ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
has moved the deadline to accommodate "community concerns on
specific aspects of the program," it said.
When the proposal was announced last June, the plan had been to
begin to take applications to create new domains in the second
three months of 2009. Another delay was announced this March to
give brand holders time to express their concerns. ICANN has now
said that the whole process will take longer than expected, and a
third guidebook, which outlines how the system will work, will not
be published until autumn.
"The third version of the Guidebook is scheduled to be published
in early September; the comment period for that version will close
after the ICANN meeting in Seoul (25-30 October 2009)," said an
ICANN statement. "This timing enables the publication of the final
Guidebook and following a communications period, the acceptance of
applications in the first quarter of 2010."
Representatives of major companies have expressed concern at the
plan to make it much easier to register new domains because of the
potential for trade mark infringement and misrepresentation of
brands.
Companies already spent significant sums combating
cybersquatting and on so-called defensive registrations of their
trade marks, where they register names at new domains to stop them
falling into other people's hands.
John Mackenzie, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons, the law
firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, previously said that brand owners do not
want the new gTLDs.
"The people who stand to gain from the new bespoke domains are
typosquatters and those in the business of selling domain names –
the name registrars and registries. Most companies simply don't
need and don't want the new names," he said when an earlier delay
to the process was announced.
"When .eu launched, the European Commission said that the high
uptake showed the demand for the new domain. It showed nothing of
the sort. Companies bought the names because they felt they had to,
to stop their brands being weakened by parasites."
One web hosting and registrar company said, though, that brand
owners and trade mark holders were over-estimating the scale of the
problem, and that the creation of many new domains would benefit
companies.
"People are talking about this as if everybody is going to be
able to go out and get a domain, but that isn't true, there are
still major barriers – technical ones and financial ones," said
Michele Neylon, managing director of Blacknight Solutions.
"It costs $200,000 in ICANN fees to get a domain, then once you
have done your research and paid your running costs for two years
you are going to need $2 million to have one of these," said
Neylon. "And you will still have to demonstrate that you have the
stability to run a domain."
Trade mark owners only have rights to a term in relation to
specified areas of business. Neylon said that a proliferation of
domains would allow more holders of trade marks to have a domain
name that contained their actual trade mark.
"If lots of people have a term for different classes [areas of
business], there is still only one name. But if there are more
domains, more of them can have that name," he said.
Neylon said that it would be unfair if those trade mark holders
that objected to the system were given favourable treatment in
shaping it to their benefit.
"There are millions of internet users out there, why should a
subset of a subset be given preference?" he said.
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