Howard Berman

FTC and Congressmen argue for new gTLD scale-back

by Kieren McCarthy | 17 Dec 2011 |

Political pressure to delay or limit the program for potentially thousands of new Internet extensions has further increased with not one but two highly critical letters from the US establishment.

Writing to the organization responsible for the program, ICANN, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has produced a searing indictment of the organization's failure to tackle authentication issues with the domain name system over the course of a decade. It "urges" ICANN to introduce a "pilot program" rather than proceed with a full rollout in January.

A second letter sent to Commerce Secretary John Bryson from two House representatives - Congressman Bob Goodlatte and Congressman Howard Berman - also asks for a limited pilot program, this time arguing that it is needed to prevent widespread trademark infringement.

The two letters come following a tumultuous week for ICANN in Washington.

Goodlatte/Berman letter to Commerce over new gTLDs

The following letter was written three days after a House hearing on new gTLDs and within a heavy Washington DC atmosphere regarding intellectual property and the Internet, most notably in the drafting of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington DC 20515

December 16. 2011

The Honorable John Bryson
Secretary
Department of Commerce
1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20230

Dear Mr. Secretary:

We write to express serious concerns about the decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to dramatically expand the number of generic Top Level Domain names (gTLDs) without adequate review of the impact of a full implementation.

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