EU’s Kroes Not Amused By ICANN Decision On New TLDs

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

European Commission Vice President and Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes is not satisfied with the decision of the ICANN Board in Singapore this week to open up the domain name space for new top-level domains (TLDs) like .eco, .gay or .paris.

The Commissioner was “disappointed that the ICANN Board has repeatedly overlooked public policy concerns,” her spokesman Jonathan Todd wrote in answer to questions from Intellectual Property Watch.

Todd pointed to letters by the EC and the US Government immediately before the ICANN meeting covering competitions concerns. Moreover, governments gathered on the eve of the ICANN meeting also according to Todd sent a “clear statement urging the ICANN Board not to adopt draft new procedures for creating new generic Internet top level domains (gTLDs) without first resolving a series of important public policy concerns, notably as regards allowing cross-ownership between Registries and Registrars and requiring that trademarks should be ‘in use’ to be protected by a special regime under the new rules.”

The “ICANN Board failed to provide responses on how it intended to address these concerns,” the Commission warned. Instead “despite this advice, the ICANN Board today went ahead and adopted its new guidelines.” From Kroes’ point of view this has been the “second time in a row that the ICANN Board disregards governmental advice on public policy issues” – the first case being the creation the .xxx top-level domain.

The EC now will carefully examine the statement issued by the ICANN board following the decision today and “coordinate its response with EU Member States and confer with international partners, notably the US.”

ICANN together with the resolution on the start of the TLD process also has published its reasons [pdf] for issues where it did not take GAC advice.

ICANN is obliged to do this according to the bylaws. The Commission will remain a strong supporter of the multistakeholder model which governs the internet, Todd wrote.

“However,” he said, “the absence of an appropriate response on the part of ICANN to substantive public policy concerns underscores the need for the model to be reformed to remain sustainable.”

Vice-President Kroes said: “The lack of an adequate response on the part of ICANN Board clearly points to some deficiencies in the current functioning of the model. This calls for specific actions in order to remedy the situation.”