The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy held a hearing yesterday on the potential rollout of new TLDs and how such a rollout would affect competition. At start of the hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers made a very good point—this is not a hearing that Congress should have had to pull together. As Steve DelBianco (Executive Director at NetChoice and a witness at the hearing) pointed out, if ICANN was working properly, there would be no need for Congressional intervention. Unfortunately, ICANN is broken and needs to be fixed if there is to be hope for a safe, stable and flourishing Internet in the future.
Just how broken is ICANN? Check out CADNA’s Top Ten list of things wrong with the organization. The Coalition has gotten positive feedback on this evaluation thus far- what are your thoughts?
Last week, when I attended Rep. Boucher’s congressional hearing on the relationship between Internet governing body ICANN and the U.S. government, I was encouraged to see how many representatives are informed on this topic and are looking to get at the source of the cybersquatting problem.
There’s a great opportunity here- Congress is listening. Concerned about their constituents, congressional members are looking to better understand Internet governance, how it is broken and what can be done to fix it. Brand owners, used to bearing the burden of policing the space, now have a sympathetic (and powerful) ear.
As government leaders are educating themselves on domain name abuse, brand owners need to be vocal about their experiences. By providing an accurate representation of the domain name landscape as it exists today, brand owners can show policy makers the magnitude of the problems that they are facing and spur action in the national arena.