At a recent meeting, ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization asked ICANN Staff to prepare a report on whether the ICANN-Verisign agreement posed "policy issues" that should be addressed by the GNSO's policy council. The report is in, and I don't think anyone was surprised to learn that the folks who negotiated the deal don't think it's wise to have ICANN's policy organizations involved. Here's the recommendation: "ICANN Staff does not recommend that the GNSO launch a policy development process directed at one specific registry agreement." And the General Counsel's opinion: "The General Counsel’s opinion is that 'the dot COM proposed agreement in relation to the various views that have been expressed by the constituencies' is not 'properly within the scope of the ICANN policy process and within the scope of the GNSO.'"

So this brings us to the ICANN equivalent of a constitutional moment. What's a policy issue and, perhaps more importantly, who decides what's a policy issue?

If nothing is a policy issue, I say we all go home. Here's the message I sent to the ALAC: "This is probably off-topic for an ICANN policy body, so please forgive me for posting it here, but I thought you might be interested in the Staff Report the GNSO requested on what policy issues might be embodied in the proposed ICANN-Verisign agreements...."  [Discuss this on ICANNWatch.]
The initial phase of the GNSO's Public Comment period on new top-level domains has ended. You can find the comments archived here. I ended up submitting that paper I wrote back in 2002 and which I blogged here both then and a couple of weeks ago. It still seemed current.
Okay, so my views haven't changed much since 2002, but I'm not the only pig-headed guy around. You really ought to read the Intellectual Property Constituency's paper, which reads a lot like what the constituency wrote five years ago. The new twist is this I-told-you-so: "The introduction of unsponsored TLDs such as .BIZ and .INFO added little if anything to competition at the registry level and because they were undifferentiated from the existing market for domain names, added little or no added value to Internet users." This is demonstrably false in more ways than I can count. First and foremost, on the registry-level competition point, Neulevel and Afilias used their gTLD registry business to capture three of the largest new markets for registry services: China (.CN), India (.IN) and the United States (.US). They also forced Verisign to submit a competitive bid for .NET. All of this benefited end-users. I really hope Neulevel and Afilias respond to this paper with a paper of their own.

Believe me, I'm sympathetic to most established corporate domain name registrants. They need another domain name like they need a hole in their heads. The answer: don't pay for what you're not going to use. In fact, if I'm running a new registry, I don't want these folks taking amazon.*** and apple.*** and pointing the domains back to their .COM hosts. I want real registrations from new registrants hoping to do something different on the Internet. Any registry that builds its business plan on the expectation that it will extract "sunrise" ransoms from corporate registrants is incredibly short-sighted. Over the long term, new registries benefit from users who actively use and promote their .*** domain name.

It's funny, but in some ways, new gTLD registries and corporate registrants have common interests. The usual suspects don't want to be coerced into defensively registering names they don't need in the new TLDs, and the new registries want to build their business from registrations outside the circle of the usual suspects. Given a common interest, how do they work together?
One of the comments on the ALAC's Wiki page on new gTLDs made me smile. An anonymous contributor wrote: "Although there are bureaucrats who would like to leave their stamp on the internet, most users will stick with using .com .net and .org for the most part....it seems to me that what most of us want to use are the original generic unrestricted TLDs and given the choice, that’s what we will continue doing. It seems to have worked well so far and i for one am not sure why we need to change anything." It reminded me of Bill Gates' infamous quote: "640k ought to be enough for anybody." (Wikipedia: Gates may not have said this.) The fact that many users will continue to choose .COM, .NET and .ORG, however, isn't a reason not to give them a larger menu from which to order. I'll have a .III with a Diet Coke, please.
Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows: "The secondary market for domains represents a new source of revenue for Tucows and our channel of service providers." Even as a shareholder of the company and long-time Cow-watcher, this news surprised me. I suppose the new functions, which will debut at www.tucowsauctions.com, are designed to keep existing customers happy more than grow the core business. I can certainly understand why the company is late to the market. The uncertainty the last few years (three years? longer?) over whether the secondary market would be run at the registry-level or the registrar-level probably froze the development plans of lots of companies. But why now?

Related note: "Tucows will host a conference call on Thursday, February 9, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. (ET) to discuss its fourth quarter fiscal 2005 financial results." Speaking of the cows, Elliot (pictured above driving his company car) and Ross Rader have put a new gTLD discussion paper up on a new Wiki page: "Making Choices:Thoughts on Implementing a Permanent gTLD Allocation Process."
And speaking of Registrar CEOs, GoDaddy's Bob Parsons has been having a heck of a time getting his Super Bowl ad approved. (And hear the details on Radio GoDaddy.)
I really like what Ali Farshchian is doing to generate revenue at CircleID. I'll bet the "Industry Spotlight" auction works out well for him. I've gone back and forth on whether to place ads on this weblog. I decided I didn't like them, but Ali's a businessperson running an online magazine so his site should have sponsorships and advertising.

Coming on Monday: "Whois, Whereis and Louis."