FTC 'very, very concerned' about new gTLD program

The Federal Trade Commission's chairman Jon Leibowitz launched an unexpected broadside against ICANN and its new gTLD program earlier today, stating that the FTC was "very, very concerned" about the program and that it has "the potential to be a disaster for consumers and for businesses".

The remarks came during a hearing by the House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet, held just one day before a Senate hearing into the program.

Leibowitz was responding to a question by stand-in Committee chair Bob Goodlatte who noted that the question had nothing to do with Leibowitz's written testimony, or the purpose of the hearing, which was titled "Oversight of the Antitrust Enforcement Agencies".

FTC's Leibowitz: Slams ICANN but did he know what he was talking about?

Goodlatte noted that the issue of identifying domain name owners was something that "causes harm and hampers law enforcement in efforts in the case of Internet fraud and consumer deception" and asked Leibowitz for his opinion on the rollout of potentially thousands of new Internet extensions starting next month.

Leibowitz responded that the Commission was "very, very concerned that this roll-out of new gTLDs has the potential to be a disaster for consumers and for businesses" and explained this was due to the fact the 'Whois' information for domains was frequently inaccurate, making it hard for law enforcement to deal with criminals on the Internet.

The inclusion of hundreds more extensions would make the situation "exponentially worse", said Leibowitz.

He also raised the issue of defensive registrations as a "burden on businesses" and the specter of thousands of phishing sites: "How many different ways can you spell the word 'Marriott'?"

The FTC sees "enormous costs here to consumers and businesses and not a lot of benefit". He noted in a follow-up by Goodlatte that the Commission would be "talking directly to ICANN... in the not-too-distant future" about the issue.

Lofgren question

However, Leibowitz came to the defense of ICANN later on in the hearing in a follow-up question by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (who we've previously identified as one of the few people in Congress that understand how the Internet works at the technical level).

Asked how he was accounting for the fact that ICANN represents a far better option in terms of Internet governance and consumer protection that an Internet run by the United Nations (specifically Lofgren mentioned the Chinese government), Leibowitz noted: "I don't mean to disparage ICANN itself. I think they do a lot of very good things. And Internet Governance has a lot of different dimensions as you point out. Our concern is on our consumer-protection side. If there is a major rollout of gTLDs without accurate information."

What does it mean?

The attack by Leibowitz was unexpected. But it had been clearly communicated to him before the hearing as he had a prepared response to a question which had little or nothing to do with the hearing's main issues (which were current anti-trust issues over AT&T, pharmaceutical companies, and the closures of four anti-trust branches across the US, among other things).

As a result, the FTC clearly reached out to its contacts and then relayed, almost verbatim, the arguments that continue to put forward by the IP lobby and ANA.

Leibowitz was most comfortable when focussed on the issue of Whois (domain registrant data) - which has been a policy headache for over a decade - and was vague about what the FTC was planning to do: it will talk to ICANN directly in the "not-too-distant future" he promised.

The big question is whether the current anti-gTLD feeling in Washington - which has been fed for several months by the ANA campaign - is just another Washington DC piece of political intrigue that will pass as soon as a juicier topic arrives, or whether minds have started being focussed on the issues, in which case we can expect to see continued resistance to the program.

ICANN failing badly

Unfortunately for advocates of the plan to expand the Internet's naming system beyond the 22 current generic top level domains, ICANN has, yet again, been caught on the hop.

Despite a Senate hearing on the new gTLD program tomorrow, CEO Rod Beckstrom has gone AWOL for a second time and is currently in Beijing announcing a new vice-president of Asia. Senior VP Kurt Pritz will answer questions in his place.

The fact that Washington remains so hostile to ICANN and that the organization has failed to make political headway in Congress despite having opened an office in the capital over four years ago and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists in that time, is also a poor reflection on Beckstrom and in particular his vice president of government affairs, Jamie Hedlund.

The counter-arguments to the IP lobby are well-known in ICANN circles as the issues themselves have been argued over extensively for a number of years. And the Whois problem is finally on the road to be tackled (a review of the issue with some highly practical solutions has just been published).

However, while ICANN continues to insist that it is "only a steward of the process" in an effort to stay out of the debate, it continues to loss credibility in the eyes of Congress, the wider world and its own constituencies.

It paints a dismal picture for the hearing tomorrow.