One must wonder what America’s Association of National Advertisers has been doing for the last five years or so. As ICANN has been consulting about the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains, they have seemingly said nothing. Not a peep. Well, not until July this year anyway. And then it becomes a flood.And now a letter to ICANN’s CEO and President Rod Beckstrom where the ANA criticises ICANN for its lack of a bottom-up input process involving the global Internet community, insufficient research and guidance from expert authorities, inadequate oversight by the U.S. Department of Commerce and potentially disastrous consequences if the program is implemented in January 2012, as planned.While ICANN’s process has not been without criticism, it’s difficult to take seriously the ANA’s comments. I mean, what were all those ICANN meetings, the long drawn out process that has gone close to pushing to the limit some of the early parties interested in new gTLDs.The ANA argues that implementation of the ICANN program is economically unsupportable and is likely to cause irreparable harm and damage to its membership and the Internet business community in general. At the same time, according to the ANA, the program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardises the safety of consumers.”By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the ICANN top-level domain program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace,” says Bob Liodice, President and CEO, ANA.”Brand confusion, dilution and other abuses also pose risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft and cyber security breaches. The decision to go forward with the program also violates sound public policy and contravenes ICANN’s Code of Conduct and its undertakings with the United States Department of Commerce.”So OK, the ANA raises some points, but points that have been debated interminably. And where was the ANA? Apparently not at the meetings and now they have woken up and demand the process be stopped.Give me a break. The ANA is a professional organisation that, so they say has more than 400 companies as members, representing in excess of 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing, communications and advertising each year, presumably in the US.So with all these members and all this support, why have they only now woken up to the new gTLD process?To read more of the ANA’s criticisms and a link to their letter, see the news release on their website at www.ana.net/content/show/id/21790.
US Advertising Industry Asleep At The Wheel on New gTLDs
One must wonder what America’s Association of National Advertisers has been doing for the last five years or so. As ICANN has been consulting about the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains, they have seemingly said nothing. Not a peep. Well, not until July this year anyway. And then it becomes a flood.