WSJ.com just published an interview with the new CEO of ICANN Akram Atallah, on how the new gTLD program was going.
There were a few Q&A’s that caught my eye
“”WSJ: You have had a lot of complaints and objections. Was this expected, and how are you dealing with it?”
“AA: Let me first separate comments from objections. There have been zero objections so far. There have been over 6,000 comments.
“To apply for an objection you have to have standing, you have to pay a fee, and it goes to a dispute resolution service. Either the applicant is awarded the domain or the objection is upheld and the application stops. This is binding.”
“Comments are a different matter. If you put a comment you have to put it to one of the evaluation panels [considering the application]. The comment period is extended to Sept. 26. But you can comment during the life of the panel, but we will not stop the panels from finishing the evaluation due to a new comment. That is the reason for why the period is limited.”
“”WSJ: You had three pages of comments on, for example, the proposed .gay gTLD, many of them from religious groups expressing strongly-held beliefs, others from groups expressing equally strongly-held beliefs in freedom of expression. How do you reconcile these views?
“”AA: That is the beauty of the process—it is not ICANN that is deciding the outcome. ICANN is implementing the process that the community developed. Our job is to make sure it happens in a transparent and efficient way. ”
“We are using world-renowned firms to do the resolution such as the International Center for Dispute Resolution, the WIPO [World Intellectual Property Organization], the International Chamber of Commerce—these are well known arbitration organizations, they will deal with the comments.”
“The religious differences have been going on for centuries. ICANN does not think it can resolve these problems overnight.”
“”WSJ: There are moves to take some of your functions and assign them to the ITU [International Telecommunications Union]. What is ICANN”s view on this?
AA: We have not made any official announcements on that.”
“We have not been invited to attend [the conference in Dubai in December]. We are not a member of the ITU, so we will wait to see what the proposals are and which ones get traction before we comment. It is a bit early for us to come out with a statement. When the time is right we will opine on it.”
It seems strange to me that ICANN is not involving itself into the ITU process or at least commenting and/or taking an offical position on that issue.
There have been plenty of comments leading up to the meeting some of which we have covered here at TheDomains.com including the recent comment by China saying that the US must turn control over the Internet to the World, and the comment by the commissioner of the FCC who warned earlier this year that control over the Internet may fall into the hands of the UN at that Dubai meeting.
I’m not sure what more comments or proposals ICANN is waiting for when its pretty clear to all that China, Russia and other countries are pushing for a UN solution to the regulation of the Internet in Dubai.
Also I don’t love the fact that ICANN is so proudly “not deciding the outcome” of strings that are subject to comments and maybe subject to objections after all they received 1/3 of a billion dollars in application fees.
To read the full interview you can click here
