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52–411 PDF 2010

EXPANSION OF TOP LEVEL DOMAINS AND ITS 

EFFECT ON COMPETITION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS AND 

COMPETITION POLICY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009 

Serial No. 111–70 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., 

Georgia 

PEDRO PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

DANIEL MAFFEI, New York 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TOM ROONEY, Florida 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

PERRY APELBAUM, Majority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Minority Chief of Staff and General Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS AND COMPETITION POLICY

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia, Chairman 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

CHRISTAL SHEPPARD, Chief Counsel 

BLAINE MERRITT, Minority Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009 

Page 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Henry C. ‘‘Hank’’ Johnson, Jr., a Representative in Congress 

from the State of Georgia, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Courts and 

Competition Policy ............................................................................................... 1 

The Honorable Howard Coble, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of North Carolina, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Courts and 

Competition Policy ............................................................................................... 2 

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, and Member, 

Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy ............................................. 22 

The Honorable Jason Chaffetz, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Utah, and Member, Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy ....... 22 

WITNESSES 

Mr. Doug Brent, Chief Operating Officer, Internet Corporation for Assigned 

Names and Numbers (ICANN), Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 24 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 26 

Mr. Richard Heath, President, International Trademark Association (INTA), 

New York, NY 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 40 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 42 

Mr. Paul Stahura, Chief Executive Officer, President, eNOM, Bellevue, WA 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 69 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 72 

Mr. Steve DelBianco, Executive Director, NetChoice, Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 101 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 103 

APPENDIX 

Material Submitted for the Hearing Record .......................................................... 131 

(1) 

EXPANSION OF TOP LEVEL DOMAINS AND ITS 

EFFECT ON COMPETITION 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS AND

COMPETITION POLICY

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in 

room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Henry 

C. ‘‘Hank’’ Johnson, Jr. (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Johnson, Conyers, Boucher, Quigley, 

Coble, Chaffetz, Sensenbrenner, Goodlatte, and Harper. 

Staff present: (Majority) Christal Sheppard, Subcommittee Chief 

Counsel; Eric Garduno, Counsel; Rosalind Jackson, Professional 

Staff Member; (Minority) Sean McLaughlin, Chief of Staff and General Counsel; and David Whitney, Counsel. 

Mr. JOHNSON. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Courts and 

Competition Policy will now come to order. Without objection, the 

Chair will be authorized to declare a recess of the hearing. 

And, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to this hearing and offer my thanks to the panel 

members for being here with us. 

We meet today to discuss an important topic which has the potential to significantly impact consumers and trademark owners 

who use the Internet. In this hearing, we will address two main 

issues. The first is the proposal by ICANN that would allow an unlimited expansion of the top-level domain names. The second is the 

potential separation of ICANN into a fully independent entity. 

As for the expansion of GTLDs, the heart of this matter is an uncertainty of how these actions would affect competition and the 

rights of trademark owners who spend sizable sums and dedicate 

countless employee hours protecting their trademarks from 

cybersquatters. When ICANN revealed their expansion plans, a 

tremendous public outcry came from trademark owners, worried 

about the infinite cybersquatting possibilities for which this plan 

may allow. 

Through an ad hoc advisory body, ICANN has proposed certain 

trademark protections to assuage the trademark owners’ concerns. 

However, such measures have not been formally adopted. And even 

if they were, some trademark owners feel such measures are not 

enough. And I know I butchered that word, ‘‘assuage.’’ 

2 

Nevertheless, there is clearly some interest out there in expanding GTLDs beyond just cybersquatters and the pecuniary interest 

of registries and companies hoping to be registries. 

I note that entities like New York City and Al Gore’s Alliance for 

Climate Protection are interested in securing domains like .nyc and 

.eco, respectively. I also note that the expansion of GTLDs will 

allow non-Roman script characters to be used in GTLDs. These efforts seem meritorious to me. 

However, what I don’t understand is why ICANN is so committed to an unlimited expansion of GTLDs. Perhaps the ICANN 

witness can illuminate this for us. 

The second main issue addressed here today is the potential separation of ICANN into a fully independent entity. Since its inception, ICANN has been tied to the U.S. Department of Commerce 

through a series of memorandum of understandings and now 

through a joint project agreement. The impact of this union instilled in ICANN transparency standards and has provided privacy 

and security policies for domain name registrants. 

However, this union is set to expire on September the 30th of 

this year, and I do not believe that a continued relationship is necessary—excuse me, I do believe that a continued relationship is 

necessary to ensure transparency and pro-consumer benefits, especially as the expansion of GTLDs proceeds. 

I fully support renegotiation of the agreement. However, should 

ICANN decide not to continue in an agreement, I and the American public would need assurances of ICANN’s dedication to maintaining transparency, privacy and security that is crucial to protecting consumers and trademark owners, as well as marketplace 

competition. 

Again, I thank the panel members for your testimony today and 

look forward to a lively discussion. 

I now recognize our Ranking minority Member, Lamar Smith, for 

an opening statement. 

I am sorry. Mr. Smith is not here. So Mr. Coble is the Ranking 

Member I will recognize for his opening statement. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to say, Mr. 

Smith has become invisible. I didn’t see him up on the panel here. 

Good to have you all with us. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling the hearing. 

In the 108th Congress, the predecessor of the Subcommittee—on 

this Subcommittee conducted much needed oversight over the 

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, 

and the United States Department of Commerce. As a result, the 

Commerce Department for the first time included in its agreement 

with ICANN a series of requirements to report on and improve the 

accuracy of the WHOIS database. 

The accuracy of this database is critical to law enforcement, intellectual property owners, and the public who deserve truthful information about the identity of those who register a domain name. 

The then-chairman of the Subcommittee, Ranking Member Lamar 

Smith, also authored the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, 

which the Congress enacted. 

This law provides serious civil and criminal penalties when 

someone willfully provides false domain name contact information 

3 

in furtherance of a Federal crime or in violation of a federally protected intellectual property right. 

Notwithstanding this progress, ICANN confronts a number of 

key opportunities and challenges today. Several of these are referenced in a letter Ranking Member Smith and I sent to Rod 

Beckstrom, the new president and CEO of ICANN, on September 

the 15. 

Without objection, Mr. Chairman, I ask that our letter and Mr. 

Beckstrom’s response be placed in the hearing record. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Without objection. 

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Mr. COBLE. In a few minutes, we will receive testimony from the 

chief operating officer of ICANN and others with a substantial interest in the policies the organization adopts and the manner in 

which they are implemented. 

It is difficult to overstate the impact of the Internet as a transformative technology. ICANN bears a tremendous responsibility in 

managing the technical aspects of the Internet to ensure the public 

is able to quickly locate the information they seek. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I am not an engineer, nor am I a computer 

scientist. It seems to me that the safety and stability of the Internet must be the single most important focus of ICANN. 

This past Friday, Mr. Chairman, I am told that an ICANN contractor recommended the implementation of a vital new security 

technology to protect consumers from fraud and cyber crime instead of immediately moving forward with plans to roll out an unlimited number of top-level domains. This recommendation was in 

a report that ICANN’s own government advisory committee, GAC, 

noted in August was essential in determining the appropriate timing and scope of an expansion of top-level domains. 

I might add, Mr. Chairman, that the GAC also expressed its concern as to why the proper analysis did not occur earlier. But unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that ICANN appears to have neglected sound advice or failed to execute what one might think is 

a mandatory instruction. 

In 2006, I am advised that ICANN’s board of directors called for 

a comprehensive economic study before determining whether new 

top-level domains should be introduced. To date, I understand that 

study has not been—has never been conducted. 

Just last month, a high-ranking Commerce Department official 

reiterated the need for such an objective study, writing, ‘‘We continue to believe that a threshold question, whether the potential 

consumer benefits outweigh the potential costs, has yet to be adequately addressed. NTIA continues to urge ICANN to undertake a 

comprehensive economic study prior to moving forward with the introduction of the new GTLDs, and we share NTIA’s perspective 

that the overreaching issue should be resolved prior to new GTLDs 

having—being introduced.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, I ask that this August 18, 2009, letter from Laurence E. Strickling be made a part of the record. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

21 

Mr. COBLE. In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to make a couple 

of final points, if I may. First, I have a great concern about what 

will follow an unprecedented rollout of unlimited top-level domains 

in terms of increasing the risk to the public of malicious behavior 

online, as well as imposing tremendous new costs on companies, 

manufacturers, and service providers, costs that, I might add, will 

be passed on to consumers in many instances. 

Secondly, I think there may be some who want to pit certain constituencies within ICANN against one another. That is not how I 


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approach these issues, and I don’t believe you do, Mr. Chairman. 

What ICANN does affects every Internet user. The processes they 

follow must be truly transparent and lead to full accountability. 

The quotes I cited earlier represent the views of the United 

States government and the key organization within ICANN and 

not private organizations. It is my hope, Mr. Chairman, that 

ICANN will take seriously these views and move forward with prudence and deliberation. 

It is also my hope that this hearing signals a renewed commitment on the part of this Subcommittee that we will redouble our 

efforts in oversight in this area, which affects every American consumer and business. 

This concludes my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, and I yield 

back. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member. And you and I 

will certainly work together as we move forward on this very important issue. 

Are there any other Members who wish to make statements? 

With no one having—okay, we have Chairman of the full Committee, Mr. John Conyers, who is recognized. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman and Ranking Member, 

Members. 

We have in Judiciary more hearings than any other Committee, 

any other standing, or full Committee in the Congress. So, one of 

my goals is to reduce the number of hearings. And this is a hearing 

that we shouldn’t have had to call, because if the parties had come 

together, I doubt if we would be here this morning. 

And so, although I am in my usual good, jovial mood, I mean, 

look, we have until September 30th when the joint agreement expires. Everybody here knows everybody else, been working with 

each other. But you guys made us come here today. Here we are. 

We have a health care bill. We have troop increase in Afghanistan. 

We have the economy going through the roof, Congressional Black 

Caucus week, and here we are talking with all of you about, can 

we meet the September 30th deadline? 

Well, if you don’t meet the 30th deadline, you are going to all be 

sorry that you didn’t make it, okay? So I have a lot of other things 

to say, but I want to continue the nice mood of the morning here 

and put the rest of my comments in the record. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I understand that my good friend, Congressman Chaffetz 

from Utah, wishes to make a statement. 

You are recognized, sir. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I will be very brief. I do appreciate you calling this hearing 

and appreciate you gentlemen for being here. 

Among the issues that I hope we are able to address along the 

way is just, how is this beneficial to competition? Obviously, we 

want the world to be competitive, but there are some negative 

things, unintended consequences that happen with, perhaps, some 

of these actions that I hope were thoroughly explored before we implement something new. 

23 

Of particular concern is what would happen to companies and individuals, entrepreneurs and whatnot, who would need to potentially engage in defensive registration. How is that positive to the 

marketplace? Anything that happens that exacerbates fraud online 

is obviously of deep concern. It is used as such a tool in a positive 

way, but fraud is certainly an ongoing concern. 

And, finally, I will just mention, again, some of the key areas 

that I would like to—and appreciate you addressing are, of the 21 

generic top-level domains, why the expansion from there? Are we 

not meeting the market’s needs with 21 of those? 

And certainly, we have international demands, particularly in 

markets that use non-English characters and whatnot, and those 

need to be addressed, as well. 

But I know you are aware of all those topics. I just want you to 

be aware of it. Those are some of the issues, at least from my perspective, that I would hope would be addressed, and if not addressed in this Committee, then certainly in the follow up. 

But we appreciate your participation and your candor here and 

look forward to a productive meeting. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chaffetz. Or Chaffetz. I am sorry, 

Jason. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Close enough. 

Mr. JOHNSON. All right. Okay. Chaffetz. Okay. 

Any other Members wish to make opening statements? 

Without objection, other Members’ opening statements will be included in the record. 

I am now pleased to introduce the witnesses for today’s hearing. 

Our first panelist is Mr. Doug Brent, chief operating officer of the 

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN. 

Mr. Brent has executive oversight of operational services, including 

Internet assigned number authority, and contracted parties such as 

registries and registrars. He oversees policy development support, 

as well as major product initiatives and international business operations functions. 

Thank you for coming, Mr. Brent. 

Second will be Mr. Richard Heath, president of the International 

Trademark Association. He is also vice president, legal and global 

anti-counterfeiting council in the legal group of Unilever PLC based 

in the United Kingdom. He served as head of the Corporate Trademarks and General Trademark Council at Unilever from 1996 to 

2005, and he also served on INTA’s board of directors from 1999 

to 2003. 

Third panelist is Mr. Stahura, Mr. Paul Stahura, founder of the 

registrar eNom and the chief strategy officer of Demand Media, the 

social media company which acquired eNom in 2006. ENom manages over 10 million domain names and connects Internet users to 

Web sites more than 2 billion times daily. Mr. Stahura has served 

for 8 years on the ICANN registrar constituency and has been active on the ICANN WHOIS task force for over 4 years. 

Welcome, sir. 

Our fourth panelist is Mr. Steve DelBianco. Mr. DelBianco is the 

executive director of NetChoice, which is a coalition of trade associations and e-commerce businesses that include Time Warner, 

24 

News Corp., and Yahoo. He is a well-known expert on Internet governance and online consumer protection and has advocated for 

business interests at the Internet Governance Forum and ICANN. 

Thank you all. Thank you, sir. Thank you all for your willingness 

to participate in today’s hearing. 

Without objection, your written statements will be placed in the 

record. And we would ask that you limit your oral remarks to 5 

minutes. You will note that we have a lighting system on your 

table that starts with a green light. At 4 minutes, it turns yellow, 

then red at 5 minutes. After each witness has presented his or her 

testimony, Subcommittee Members will be permitted to ask questions subject to the 5-minute limit. 

Mr. Brent, please proceed with your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DOUG BRENT, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, 

INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS (ICANN), WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. BRENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me okay? 

Mr. JOHNSON. It seems like you probably need to cut that mic on. 

Mr. BRENT. It is—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. It is on, okay? We can hear you much better. 

Mr. BRENT. Thank you very much. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. BRENT. Mr. Chairman, Committee Members, thank you very 

much for the opportunity to come and talk with you today. My 

name is Doug Brent. I am chief operating officer of ICANN and 

have the day-to-day responsibility for much of the work that is 

under consideration by the Committee today. 

The ICANN organization is just over 10 years old. We are a bottom-up, multi-stakeholder entity that coordinates key technical 

functions of the global Internet. We were born from the United 

States government ‘‘White Paper on the Management of Internet 

Domain Names and Addresses’’ and have benefited from the assistance and support of the United States government across three 

presidential Administrations. 

ICANN stakeholders—many of whom are here today—range 

from governments to individual Internet users to businesses from 

the U.S. and around the globe. 

I want to go directly to the concerns that I think are most significant to the Committee today. As Members are aware, ICANN’s 

community is working to complete a process to bring competition 

to top-level domains. TLDs—and we have lots of acronyms in this 

world—TLDs, as they are known, are the part of the domain name 

to the right of the dot. Common examples are .org, .com, .net. 

ICANN’s work to increase competition is part of our history. In 

1998, there was one business that registered domain names, and 

each name cost approximately $50 to register. ICANN has fostered 

an environment where hundreds of companies were created to register names, and the cost can be as low as $6 for individual registrants. 

But why apply this competitive mandate to new top-level domains? Why expand now? What good will it bring? 

Three reasons. First, the United States has encouraged ICANN 

to consider and implement new TLDs since ICANN was founded in 

25 

1998. It was part of the founding documents and part of the agreement since. 

Second, there is every reason to believe that the benefits offered 

by competition for virtually every other market also apply to TLDs. 

New TLDs don’t just mean more .coms, but the opportunity for real 

innovation in how names are used to the general benefit of Internet 

users. Already, there are strong and public campaigns for new 

names. Multiple parties have expressed interest in .eco, with one 

supported by former Vice President Al Gore, .basketball has been 

promoted by Shaquille O’Neal, and there are proposals from all 

over the world, from New York to Sydney to Paris, to have their 

communities represented at the top level. 

Third, there are about 1.6 billion online around the world. Many 

of these Internet users aren’t English-speakers, and their number 

is growing. As the domain name system presently operates, toplevel domains can’t be displayed in any character set other than 

that used for English. To break through that barrier, ICANN is 

working to introduce top-level domains in all of the languages of 

the world. 

Planning and thinking for new GTLDs has been going over a decade. This has been a thorough process. Policy development began 

in 2005 and took nearly 3 years of development from community 

members—again, many here—including the intellectual property 

constituency. The implementation planning has been actively underway for more than 2 years, with numerous opportunities for live 

participation, remote participation, and formal written comments. 

Importantly, the new GTLD work is not yet done. While numerous hard issues have been resolved along the way, some still remain. Intellectual property concerns are crucially important to 

ICANN. Even ICANN’s chair is an intellectual property attorney. 

We have not and will not allow new TLD expansion that does not 

appropriately protect trademark holders. 

Trademark holders want more tools for enforcement and protection at the second level. So do we. In fact, we asked for a team of 

intellectual property experts from all over the world to provide advice on how protections could be strengthened. I personally participated in that discussion, hundreds of hours in the last 6 months, 

and recommendations are now being actively considered. 

In conclusion, ICANN did not casually think this plan up. This 

will not be an unbridled expansion. It is the work of many hands 

from a bottom-up process. There have been no fewer than 20 papers and submissions on the expansion of new GTLDs. In just the 

last 12 months alone, there have been two versions of the applicant 

guidebook, thousands of pages of commentary, analysis, and revisions, with more to come. 

There is more work ahead of us, and that work will be and must 

be in the public interest. I thank Members for this opportunity and 

look forward to answering questions you have about ICANN. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brent follows:] 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF DOUG BRENT


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Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Brent. 

Mr. Heath? 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD HEATH, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL TRADEMARK ASSOCIATION (INTA), NEW YORK, NY 

Mr. HEATH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you all hear me? 

Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Coble, Chairman Conyers, 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

offer the perspective of trademark owners on the introduction of 

new generic top-level domains, or GTLDs, to the Internet’s domain 

name system. 

The International Trademark Association, or INTA, welcomes 

this Subcommittee’s oversight of this important issue and appreciates initiatives such as this hearing and the September 15th letter from Representatives Smith and Coble that posed several key 

questions to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and 

Numbers, otherwise known as ICANN. INTA actively participates 

within ICANN and contributes to its policy development process. 

Mr. Chairman, when a trademark is used as a domain name 

without the trademark owner’s consent, consumers can become confused about the source of the goods and services being offered on 

the Internet. This confusion tarnishes and harms brands. It misleads consumers. And it results in decreased confidence in the 

Internet as an instrument of legitimate commerce. 

For example, in 2009, a Get Safe Online study undertaken by the 

British government found that 44 percent of small businesses have 

been the victim of online crime. And most alarmingly, the fear of 

online crime has deterred 14 percent of all British citizens from 

using the Internet altogether. That is a substantial number. 

Abuse of the domain name system has been a problem since the 

Internet was opened to commercial use, and the amount of abuse 

is steadily increasing, and the harm to trademark owners and consumers has been increasing, as well, both in scope and in severity. 

Despite the hard work of the ICANN board and its staff, Mr. 

Chairman, we see significant increases in abuses of the domain 

name system and inadequate management by ICANN to address 

the problems, including their inability to enforce contracts. 

The result in the current 21 GTLD space is at least the following 

issues: an increase in consumer confusion and decrease in confidence in the Internet; threats to public health, safety and security 

through Web sites selling counterfeit goods and services; propagation of malicious software that spreads viruses, spam, and leads to 

identity theft; tarnishment of brands and damage to the reputation 

of legitimate businesses; and, last but by no means least, an increase in business costs due defensive registrations, Internet monitoring, and expensive legal actions to enforce trademark rights, the 

costs of which are either passed on to consumers or absorbed by 

businesses, making them less competitive. 

It is against this background that ICANN now plans to introduce 

an unlimited number of new GTLDs, which will increase the harm 

to businesses and consumers. So why introduce this program of expansion at all? 

The key argument we have just heard from ICANN offers expanding the domain name space is the need to spur competition, 

41 

but ICANN cannot assume without empirical support that simply 

adding unlimited GTLDs to a complex economic model like the domain name system will necessarily increase competition in a manner that best serves and improves public welfare. 

The critical issue for brand owners, consumers, and other Internet users is to ensure that the introduction of any new GTLDs is 

responsible, deliberate, and justified. We therefore believe that, before any additional GTLDs are introduced, ICANN should resolve 

what it has identified as the four overarching issues, namely trademark protection, the potential for malicious conduct, Internet security and stability, and top-level domain demand and economic analysis. 

With respect to trademark protection, ICANN’s board did create 

an implementation recommendation team—the IRT, as we have 

heard—to address new protection mechanisms in the face of a rollout of an unlimited number of GTLDs. The IRT, despite an extremely tight deadline, proposed some useful recommendations in 

its final report. But even if these recommendations are adopted by 

ICANN, they are untested, and they may not be adequate to address the unlimited expansion of new GTLDs proposed by ICANN. 

With respect to an economic analysis, ICANN, despite asserting 

in its testimony, has yet to conduct an independent, comprehensive 

economic study of the domain name marketplace. INTA believes 

that ICANN should not implement any program for the creation of 

new GTLDs without fully understanding the beneficial and harmful effects of such actions on consumers, competition and intellectual property rights. 

INTA is strongly critical of the process undertaken to date and 

of ICANN’s decision to authorize an unlimited number of new 

GTLDs without prior economic study and without adequate protection for all Internet stakeholders. 

As a result, we welcome the involvement of the Judiciary Committee on this important matter, and we ask that the Committee 

continue to work with ICANN, the Department of Commerce, and 

others in Congress in developing sound policies that protect the legitimate interests of the public. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Heath follows:] 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD HEATH


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Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Heath. 

Mr. Stahura? 

TESTIMONY OF PAUL STAHURA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

PRESIDENT, eNOM, BELLEVUE, WA 

Mr. STAHURA. Good morning. And thank you for inviting me to 

testify. 

My name is Paul Stahura, and I am the founder of eNom, a domain name registrar in Bellevue, Washington. Registrars sell domain names that they get from registries. 


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I started eNom in my garage in 1997 before there was a competition in the registrar business. After ICANN introduced registrar 

competition, I was able to grow my business, and now eNom is the 

second-largest registrar in the world. It powers over 10 million domain names for consumers and businesses of all sizes and connects 

Internet users to Web sites 2 billion times a day. And I have been 

fighting for the last 12 years to bring competition to registries. 

I couldn’t agree more with the following recent statement of 

President Obama. ‘‘My guiding principle is and always has been 

that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. 

That is how the market works.’’ 

In my oral testimony today, I would like to make three points. 

One, there is high consumer demand for many new GTLDs. Two, 

there currently is little or no competition to satisfy this demand. 

And, three, we shouldn’t prohibit competition because of trademark 

concerns. Instead, we should address these concerns. 

Firstly, regarding demand, when it comes to consumer opinions 

and studies of economic demand, actions speak louder than words. 

Actual consumer behavior that registrars like mine see every day 

is more meaningful than a study. As Henry Ford once said, ‘‘If I 

asked my consumers what they wanted, they would have said a 

faster horse.’’ 

Name registrations worldwide are growing. And guess what? 

They are growing faster in the smaller, newer TLDs than the old, 

more established ones. This proves there is demand for names in 

new TLDs. 

Now, regarding competition, the biggest benefit these new TLDs 

bring is competition, and, through competition, lower prices, more 

choice, and more innovation for consumers. When ICANN brought 

competition to registrars, the price was cut by more than half. And 

today, consumers have over 100 choices as to where they register 

domains and what services they get from the registrar. Now is 

time—it is actually past time to bring this competition to registries. 

I want to talk about another kind of competition that TLDs will 

promote, not competition among domain name industry players, 

but competition among brand owners. Inter-brand competition is 

also good for consumers, but established brands don’t like it. 

For example, imagine if you built up a tremendous local shoe 

business and your name was United Shoes. You may have a trademark on the word ‘‘United’’ for shoes. It is your name, but you cannot get united.com. United Airlines already has it. United Van 

Lines and UnitedHealthcare cannot get it, either. Most memorable, 

meaningful .com names with the word ‘‘united’’ in it are taken. 

But with new TLDs, each business could get a valuable name. 

You could get united.shoe, if ICANN made .shoe available. With 

united.shoe, among other things, consumers would be generally 

less confused about what this United does. Nike is probably happy 

that United Airlines is forcing United Shoes from getting 

united.com. Those established brands want those new brands to be 

unable to get their exact matching .com, and they don’t want new 

TLDs, like .shoe. 

Incumbent brands don’t want to make it easy for new entrants 

to brand their new products with names in appropriate, meaningful 

TLDs. It is like the earlier, bigger companies got all the picks and 

71 

shovels to the Internet goldmine and the smaller, newer companies 

that come later have to settle for a toothpick and a spoon. Let’s 

give them the same tools that the big guys have. 

Finally, regarding trademark concerns, the bottom line is, trademark concerns with new GTLDs are being addressed through a 

long and open process. For many years, government advisory committee, intellectual property constituency, the IRT, with 18 intellectual property experts, the business constituency, the GNSO, noncommercial users, ISPs, and many other groups have been closely 

involved in this long process and have designed rights protection 

mechanisms that will be very effective and go far beyond what is 

currently in place in .com. 

In conclusion, the U.S. government has a history of allowing the 

Internet to flourish. The benefits to citizens around the globe have 

been immeasurable. We should not depart from this wise precedent 

now. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stahura follows:] 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL STAHURA


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ATTACHMENT 


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Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Stahura. 

Mr. DelBianco? 


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TESTIMONY OF STEVE DELBIANCO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

NETCHOICE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Good morning. 

We are grateful to the Chairman and the Ranking Member for 

asking the question today: Is ICANN in its drive for new top-level 

domains really sticking with its mission and is it truly being accountable to stakeholders? 

So let me start the same way I did in my written testimony: by 

apologizing to this Committee for dragging you into this food fight 

happening in the ICANN community. If ICANN really were accountable to the global stakeholders, we would have worked this 

out in our own bottom-up consensus process. But we got sidetracked along the road to new top-level domains. 

First, a little bit of context here. The hearing is about—it is really about labels. And I think all of you have seen one of these before. It is a label maker. You punch in a label, hit the button, and 

it spits out one of these tags. 

And the thing about labels is, I can put them on anything. I can 

put them on my Web page. I can put them on this microphone, this 

table. I can put them on anything, and it helps me to identify it, 

show what it is. But it also tells others what it is. As Mark Twain 

once said, it is labels that let you tell the difference between German wine and vinegar. 

Advocates for new domains say that new labels are absolutely 

necessary for innovation and growth. But hang on. Every day, our 

industry and my members create new Web sites, applications, and 

services, like Twitter for messaging or Bing, the new search engine, 

and labels are just one of the ways that people find these new services far more than use search engines or links. The label is not the 

creation; it is just something we stick on it. 

Now, Paul’s group wants ICANN to give him one of these, so that 

he can make his own labels. I can’t fault Paul for that. Having your 

own label maker is like printing money, especially if brands and 

banks have to buy labels to stop cybersquatting and consumer 

fraud. 

I think it is time for an example. We are in a food fight today, 

so let’s talk about .food, .food, a new top-level domain that is being 

proposed; .food won’t create a single new restaurant. It won’t create 

a new Web page. It won’t create new restaurant reviews or online 

reservation sites for restaurants. They have already got those. All 

.food will be is another label that has to be purchased and stuck 

on to pages we already have on the Internet. 

I am not saying that labels aren’t important. They are important. 

It is just that more labels alone will not drive innovation and 

growth. 

But new labels are hugely important to a segment of the population who don’t have any labels at all. ICANN’s label makers, the 

ones we have today, they print only in our Latin alphabet. ICANN 

doesn’t have a label maker for over 56 percent of the people on this 

planet who don’t use our alphabet at all for reading and writing. 

And that includes speakers of Arabic, Chinese, and a dozen languages in India alone. 

ICANN has been working on a label maker that will do these 

international characters for several years, but China actually got 

102 

tired of waiting and just built their own a few years ago. Now, it 

shows that governments can and will splinter the Internet if 

ICANN doesn’t deliver what they need, and that is not good. 

Since all of us at this table have been working so hard to make 

sure we have a single global addressing system so that you can 

publish or read a Web page or send and receive e-mail no matter 

where you are on the planet, we have to bring China back to the 

fold and stop other nations from following their example. 

ICANN was closing in on a label maker for these international 

characters, but then they opened things up for all kinds of new labels, even in our alphabet. That is what is created the land rush 

and the food fight that you are watching today. 

So a good outcome of today’s hearing would be having ICANN 

refocus its attention and efforts on these international labels and 

not just government-controlled labels, right? People in China and 

India want to have access to their own language versions of things 

like .com and .org and .asia. 

Finally, today’s hearing, I think, shows that ICANN needs better 

accountability to global users and to those who create the compelling content and services. It shouldn’t take a congressional hearing 

to get ICANN to focus on fraud and abuse, but the U.S. government has given ICANN guidance like this in the past during our 

10-year transition agreement. 

For instance, a December 2008 letter from Commerce and Justice 

is really what prompted the creation of the IRT. The thing is, 

though, our transition agreement expires next Wednesday. We 

need a new accountability mechanism, something that will work 

better for all of us. 

It is football season, so here is a football analogy. The coach’s 

challenge and official review really works well. It lets you fix a bad 

call right there on the field when it happens, instead of waiting 

until after the game when it won’t make a difference. 

Well, Internet stakeholders need a coach’s challenge, too. We 

need a way to get an official review of an ICANN decision when 

it happens, and there are tough questions about this review, like 

how to call for a review, who gets the coach’s challenge flag, who 

are the review officials, and would the review be binding or advisory on ICANN? And I know some governments really want to 

shrink the U.S. government role with respect to guiding ICANN. 

But here is why I think the rest of the world will welcome a continued defined role in—if the U.S. takes part of these reviews. 

First, the U.S. position on free expression and protection of human 

rights helps ICANN to push any censorship to the edge of the 

Internet and not in the core. 

And, second, today’s hearing I think shows that we are being 

sensitive and attentive to the number-one priority for a global 

Internet. The fact is a billion of us are online today, but there are 

7 billion people on Earth. ICANN needs to empower the next billion users before trying to build more label makers for those of us 

that are already online. 

So I will conclude just by saying that there is a lot that is right 

about ICANN. It is clearly the right model, and it is the way forward, but there is something missing. If I had to put a label on it, 

I would say it was accountability. 

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Thank you. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. DelBianco follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVE DELBIANCO


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Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. DelBianco. I always love it when 

demonstrative evidence is brought in. [Laughter.] 

I will now commence with the questions for 5 minutes. What is 

ICANN’s position on the trademark protection proposals in the IRT 


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report? And can we expect to see these proposals fully adopted by 

ICANN? 

Mr. Brent? 

Mr. BRENT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

As I mentioned earlier, I actually participated along with its IRT, 

another acronym, implementation recommendation team. The goal 

of that team was to come up with intellectual property protections 

that made sense in the intellectual property community for consideration inclusion in this new GTLD process. 

Part of that process has been the issuing of a number of what 

we call guidebooks. A guidebook is the big application with all the 

rules that someone would need to participate in, and that would actually talk about what these intellectual property protections are. 

There has been two issues of that guidebook, and a third is expected in the first week of October. That new guidebook will include at least two of these recommendations that have come up 

through this implementation recommendation team process. 

The first of those is what is called thick WHOIS. What does that 

mean? That each new registry would have to provide a central repository for WHOIS and make that publicly available on a 24-by7 basis. 

The second one is, is what is called a post-resolution dispute 

mechanism. There is definitely concern by the intellectual property 

community that, with the creation of a new registry, that registry 

might engage in mal behavior. If it did, how would—you know, 

what would be the basis on which we would try to address that bad 

behavior? And that is called this post-resolution dispute mechanism. 

There are other recommendations that have come up through 

this IRT that are still under consideration. Some important ones of 

those are what—URS, which is a faster and cheaper way to address arbitration of disputes related to second-level domain names. 

And another one is an intellectual property clearinghouse. Those 

are still under consideration at this time. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

This question is for each panelist. I would like for you to respond. 

Two reports, one by OECD and the other by Summit Strategies 

International, examine the first round of domain name expansion. 

Those reports indicate that consumer demand for the new GTLDs 

were well below expectations and that a significant portion of the 

demand experienced was likely defensive registration. 

What are your thoughts on these reports, starting with Mr. 

Brent? 

Mr. BRENT. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. 

You know, with all due respect to Mr. DelBianco, I would describe these new TLDs differently. I don’t think they are a label 

maker. And we caught up in these technical terms, so let me just 

quickly review. 

We talk about top-level domains and second-level domains. That 

is an entirely technically accurate way to describe how DNS works. 

But the way to really think about this is a top-level domain is a 

business. A second-level domain is a customer of that business. 

So what do I mean? ICANN has registered the name icann.org 

to represent our organization; .org is company, public Internet regVerDate Aug 31 2005 12:05 Apr 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\COURTS\092309\52411.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
114 

istry, that runs about 10 million domain names at roughly $10 

apiece, so you can see that there is real revenue associated with 

that. ICANN is a customer of that domain name. 

So the notion is that new TLDs are not about just new labels, 

new names. Obviously, brands are important. That is why we have 

these intellectual property concerns. But the notion of new TLDs 

is a lot more about new potential service models, new businesses 

coming up in use of the Internet. 

So in answer to your question, I think a lot of the early generic 

TLDs that were issued in the 2000 and 2003 rounds thought that 

their primary competition was, how do I become another .com? 

Probably what is of more value to consumers now and, you know, 

what I think most businesspeople would think of in a business plan 

is, how can I add value to end users, not how do I go compete with 

.com? 

So I think, in these early rounds, there was a lot of notion of 

land grab. ‘‘I am going to, you know, have 80 million registrations 

and compete with .com.’’ I think where we are today is, people are 

really realizing the opportunity for innovation. The financial industry, for example, is really looking at this in terms of innovation for 

secure, trusted financial domains. 

So I think that is really the difference between the old model of, 

‘‘I have just got to get a lot of numbers,’’ versus this new model of 

creating real value added for end users. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Brent. 

Mr. Heath? 

Mr. HEATH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I think those reports provide some useful pointers. It is important to note that they were done, some of them, actually in the last 

decade. 

Mr. JOHNSON. They were done when, now? 

Mr. HEATH. In the last decade. They are quite old. And I think 

they provide some useful pointers, but they were done at the time 

when the .com bubble was taking place in—at the turn of the century. And times have changed. The economic impacts have moved 

on completely from those days. 

And I think, if we were to do them again now, particularly 

through an independent body like the OECD, you may find different findings, but I think they do provide some useful pointers. 

But the overall assumption that it increases competition I think is 

just not there, because, in my view, it decreases competition, because if we have to fund an awful lot more defense, a lot more legal 

actions, and all this registration process, that money is diverted 

from true innovation and R&D and creativity, and it diverts resources from other areas that could benefit the community, such as 

corporate social responsibility and all the good stuff that companies 

do around the world, because there is no value added in having an 

unlimited number of domain names. 

And I think I would also say that if you were a company—let’s 

take as an example like IBM. I wonder what the value is—the 

value difference is between ibm.com and .ibm. Now, I would wager 

there is no difference between those, but you would need a body 

like OECD or an independent analysis to determine that. And, 

frankly, that has not been done. 

115 

So I think both studies are useful. They provide some useful 

pointers. They need to be updated and we could usefully use them 

again. And I think it would be worthwhile revisiting it now, and 

that is in my testimony. 

Mr. STAHURA. I think there is a big difference between ibm.com 

and .ibm. I think .ibm is way more valuable than ibm.com to IBM. 

But to answer your questions, why were the registrations below 

expectations? I could tell you why. It was because, in that round, 

it was a beauty contest round. In order to get to TLD, you had to 

talk big. You had to say, ‘‘I am going to get, you know, many, many 

registrations.’’ You know, I applied for a name in that round. I said 

I was going to get X registrations. I lost to somebody who was 

going to get Y, a much bigger number. 

So in order to get to TLD, you had to say, ‘‘I am going to register 

a lot of names.’’ So it is no surprise to me that, when you actually 

got the TLD, that the number of names registered in it is a lot less 

than what you had expected. So that is why it was below expectations. 

And regarding the too much defensive registrations, first off, 

many millions of names were registered in those new TLDs. We did 

a study comparing those new TLDs to the old TLDs, like .com and 

.net, that you might have heard of, and that study said that the 

number of defensive registrations in .com was way, way more than 

the number of defensive registrations in the old set of new TLDs. 

So that is one reason why I think the number of registrations is 

low compared to .com and .net. 

Also, back then, nobody knew that there was going to be more 

TLDs. It turned out, there wasn’t more TLDs. So people rushed 

into those new TLDs back then, thinking, ‘‘You know, not sure that 

there is going to be a new one, so I would better defensively register everything I can think of.’’ So that whole land rush mentality 

was another reason why the number of defensive registrations was 

high, even though it was low compared to .com. 

So that is the reasons. 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I think we have to remember that Web sites and applications are 

what drive visitors and customers. It isn’t the label. It is great if 

you can get a label that is easy for people to remember, because 

they might just type it in if they saw it on the side of a truck or 

on a billboard or heard about it, but it is not essential to have that 

business be successful. 

I will give you an example. Right on the Hill here, we have a restaurant we all like to patronize, Bullfeathers, right? And if you 

wanted to find out whether they had a catering facility for tonight, 

we might jump on the Internet and type in ‘‘Bullfeathers.’’ What 

would you put at the end? You would put .com. You would just sort 

of assume it is commercial and everybody remembers com. 

So you would type in bullfeathers.com. Well, right away you 

would see that that is not the restaurant. It is a telecom and car 

stereo installer on the eastern shore of Delaware. So they don’t 

compete at all, but it is different. 

What would you do next? Would you guess at bullfeathers.biz or 

.us or, after Paul and ICANN launch thousands of new—hundreds 

of new domains, maybe you will guess bullfeathers.food, 

116 

bullfeathers.diner, bullfeathers.bars. I mean, sooner or later, you 

are going to stop guessing and do what? Use a search engine. 

And that is why I think the studies we are speaking about today 

in your question are hopelessly out of date. As we have a lot of domains today, and we are going to add many more, people will just 

use search engines, because they give you a reliable, context-based, 

page-ranked look at the sites you want to visit. 

And if we were going to do a study, Mr. Chairman, today, I 

would just look at what happened last week, right? We had a new 

TLD effectively launched when a country code, .cm for Cameroon, 

decided to open up their country code top-level domain for anyone 

to register. Well, they are breaking records. They are breaking 

records as people go to register names that end in .cm. 

And why is that? Well, because a lot of people, when they type 

in, guess what? They make a mistake. They leave out the O in 

‘‘com.’’ And where does it take them? It takes them to Cameroon 

or .cm. 

This is about typographical errors that are driving demand for 

people to get into that area. So naturally, defensive registration are 

ringing the cash register for the companies running .cm. Maybe we 

don’t need another study. Just take a look at what is happening 

there today. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Stahura, you wanted to respond to—— 

Mr. STAHURA. I mean, it is dot—Cameroon, a country. They can 

do what they want with their TLD, I believe. But there are provisions in the current version of the draft applicant guidebook that 

would prevent confusing, with another TLD that is confusingly 

similar to an existing TLD, like .com. 

So, for example, even if I wanted to, I could not get .com or, you 

know, .kom, for example. So the new—we are not talking about 

this new round of TLDs producing domain names like .cm that Mr. 

DelBianco was just talking about. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. I will now turn it over to the Ranking 

Member for questions. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DelBianco, it may be a food fight, but at least it is a nonviolent, orderly food fight, and I commend you all for your civility 

to that end. 

Mr. Brent, let me ask you, why was the comprehensive economic 

study recommended by the ICANN board in 2006 never been conducted? 

Mr. BRENT. Thank you. 

There are clearly important economic issues associated with new 

GTLDs. But just to be clear, this 2006 study that has been referenced many times—and I re-read the board resolution last night 

before I testified in front of the Committee—that 2006 resolution 

was not related to threshold questions of new GTLDs. 

There was an economic study requested at that time that related 

to contractual issues with three top-level domains. I would be 

happy to provide that resolution to the Committee here. 

But putting that aside for a second, that doesn’t—there still are 

these open questions about, well, you know, what are the economic 

characteristics of new generic top-level domains? ICANN has actually, in the last 18 months, run three different economic studies. 

117 

There are some important issues there that, you know, may come 

up today, for example, registry-registrar separation or integration, 

sort of the vertical structuring of the industry, price caps in new 

generic top-level domains or not, on registration or on renewal. 

So there are many of these important issues. ICANN has actually—because of the strong community interest in this area of economic analysis, we are going to take a further step, which is to 

bring on a new set of economists, different people entirely, have 

them review all the work done to date, put that work in the context 

of the questions that have been asked by various members of our 

community, and then assess have we answered the question at that 

time. 

Mr. COBLE. Okay. 

Mr. BRENT. I will say that—just to very quickly add on—I will 

say there is some concern, which I am sure you can understand— 

I know there are entrepreneurs on this panel, and my background 

was in venture-backed companies. And it is always difficult, at 

what point would you stop analyzing, do you stop studying? 

We have done three. I think we are going to review that work 

in the context of the questions that have been asked and then say, 

is that enough? Have we addressed that question? 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Brent. 

Mr. Heath, is it your belief that ICANN did a sufficient job in 

seeking the views of trademark owners and consumers prior to the 

announcement of the proposed creation of an unlimited number of 

GTLDs? 

Mr. HEATH. In a short word, no, I don’t think they did, because 

I think they should have acted prospectively, rather than retrospectively, which would be a much more sensible way of doing it. And 

I think there is still a lot of work to be done, and we acknowledged 

what Mr. Brent said, that that work is still ongoing. 

The work—has been very useful and very valuable, but it is safe 

to say that those recommendations are untested. It is not an exhaustive list, either. And it was pulled together in a very, very 

short and, frankly, unrealistic timeframe of just 8 weeks. 

If we had had more time and we were consulted at the appropriate moment, we could have come up with some more substantial 

recommendations. They are good ones. They may work; they may 

not. We don’t know. But we need to do more, and we need to have 

done it earlier, so I think they could have done more. 

Mr. COBLE. All right. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. DelBianco, although much of the testimony this morning has 

been about the protection of trademarks and other intellectual 

property, ICANN identified three other issues: potential for malicious conduct; security and stability of the Internet and top-level 

domain demand; and, finally, economic analysis. 

In your opinion, to what extent do you feel that these other 

issues have been adequately addressed? 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Thank you, Ranking Member Coble. 

The adequately addressed is not sufficient to simply say, as Doug 

Brent has, that those are ‘‘under consideration.’’ What will matter 

is seeing it—these requirements start to show up in the draft applicant guidebook, to where the minimum requirements that people 

that bid on these new top-level domains are more than just simply 

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disclosing what they are going to do, but meeting minimum standards of rights protection. 

And as you go down that list of trademark protection, consumer 

protection, those are intertwined. The only reason these companies 

bother to protect brands and cybersquatting is to stop their customers from getting defrauded by visiting sites that are fraudulent, 

trying to steal their I.D. number for a bank site or an ISP or counterfeit goods. 

This is about helping people avoid fraud. It isn’t protecting rich 

American companies who are sacredly guarding their trademarks. 

So those are tightly intertwined. 

And earlier, you asked a question about Mr. Brent, about why 

haven’t studies been done? But I would remind you that the rest 

of the world is incredulous that we think we need to study whether 

they need the ability to type their domain names and e-mail addresses in their own language and alphabet. 

Now, they need that now, and we ought to be focusing on that. 

Interesting that that didn’t show up in that list of priorities, because ICANN has sort of smushed that in with the launching of all 

these new domains, like .web. We ought to be focusing on the rest 

of the world, because as the steward of the Internet, of a global 

Internet, that has been our mission. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you. Let me get to Mr. Stahura. 

Mr. Stahura, we have heard about proposals to address the concerns of trademark owners regarding the introduction of an unlimited number of new GTLDs. What role would a registry or registrar 

play in implementing these proposals or others that may be suggested, Mr. Stahura? 

Mr. STAHURA. Speaking about the unlimited number idea, there 

has been a lot of ideas to limit not just the number, but other 

things. For example, the IDN idea that Mr. DelBianco was just 

saying, IDN meaning international domain names, let’s—you know, 

it is pretty much indisputable that, yes, we should have new toplevel domain names in Chinese, in Arabic, and so on. 

The question is, should we limit the rest of us so that we can’t 

get our .blog. For example, in English and let the Chinese get .blog 

in Chinese first? It is back to competition. I think that they 

should—we should all go at the same time. They should be able to 

get .blog in Chinese or Arabic, and we should be able to get .blog 

in English. So that is one way of limiting it, letting them go first. 

Okay? 

Another way is, limit the number. You know, we don’t limit the 

number of patents each year. It is an unlimited number. We could 

have a number—unlimited number of patents next year. We don’t, 

but we could. But it is—every year, it is pretty much the same 

number of patents. We don’t limit it. 

Another way to limit it is restricting the type of TLDs. For example, let’s just have a TLD for the Lakota Indian tribe. And, yes, 

that is another way of limiting it, and maybe they will apply, this 

tribe will apply for .lakota. But that TLD—so one idea is to just 

limit it to restrict TLDs and not have any open TLDs, like .blog, 

for everyone else. 

The problem with that limitation is that .lakota is only useful 

and restricted—it is only restricted to that Lakota people. So it is 

119 

another not good thing. Restricting TLDs makes it so that there is 

not as much benefit for everybody. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you. 

My time is expired, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member. 

Next, we will hear from the esteemed representative from Virginia, Mr. Rick Boucher. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your having today’s hearing relating to the management 

of the domain name system. 

And I have a number of questions of our witnesses about how 

some of the proposals that ICANN has made could affect competition and could either benefit or adversely affect consumers. And let 

me start with the settlement agreement that was entered into between ICANN and VeriSign in 2006. 

Excuse me. I have a terrible cold. I hope you can hear what I 

am saying. 

In that agreement, which was subsequently approved by the Department of Commerce, VeriSign, for all practical purposes, was 

granted what amounts to a perpetual monopoly in its management 

of the .com registry. And, obviously, any time you have a monopoly 

in operation, there is the potential for adverse affects on consumers. 

Now, we have had that agreement in place now for about 2 

years. Maybe it is too early to cast any judgments about its effect 

in the marketplace, but I would like to give our witnesses today an 

opportunity to comment on the fact that, under the terms of this 

agreement, we will not have what amounts to a re-competition for 

management of the .com registry, because that troubled you. 

Have you seen any problems so far? And do you have any suggestions for us as to how we might address whatever concern you 

have? 

Mr. DelBianco, your hand was up first. 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Thank you, Congressman Boucher. 

You made the statement that VeriSign has some sort of permanent lock, but I want to make it clear, ICANN owns the label 

maker for .com. ICANN owns it. ICANN has a contract where currently VeriSign is the one running and investing in cranking out 

the labels—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. But under the terms of the settlement agreement 

that the Department of Commerce approved, there is the potential 

for what amounts to a perpetual re-award of that without competitive bidding. 

Mr. DELBIANCO. There is the potential for renewal of a contract 

because ICANN’s standard contract, the same contract it does for 

all the folks that run the label makers, so that if they perform their 

duties well and don’t have any material breaches of their duties, 

they are entitled to a renewal of that contract without necessarily 

having to re-bid it. 

Now, a lot of that has to do with the fact that they make massive 

investments, especially with the hundreds of millions of names that 

are in a registry like—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, I gather you are defending the terms of the 

agreement. That is fine. 

120 

Mr. DELBIANCO. I am defending—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. But let me just say that many observers have 

questioned the fact that determining whether or not VeriSign is 

performing properly and doing a good job and meeting quality 

standards can be very subjective. And the best way, in the minds 

of many, to address matters like that is to have a re-competition 

with periodic recurrence. And that is not assured in this. 

Let me ask other members of the panel if they have any views. 

Yes, sir? 

Mr. STAHURA. Obviously, you know, I am in business to make 

money. I would love to re-compete and, try to win the .com contract. And I am sure if all my competitors were sitting here, they 

would all be saying the same thing in unison. Of course, we would 

love to run .com. 

That contract is not going to come up for a while. I would also 

like to compete with them and get .web or .family. That is another 

way to compete and provide these benefits to the public. 

Mr. BOUCHER. All right, so you are not—you are not expressing 

direct objection to that agreement. 

Mr. Brent, do you want to be recognized? Nope? You have nothing say? 

All right. Mr. Heath, anything? 

Mr. HEATH. I don’t have too much to comment on. I would simply 

say that surely this boils down to accountability and normal business rules. If the relationship you have in your contract is working 

and you have performance indicators on that contract and they 

meet those, then you want to renew it, and—that is fine. If you 

don’t meet them and it doesn’t work or there is a problem with it, 

then you terminate the contract and you go and look at somebody 

else. 

Mr. BOUCHER. So it may come down to just how adequate these 

performance standards really are? As they are stated, do you think 

they are adequate? You don’t really—I am seeing people nod. All 

right. 

One further question, Mr. Chairman. I see my time is about to 

expire. One of the proposals that ICANN has put forward would 

allow the registries, such as VeriSign, that manage the top-level 

domains to begin to sell domain names directly to end users, in effect, going around the registrars, like GoDaddy, that carry that responsibility today. 

And under the current structure, that is not permitted. Effectively, VeriSign and other TLD administrators have to wholesale to 

the registrars, who then in turn sell to the end user. And that 

structure does encourage competition, because you have a variety 

of registrars competing with each other. 

It has been suggested that the managers of the top-level domain 

names might have information about end users that would enable 

them to obtain a marketing advantage, if they were given an opportunity to compete with the registrars in selling these domains 

directly to the end user. Does anyone on the panel share that concern or have any thoughts about it? 

Mr. Brent? 

Mr. BRENT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Boucher. 

121 

This is an active discussion going on within the ICANN community right now, and there is no resolution of this, but let me just 

quickly paint the picture, if I can. 

There are two very extreme views on this topic. One is that 

would mostly be held by incumbent registries that—to prevent registrars from essentially getting in a business that is called backend registry services. If you—the best example of this today would 

be if you think about the .org registry, the public Internet registry, 

they have 10 million names, but it is actually a very small company, very few people, 10 or 20 people. They outsource the running 

of that registry to another company. 

It is envisioned in this new GTLD round that that notion of 

backend registries will become a much more important aspect of 

the marketplace. And so there is a question from the incumbent 

registry point of view, should that be allowed for registrars to be 

in that business? Needless to say, the registrars have entirely the 

opposite view. 

What ICANN has done to try to answer that question is, first of 

all, go through a community consultation process, but get two eminent antitrust economist/lawyers involved, Salop and Wright, to 

analyze this question for us. We have further meetings planned on 

this particular topic, and I would say this is going to take some 

time to resolve. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Do you have a timeframe for resolving all of these 

various matters that are currently pending and—deciding when 

you are—whether or not you are going to have additional generic 

top-level domains and resolving issues like this, direct competition? 

Mr. BRENT. Right, sir. I think this is probably something all the 

members here have more experience than I do. When it comes to 

a product launch or finishing a software product, I know how to 

put a date on that. 

And what we have found in this process is it is a little bit like 

a foot on the gas and a foot on the brake at the same time. On the 

one hand, our community is strongly telling us: Finish this process 

and, on the other hand, only finish it when all the questions have 

been thoroughly answered. 

Each time as we have approached this, each time we have approached a decision point, we have said the legitimate concerns 

must be answered before we can proceed. And this is another one 

of those that I could put a forecast up and say, ‘‘Perhaps it will 

take 3 or 4 months to resolve this registry-registrar vertical integration.’’ Certainly, the process can’t proceed until that question is 

answered. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Chairman, with your indulgence, I would like 

to give some other panel members an opportunity to comment. 

Yes, sir. I can’t pronounce your last name. 

Mr. STAHURA. Oh, sorry. Stahura. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you. 

Mr. STAHURA. I am not sure I am pronouncing it right. 

Your question about, you know, registries selling directly to the 

public, well, it is already happening in some registries, like country 

code registries that, you know, various countries have their toplevel domains, and they do sell direct to the public, as well as 

122 

through resellers, which we call registrars. So it is already happening. 

Essentially, it is called vertical integration. You know, the sale— 

the source of the product acquiring or, you know, selling direct to 

the public and—well, acquiring their reseller channel. And vertical 

integration provides a lot of benefits to consumers because it makes 

two companies together more efficient than if they were separate. 

And, you know, I am not a competition expert, but it is usually 

allowed as long as there is not market power by one of the two that 

is acquiring each other. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, when you have one company that manages 

the entire top-level domain registry, that might be one indication 

of there being market power—— 

Mr. STAHURA. Correct. 

Mr. BOUCHER [continuing]. Particularly if they can use information unique to them to gain a marketing advantage. 

Mr. STAHURA. Right. But it could also be that maybe there is a 

large registrar that is selling a small—you know, is acquiring a 

small registry. That is another indication of market power. 

So absent market power, I think vertical integration provides efficiencies that, you know, consumers benefit. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Okay. 

Mr. DelBianco? 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Thank you. 

The structural separation has long been a case at ICANN to 

where the registries can’t own registrars and registrars can’t own 

registries. And that is really what stimulated the competition that 

the white paper called for 10 years ago. We have seen markups on 

domain names go from, what, $75 down to just $5. That is what 

competition has generated. 

And that separation is a good thing, and many of us believe at 

ICANN, as I do, that we should maintain that separation. But in 

the new TLD contracts that are being anticipated, there is probably 

not going to be a separation between registrars being able to run 

their own registry. 

And I think you had your example maybe a little bit backwards. 

There is no concept of—VeriSign selling .com directly, because they 

are covered by an existing contract, and they are not allowed to sell 

direct and never will under that contract. 

Instead, it is the new contracts, like Paul’s bidding on .web, I believe, and Paul is a registrar. He is the second biggest registrar on 

the planet. But he would also like to be a registry, so he would like 

to see that separation wall come down so that Paul can not only 

run the .web, but sell it, as well. And I believe that that has some 

concerns for a lot of us around the world because of insider trading—there is a phrase you would understand—insider trading. 

Paul is going to be able, by running the .web, to not only know 

what people are trying to access in the page, but he will be able 

to control the inventory of those names, as well as distribution. I 

think we should maintain that separation as we roll forward into 

the new top-level domain. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much. 

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman. A very helpful 

discussion. 

123 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Boucher. 

Next, we will hear from Mr. Chaffetz, from Utah. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, again, thank you to our panelists. 

One of my concerns is how we deal with the language issues, because that seems to me, from a global standpoint, a much bigger 

issue, particularly—you mentioned Japan, but obviously other 

countries that are using an alphabet that is perhaps different than 

ours. 

Go back and explain to me what we are doing or not doing to 

take care of that issue. 

Mr. BRENT. There are really two tracks of this—what is called 

internationalized domain names, which is that, in the very last 

part of a name, where you would see .com or .org, it could say, for 

example, .china in Chinese or it could say, you know, .food in Arabic. 

So those names have undergone a lengthy technical development 

process—actually, not primarily managed by ICANN—that is going 

through the IETF, Internet Engineering Task Force, that is now 

just at the very brink of conclusion. So there is a whole technical 

set of efforts going on. 

And then there are two ways that these internationalized names 

will show up. One is in what is called country code names, which 

we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about, but that would be a 

.uk, .au, those—you know, those two-letter names. The countries 

that—particularly the ones that use non-Latin characters, nonEnglish language, there is what is called the fast-track process, 

which is anticipated to culminate this year, where country code 

names, .china in Chinese or .saudiarabia in Arabic, could be put in 

place. 

But, really, in the context of the generic names, which is more 

what we are talking about today, as several panelists have mentioned, we don’t think that the notion of the government-run TLDs 

is all that people are looking for in other countries of the world and 

that part of this new GTLD process and what our policy development said from our bottom-up, multi-stakeholder world was to simultaneously launch new GTLDs, new top-level domains in international characters and in Latin characters at the same time. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And with this looming deadline, what is the plan, 

given that, you know, next week is next week? So—— 

Mr. BRENT. Right. So I should say that the timing of this new 

GTLD program, at least in the mind of ICANN, is completely independent of the timing of our arrangements with the U.S. government. This is a process that has been going on literally for 10 

years, so we couldn’t have timed it to get in front of you today. 

So, you know, the process has originally been targeted. We have 

passed original targets, in terms of delivery. The most recent delivery date we were aiming for was February of next year to launch 

the process. Based on where we are, we have a couple of outstanding issues, I am expecting that that date will likely be missed. 

But we are talking about, you know, that kind of a launch timeframe. It would be, you know, many months from now. 

124 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I don’t know exactly how I feel about that answer, 

but if you—pattern of missing deadlines—yes, did you want to 

make a comment? 

Mr. STAHURA. Yes, I would say there is—I thought that we would 

have new TLDs years ago. There has been pushback, pushback, 

pushback by forces. And so, you know, to say that somehow it was 

arranged that TLDs and the ending of the JPA would be kind of 

coincidental and one would be pushed back a week after the other 

one or a month or 2 months, that is just not true. We should have 

had TLDs a long time ago. 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Thank you, Congressman, for sharing the concern about making sure the next billion people around the planet 

can use their own alphabet. The notion that folks in the Arab world 

can’t even type google.com to do a search in all Arabic, they can’t 

do it. They have to turn their keyboard sideways and use three-fingered salutes to turn ‘‘com’’ on their keyboards. That is intolerable. 

And I share your concern that we need to roll that out. 

Mr. Brent has correctly said that we are giving governments a 

sort of fast-track on their country codes in native scripts, but think 

about it. A lot of those users want to use .asia in Chinese. I would 

like to be able to make netchoice.org accessible to people in Chinese. And I don’t want to have to go to those countries and beg for 

their permission to host my domain in their particular script. 

There are 22 countries that use the Arabic language, so an Arabic user, which of the Googles would they have to go to, google.eg 

in Arabic for Egypt, .sa for Syria in Arabic? No, they want 

google.com in Arabic. And Google shouldn’t have to try to secure 

its rights in those new versions of .com, either. If they own 

Google.com, they ought to have an opportunity to either guard or 

light up that domain when it goes to the Arabic world. 

And then, finally, you asked about timing. And there is one sort 

of coincidence of the timing, and that is, under this transition, we 

have exercised guidance and given guidance to ICANN on really 

thorny issues like this one, by refocusing their priorities, and that 

is what generated the IRT, frankly. That is what is causing them 

to pay a lot more attention to the economic studies. 

ICANN has a lot of people to answer to, so it is very tough to 

know where to listen. But as Samuel Johnson once said, nothing 

focuses the mind like the thought of a congressional hearing in the 

morning. [Laughter.] 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I see I am out of time here. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chaffetz. 

I would like to ask about ICANN, but first I would like to know, 

which countries are the biggest users of ICANN’s services? 

Mr. BRENT. I am trying to think of the right way to answer that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, top three. I will limit it to that. 

Mr. BRENT. There is the generic name space and the country 

code name space. In the country code name space, there is actually 

probably pretty even usage across the countries in the world and, 

in some sense, it is actually the least developed, least technically 

capable countries with whom we have to spend the most amount 

of time. 

125 

So, for example, ICANN typically will run security-oriented 

training with small countries. And, you know, very small countries 

around the world all want to have their Internet presence. So it is 

actually interesting that, in the country code space, it is sort of the 

smallest, least technically advanced demand the most resource 

from ICANN. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, how prolific are the Chinese people at wanting to protect domain names within your registry that you control? 

Mr. BRENT. Right, right. So, actually, as part of this implementation recommendation team process, the intellectual property interests within ICANN, we held a meeting in Hong Kong that I personally attended, specifically looking at these trademark interests. 

And I would say there is a very great—a very high interest both 

in new generic top-level domains in China—that is, the Chinese 

people would like to see new top-level domains—and that they have 

many common concerns with those that Mr. Heath has expressed, 

in terms of protecting their trademarks. There is no doubt about 

that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. So I take it that the Chinese use ICANN’s services 

pretty frequently and to a great degree over other countries? Is 

that fair? 

Mr. BRENT. Yes, I am not trying to be contradictory, but I don’t 

think that is the right conclusion. I guess, really, as I said, it would 

be, you know, very small, you know, Mauritius or, you know, very 

small countries that tend to have not the technical expertise with 

whom we spend the most time. 

And that China, for example, has a very—you know, the way 

they run the .cn infrastructure is very professional, very high tech, 

and they don’t—we don’t really spend a lot of time supporting 

them. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Your board members, how many do you have? And 

how are they selected? 

Mr. BRENT. Well, this is a little bit of a simplification. The 

ICANN board is almost legislative in nature, in the sense that it 

tries to be both representative of the various constituencies in 

ICANN, so contracted parties, registries and registrars. It tries to— 

and then there is also an independent nominating process, called 

the NomCom—again, another acronym—but a nominating committee that is an independent committee of something like 21 people—I believe that is approximately correct—who has geographic 

quotas in terms of filling board positions from around the world. 

Our board is quite diverse. You know, obviously, we have people 

from North America, from the United States, and we have people 

from all over the world. 

Mr. JOHNSON. See, you mentioned or someone mentioned on the 

panel about the Chinese pulling out of some—Mr. DelBianco, you 

want to help me with that? 

Mr. DELBIANCO. In 2006, China lost patience with us and with 

ICANN, because we weren’t able to deliver Chinese characters to 

the right of the dot. That is intolerable for them serving their own 

people to not be able to type an e-mail address or a domain name 

or a link on a Web page using their own characters. 

You would see Chinese Web pages, Mr. Chairman, where everything on the Web page was in Chinese, except for the domain 

126 

name, except for the e-mail addresses that are on the page, or the 

links on the page. That was just intolerable that China decided to 

fork the Internet. They have their own mini-ICANN running inside 

of China that sits on top of ours, and it allows people in China to 

type real Chinese characters for the .cn, and they have their own 

version of .com and .org. 

So that is what I mentioned in my testimony, that they have already splintered or forked the Internet. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? 

Mr. DELBIANCO. It is a scary thing, because what it demonstrates 

is that we have lost our way at having one single, global Internet 

addressing system that works no matter where we are on the planet, the same security, stability, and reliability that, if you are flying 

on a mission to Shanghai, that your e-mails will reach you just as 

securely as ever, that you can send and retrieve your Web pages 

and e-mails without worrying about things being misdirected or 

going to the wrong page. 

We need one addressing system. This is one world, one Internet. 

So it is a very bad thing, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JOHNSON. All right. Have the Chinese ever been represented 

on ICANN’s board? 

Mr. BRENT. I have been with ICANN 3 years. During that 3-year 

tenure, no, but I believe—and I am happy to get back with a specific answer—I believe in, prior to that time, there has been Chinese board members at ICANN. 

Mr. JOHNSON. All right. Thank you. My time has expired. 

Mr. Goodlatte, of Virginia? 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Brent, there is a strong likelihood that hundreds of new generic top-level domains will be granted in the short term if this 

proposal is enacted. Can you guarantee us right now that ICANN 

has the resources to properly enforce the rules that we will establish for the registries under this proposal? 

Mr. BRENT. You know, I think the short answer is—and I am 

sure you want a short answer—I think the short answer is yes, and 

I think the longer answer is that the key to achieving that goal is 

to have the right rules. 

You know, often what we find—and I think the reason why— 

and, you know, my spending time with a lot of the trademark, intellectual property people over the last 6 months has been a deep 

frustration about the way things work today. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. But let me interrupt. Do you agree, based on 

the testimony of Mr. DelBianco and Mr. Heath, that maybe you 

don’t have the right rules ready to go yet, that there are still a lot 

of things that need to be worked out here before we move ahead? 

Mr. BRENT. You know, we might question a lot, but I think, absolutely, we have more work to do, and we are actively considering 

additional rules, not only in intellectual property protection, but I 

think, importantly, I would be happy—if the panel is interested— 

to talk about this notion of malicious use of the Internet, as well. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. And can you guarantee me that ICANN has the 

resources to continue to perform its core role of ensuring the stability of the domain name system after the rollout of this proposal? 

127 

Mr. BRENT. Right. And I think, again, the short answer is yes. 

And the absolute prime directive of ICANN is this notion of maintaining a single, global, interoperable and secure and stable route 

zone. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Okay. Well, if the rollout of the new GTLDs gets 

held up, would ICANN still move forward with the rollout of internationalized domain names for current top-level domains in order 

to help other countries from—in order to help deter other countries 

from setting up their own balkanized versions of the Internet, as 

was described by Mr. DelBianco with regard to China? 

Mr. BRENT. Sir, I can’t give you quite as short an answer to that 

one, but bear with me for a second. So, first of all, I would want 

to respectfully disagree with Mr. DelBianco. It is an overstatement 

to say there is a fractured Internet today. 

I certainly do agree that the goal—and extremely important to 

ICANN is this notion of a single, global, interoperable name space. 

We could have a technical debate about the state of China right 

now, but I don’t think it would be of interest to the Committee. But 

that is, absolutely, the number-one goal. 

In the very short term, the intention is before the end of this 

year to—for key countries in the world that use non-Latin characters, non-English countries, to give them—to delegate these 

names in their own languages for their country code domains. 

So the easy example would be, for China, which today is .cn, to 

delegate a .china in Chinese characters. 

The third question you asked is a little bit harder for me. I am 

the chief operating officer—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, let me ask Mr. DelBianco if he wants to 

respond to that. 

Mr. DELBIANCO. You asked the question, Congressman Goodlatte, 

about current TLDs. And that means more than just the country 

codes. And as Mr. Brent indicated, a fast-track just for governments is not the track that Chinese users, Arabic users need. They 

want to get access to .org, .com, .asia, and all of those sites, not 

just the country codes. 

And so I truly believe that we need to expand that track. And 

given the resource constraints, this is a very complex thing that 

ICANN is trying to do. We have been working for several years on 

these IDNs, or internationalized domain names. 

So I think it is far better for ICANN to focus on getting that 

track out of IDN versions of top-level domains, work out the kinks 

in this system, and then, based on that, then let’s move ahead for 

the Latin alphabet TLDs that are currently driving a lot of the food 

fight here today. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Okay. Now back to Mr. Brent. 

Mr. BRENT. Yes, Mr. Goodlatte, I just didn’t get a chance to answer—fully answer your question. The last part of your question 

was related to the launch of IDN separately from Latin character 

TLDs. 

ICANN is a bottom-up policy development process. We are a 

multi-stakeholder organization. I wish, as CEO sometimes—as 

COO—I could make these decisions on behalf of ICANN. That is 

not my role. 

128 

The policy development—the policy work that went on for 3 

years that involved, you know, probably tens of thousands of person hours, what came out of that was a policy recommendation for 

simultaneous launch of IDN TLDs and generic TLDs, in part for 

competition reasons, in part because of all of the same rules that 

we are concerned with for intellectual property protections, malicious use protections, for string similarity, for all of the complexities of this process must be done before the IDNs can be launched, 

and actually, in the view of the policy developers, should be the 

same for both IDNs and—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, let me follow up on that, because studies 

have shown that consumers are increasingly worried about the 

safety and security of the Internet. How do you think this proposal 

will contribute to consumer confidence in using the Internet? And 

let me ask the other panelists to talk about your raising concerns 

regarding intellectual property protections, as well? 

Mr. Heath? 

Mr. HEATH. Well, I think—I mean, what we have just been talking about, the international domain name system, there is clearly 

demand for that. And that probably is a parallel track from the 

opening up of GTLDs generally. 

But you have touched on the issue of consumer confidence and 

safety on the Internet generally. There is some in my testimony on 

it. And the fact is, it is not as secure as it should be now, just with 

the 21 GTLDs we have at the moment. And, in fact, it has got 

worse. The study I referred to in my testimony, the British government carried out this year, they also carried it out about 3 years 

ago, and that the confidence in security of the Internet 3 years ago 

was a lot stronger than it is now. 

And that is with the existing system. And our concern is that if 

an unliberated expansion of the GTLD space will just exacerbate 

that process and it will be orders of magnitude worse than it is 

now. 

So I think if we can get the governance right on the existing system, then you can consider a measured rollout of names that are 

required according to demand, rather than doing everything all at 

once or simultaneously, which strikes me as being a bit silly. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I know my time is expired, but 

Mr. Heath raises a point that I would like to—back to—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Please. 

Mr. GOODLATTE.—Mr. Brent to respond to. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Please proceed. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you. And that is—you know, we do have 

enforcement problems right now. And what enforcement mechanisms will ICANN have to employ to ensure that applicants and— 

we are going to have a wide—you know, we are not just talking 

about, you know, a limited array of people who are going to have 

the ability to have a GTLD. You are going to have all kinds of people applying and receiving them, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands. 

How are you going to keep them—how are you going to have 

them comply with their own rules, once they have their own 

GTLD? 

129 

Mr. BRENT. Right. So it is sort of hard to—what level of detail 

to answer this question, but I think that there has been a couple 

of important areas where ICANN has been asked to develop—and, 

really, the ICANN community—to develop much more specific 

rules, intellectual property protections, which actually many are 

happy with at the top level, the sort of far-right-hand name in this 

new GTLD proposal already. 

The big concern, as it is today, is around these second-level 

names. So it is a question of people behaving according to their 

rules, making it easier and cheaper for intellectual property rights 

holders to dispute things, to make it easy and cheap. 

So there is a whole set of rules there around malicious conduct. 

You know, there are huge opportunities in these new TLDs to 

make rules that make malicious conduct harder for these new 

TLDs, make enforcement easier, and make it easier to manage a 

whole variety of TLDs on one contract, where today the 21 TLDs 

that ICANN have are all on separate arrangements with ICANN. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Stahura has been chomping at the bit, and 

then Mr. DelBianco. 

Mr. STAHURA. I have so much to say. It has been 12 years. 

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak. 

Regarding malicious conduct, it is sort of like we want to come 

out with new bank branches, but the number of bank robberies, because there are new bank branches, won’t go up. The total number 

of bank robberies is probably going to be the same, even though we 

come out with more bank branches. And that is the first thing. 

The second thing is, these new bank branches are going to have 

better safes, more security, so like these—like the IRT rules to protect trademark holders and so on. So the existence of new TLDs 

does not increase the amount of bad stuff that happens on the 

Internet. 

Anybody could register a name right now in .com. There is a lot 

of—it is infinite name space in .com, okay? You could go in there 

and register a name now and do phishing with it. Coming out with 

.paul or .cool is not going to increase that. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, my debate coach in college said that analogy was the weakest form of argument, but I am not sure I see the 

analogy here, nor do I buy the argument that, if you have more 

bank branches, there won’t be more bank robberies. It seems like 

there are more opportunities and there will be those who would be 

interested in breaking the law having more avenues to search out 

and find the weak spots where they could violate the law. 

And if you have more people enforcing rules and enforcing them 

in different ways, people are going to shop for those places where 

they get the best deal on violating the rules. So I am a little concerned about that analogy. 

And, Mr. Chairman, if you will allow, we will give Mr. DelBianco 

the last chance to answer, and then I will cease and desist. 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Brent talked about addressing Congressman Goodlatte’s concerns by saying, well, yes, if you have the right rules, I think we 

could do it, if you have the right rules. And at the risk of using 

an analogy—— [Laughter.] 

Mr. GOODLATTE. It is not easy. 

130 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Those of us who live in the capital—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. We are setting a high standard here for—— 

Mr. DELBIANCO. Those of us who live in the capital region actually regard speed limit signs as merely advisory. You see, it is enforcement that matters. And that is where the rubber will meet the 

road at ICANN. Do we have the resources to do the enforcement 

of these new rules once we come up with them? 

And I would hasten to add that rules that are written once and 

put into contracts instantly become obsolete. We are in an arms 

race with the bad guys. And contracts that stipulate how one handles the WHOIS may not be any help at all with tomorrow’s generation of how they do phishing or fast flux hosting or new areas 

that they come up with, like domain tasting was something we 

hadn’t anticipated in the rules. 

So not only do we have to have enforcement, we have to be quick 

to adapt the rules we have to new threats to consumers and new 

threats for fraud on the Internet. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, I like that analogy better, but thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Goodlatte. 

And, Mr. DelBianco, you will receive a reward that will be coming to you over the Internet for the dubious distinction of having 

made Mr. Goodlatte smile and laugh. [Laughter.] 

No response. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. And I am still smiling, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I would like to thank all the witnesses for their 

testimony today. Without objection, Members will have 5 legislative 

days to submit any additional written questions, which we will forward to the witnesses and ask that you answer as promptly as you 

can to be made a part of the record. 

Without objection, the record will remain open for 5 legislative 

days for the submission of any other additional materials. 

And with that, this hearing of the Subcommittee on Courts and 

Competition Policy is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:37 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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