<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<p>From the perspective of someone outside the ICANN arena on this
issue, here is an article from The Hindu about L'Oreal seeking
.BEAUTY as a closed generic. <br>
</p>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/beauty-lies-in-the-domain-of-the-highest-bidder/article3929612.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/beauty-lies-in-the-domain-of-the-highest-bidder/article3929612.ece</a><br>
September 24, 2012 (Last posting for today. Many thanks, Kathy)<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<div id="content-body-14269002-12641568">
<p>L’Oréal has applied for <i>the top level domain (TLD) .beauty</i>
to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(Icann), the global authority dealing with domain names on the
Internet. TLDs are what we see on the right side of the dot in
domain names — for example, .com and .net. If L’Oréal gets
.beauty, which seems very likely, it will be able to reserve
this top level domain name just for its own use. Unlike .com,
.org, .net etc, which are public TLDs, .beauty will be a private
TLD. What this means is that, for instance, “Raji Curls,” a
beauty salon, will not be able to ask for <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.rajicurls.beauty">www.rajicurls.beauty</a>,
as one could have in the case of .com. L’Oréal will have the
exclusive use of .beauty, as its private property. If L’Oréal
were to seek a trademark for “beauty,” it will be flatly
refused. The word is too generic for anyone to be given monopoly
rights over it. It is therefore surprising that L’Oréal should
be able to get global monopoly rights on .beauty, just because
it is willing to pay $1,85,000, the application fees for new
TLDs, to Icann.</p>
<p>How L’Oréal will leverage this privileged association with a
key symbolic term of our culture will be an interesting exercise
to follow. But the goldmine is there for anyone to see. It can
certainly begin by propagating the term “.beauty” in all its
communications and expressions. With time, demonstrating the
long association, it could also seek trademark rights on
“.beauty,” and so will go on the saga of how L’Oréal became
beauty, and beauty, L’Oréal! Incidentally, L’Oréal is also
seeking private ownership of .makeup, .skin, .hair and .salon.</p>
<p>
<b>The case of Amazon</b>
</p>
<p>The problem becomes even more pernicious when the whole
business of a company is digital. Amazon, for instance, has
applied for .book as a private exclusive TLD. Soon, book, or at
least the digital book — which is what .book would signify — <i>will
be what is offered by Amazon</i>. One would think that this is
too large an unfair advantage to hand over to Amazon which
already engages in monopoly practices in the area of digital
books, through the “locked-in” Kindle model.</p>
<p>(Well, it can name “Kindle” .book now!) If this is getting a
bit disconcerting, what about “.cloud” being the name of <i>the</i>
online computing system that Google runs, since Google would
most likely soon have the exclusive use of .cloud? Cloud
computing is expected to be an industry that will be based on
unprecedented vertical and horizontal integrations. In such a
scenario, awarding exclusive use of .cloud to one company only
makes the problem worse.</p>
<p>
<b>Private rights on public words</b>
</p>
<p>Words as parts of language are our common heritage. It is
obvious that language, and its specific uses, have to be
zealously protected, as public domain, that is equally
accessible to all. Words used in some forms however are unique
identifiers, which cannot be shared. Trademarks and domain names
are two examples of such unique identifiers. Trademark
authorities are very strict about not allowing generic names as
trademarks. Authorities registering names of companies,
organisations, etc are similarly very cautious and exacting, in
terms of seeking very good reasons for claiming anything that
may appear to interfere with common ownership of names, words,
phrases and language. Icann, however, seems to have thrown all
caution to the winds. It is not only .beauty, .book and .cloud
that are being taken, and privatised. A host of other generic
words like, .love, .school, .kid. .music. .apps. .home, .buy,
.mail, .eat. .movie, .car, .author, .joy, .green etc are also up
for sale. Those words that attract more than one suitor will be
auctioned.</p>
<p>Owners of most existing TLDs, like .com and .org, are obliged
to make second level domain names (like “thehindu” in
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.thehindu.com">www.thehindu.com</a>) available to the public in the open market. It
is also useful that, till now, TLDs have largely been confined
to three letters, which arrangement greatly limits the semantic
possibilities that can be associated with TLDs. It is not
evident what public interest is served by giving a go-by to
these two very sensible provisions of the earlier TLD policy in
this round of allocations, allowing private (as against public)
TLDs that employ full generic words. In fact, Esther Dyson, the
founding chairman of Icann, has said that there was no reason at
all to establish new TLDs.</p>
<div id="inarticle_wrapper_div">
<div id="inread1_26817" style="display: inline-block; position:
fixed; left: -99999px; overflow: hidden; clear: both;">
<div id="inread_26817" style="height: 1px; overflow: hidden;
position: absolute; visibility: visible;" class="mainAdView">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"
width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr id="zd_tr_26817">
<td id="zd_td_26817" style="opacity: 0;"><br>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Icann must understand that it is a governance system with the
responsibility of protecting and promoting public interest. It
is not a private company offering products and services with an
aim to maximise profit. For this reason, it may have to be more
prudent than innovative. Icann is taking important decisions on
behalf of people of the whole world. Giving off generic words as
private TLDs is a zero sum game. What it gives to a private
party for exclusive use is denied to everyone else to that
extent. Icann is providing a few companies highly privileged
association with some very important symbolic terms, thus
compromising the common ownership of these elements of our
cultural heritage.</p>
<p>
<b>‘Titles’ on monopoly empires</b>
</p>
<p>It is an unfortunate fact of the emerging digital ecology that
a few companies have begun to monopolise complete segments of
our civilisational system — one company claims to be organising
the world’s knowledge for us, another positions itself as <i>the</i>
space for social networking, a third one is <i>the</i> global
distributed instant media, one company has always sought to be <i>the</i>
digital office suite, another is emerging as <i>the</i> music
store.... and so on. This is a rather disturbing trend.</p>
<p>Instead of providing counter-measures to the emergent threat of
monopolisation in the digital realm, Icann is accentuating it
further through the new TLD programme. It is allowing mega
corporates, interested in “representing” whole segments of our
civilisational system, exclusive use of corresponding generic
words like .book, .music, .media, .school, .beauty, .cloud, etc.
Such benevolence on Icann’s part greatly helps cement the
business plans of these corporates, who can employ their
proprietorship over these words to redesign and shape the
associated cultural phenomenon in the image of their own narrow
interests, and then extract perpetual rents. No business model
could be more remunerative. Over time, demonstrating long
standing exclusive usage, these corporates may also seek
trademark rights on these generic words, or at least the words
with a dot before them.</p>
<p>To take just one example, Google already owns close to 90 per
cent of the search market. It now wants Icann to give it the
“official stamp” for its monopoly position through an exclusive
ownership of .search. Marketing manager for British domain-name
registrar Names.co.uk, Stephen Ewart, calls this as “a silent
privatisation of the Web.” “Once you own these spaces, you can
write your own terms and conditions,” he says, adding how “big
brands can decide who can be there and decide what can be put in
that space.”</p>
<p>It is difficult to comprehend how such a hugely problematic
plan of allowing private TLDs employing generic names has
managed to get through the numerous committees associated with
Icann. Apart from the problem of corporate monopolies discussed
here, there are other kinds of serious issues involved with
applications that have been made for TLDs like .church and
.islam. While Icann has an open window for public comments on
the new TLD applications till September 26, any objection must
pertain to specific TLD applications and not to the general
policy itself. Hopefully, it will still be possible to save
beauty from Loreal, and the book from Amazon.</p>
<p>
<i>(Parminder Jeet Singh is Executive Director, IT for Change,
in special consultative status with the United Nations
Economic and Social Council.)</i>
</p>
</div>
<br>
</body>
</html>