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You
can stop calling Richard Gabriel now!
I had
been hearing rumors that Physicians.com was sold
for $250,000 earlier this week. That was
confirmed this morning when the buyer, Richard Gabriel,
called me and asked that I make the deal public so
people would stop calling him at all hours of the day
asking him if the rumors were true! As it happens
Gabriel was also on the other side of one of the year's
biggest deals last month. He was the seller of Auction.com,
a domain purchased by REDC for $1.7 million.
That is the third biggest sale reported so far in 2009. |
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Opposition
to ICANN's plan to flood the Internet with an
unlimited number of new gTLDs continues to build.
Yesterday, the International Olympic Committee put
ICANN on notice, stating that the IOC is
reserving the right to “take action against ICANN
for damages resulting to the IOC or the Olympic Movement
from the implementation of the gTLD proposal.” As word
of the ill-advised ICANN plan (that was widely
publicized by USA
Today and the Industry
Standard earlier this week) continues to
filter out I believe you are going to see a massive wave
of resistance develop in the months ahead.
I am
starting to get a gut feeling that, despite
ICANN's insistence that the rollout of new gTLDs is
going to happen, this flood of web flotsam and jetsam may
never materialize. Similar to previous "sure
things" that were derailed by public backlashes,
like Verisign's WLS (Wait List Service) and the .xxx
extension, a similar situation seems to be
developing here.
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You can have a
say in whether or not it does happen by
posting your opinions on this
page at ICANN.org, but you have to
hurry as the public commentary period ends Monday
(April 13). I know there is a widespread,
and from past history justified, feeling that
ICANN ignores the very commentary they solicit
and in the end does whatever they feel like
doing. Still, at the very least, you are helping
create a public record that in the long
run provides documentation of how well (or not
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well) the
organization has followed its own "ground
up" policy making procedures. That record
may well play a role in ICANN's own future as
overseer of the domain name system.
As Max Menius of
Greensboro, North Carolina noted in comments
he posted at ICANN today, "Pushing
this TLD fiasco on and on in the face of huge
opposition is going to threaten the stability
of the internet, and further undermine
the public's confidence in ICANN's
decision-making processes and loyalties. This
game of back-and forth "open
discussions" has played out." |
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Some
eloquent arguments have been made in the public
commentary thread and there is one in particular
that I think everyone should read, especially
those involved in any of the thousands of global
businesses that will be burdened with new,
unnecessary expenses to protect their brands and
marks in countless new extensions if ICANN's
plan is allowed to become a reality. That
letter, written by George Kirikos of
Toronto, Canada, is a devastating
indictment |
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of ICANN's new gTLD
plan that I urge you to read
in its entirety.
Kirikos quoted a
letter written in 2004 by Tim Berners-Lee
(the inventor of the World Wide Web)
that, in one of many passages relevant to
ICANN's current plan, said "Our first
instincts, then should be not to change the
system with anything but incremental and
carefully thought-out changes. The addition
of new top-levels domains is a very disturbing
influence. It carries great cost. It
should only be undertaken when there is a very clear
benefit to the new domain."
In his own
notation, Kirikos added, "Instead of the
above well considered incremental approach (even
advocated by the Department of Commerce, NTIA
and DOJ) ICANN proposes a wild-west
free for all." My sentiments exactly
and I can't see anything good coming from that
approach to administering the domain name
system. |
Tim
Berners-Lee |
(Posted
April
10, 2009) |
