Does ICANN have its head stuck in the sand on new gTLDs? The campaign against the Internet governance organisation has been building up in the past few months, with public protests from entities like the American national advertisers' association ANA or CRIDO, a group of major corporations.
The protest themselves play like a broken record.
"Where's the economic studies to show that new gTLDs are needed?" or "new gTLDs will make it more difficult to deal with crime on the Net."
ICANN has done economic studies. But how can a study predict innovation? Did studies prove that Facebook or Google might work? Thankfully, there was no need. Those major Internet initiatives where the result of private enterprise doing what it does best: innovating without being constrained by politics.
Those worried about crime point to the WHOIS as a potential flaw that might be exploited by cybercrooks. There again, this is waving away years of policy development by the ICANN community to try and find solutions to these (very real) problems.
That community is still working hard. Recent results include fresh proposals on how to improve WHOIS.
But in the light of a US Senate hearing happening today on "ICANN's Expansion of Top Level Domains", it’s the critics that are getting all the press. As former ICANN staffer Kieren McCarthy notes, ICANN is missing a lot of PR opportunities here by simply not responding to critics.
Worse, this is the second such hearing where ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom has chosen not to attend in person but rather to send his Senior VP Kurt Pritz. While Kurt, as the man in charge of the new gTLD program, is probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this topic, you might have expected ICANN to front its CEO for such an important event.
Because despite the fact that the launch date has been set at Jan 12, 2012, new gTLDs aren't here yet. And as storm clouds gather in an ever-more ominous show of protest from the new gTLD naysayers, ICANN needs to be as convincing as it can be today in front of the US Senate, with a panel where Kurt Pritz can expect to feel very much on his own opposite staunch critics like ANA VP Dan Jaffe or ex ICANN Board member turned ICANN opponent Esther Dyson.