone are now being wildcarded to the main GB.COM website. Upon going to the GB.COM website, the following notice is posted: Welcome to the GB.com site You may be here because you have been sold a domain or email service using the gb.com domain that has ceased to work. You can restore that service swiftly by registering with GB.COM Ltd. GB.COM Ltd will not provide a service that you have paid others for, unless they have an arrangement with GB.COM Ltd. If you have already paid for future service and it has ceased then you should contact your supplier. If you have any queries please send us an email and we will endeavour to answer your questions. GB.COM Ltd. In response, CentralNic have posted the following notice on their website: Notice Regarding GB.COM Domains Unfortunately, the service we have been providing for domains ending .gb.com has been interrupted. We apologize for any inconvenience – the interruption was effected without warning by a third party and was out of our control. We are currently taking legal advice about this and will be taking urgent steps to restore the service. But we cannot achieve that instantly. In the interim we are taking every action possible to ensure that .gb.com websites continue to function during the temporary period before our service is restored, to mitigate any losses to our clients. Neylon, who manages registrar Blacknight Solutions , did a bit of poking around in Whois records and found the nameservers for GB.COM were switched away from CentralNic over to Bytemark earlier on the day in question. Neylon further notes that all the other Whois records seem to be unchanged. On his posting, Neylon notes several updates from CentralNic with the final one being from one of CentralNic’s staff stating: We have started creating accounts with Gb.com Ltd for our registrars, and registering their domains into them. Although we don’t believe that Gb.com Ltd has any right to do what they’ve done, we feel that this is the best course of action to get our registrant’s domains working, until we can resolve the legal issue and bring gb.com back onto our registry infrastructure. We are working in descending size order, so the largest registrar portfolios are being cleared first. As we are having to use a screen-scraping script to submit the information, it’s a slow process, taking 4-5 seconds per domain. We have already registered those domains that are directly registered with us, with no registrar. For further updates and additional information, see Michele Neylon’s Internet News blog at: www.internetnews.me/2011/07/30/centralnics-gb-com-in-dispute-gb-com-now-wildcarded

04|21|2011 11:45 am EDT RightHaven.com Taken Down for Invalid Whois by Frank Michlick in Categories: Legal Issues – 0 Comments Tags: Tags: godaddy , Invalid Whois , Righthaven .

Abstract: This article examines the legal and political effects of the “Affirmation of Commitments” between the United States Department of Commerce and ICANN. The agreement purports to recast the public-private relationship at the heart of the management of the DNS. The DOC surrendered its most formal and visible legal control over ICANN – but kept some less visible powers

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Roger Cleveland Golf Company, Inc. (“Cleveland® Golf/Srixon®”) won a landmark legal victory with a jury verdict last week and entry of judgment in South Carolina federal district court in a first-of-its kind trademark infringement case

The announcement this week from ICANN that Employ Media, operators of the .JOBS gTLD, are in breach of their Registry Agreement has been quickly rebuked by the registry. In an announcement, Employ Media say they “view the substance of this notice to be a surprising reversal of position and contradictory to prior decisions issued by its Board of Directors. Further, we find the claims contained in the Notice to be utterly without merit.