Group cites widespread opposition as proof of lack of consensus.
I’m going to rip off the title of this post from a video released yesterday by Association of National Advertisers (ANA). (embedded below)
In the video, ANA says ICANN’s claims that the new TLD program was the result of many years of consensus building is “absolutely false”.
Its proof? 103 organizations have “signed on” with ANA to oppose new TLDs.
Now, it’s true that there are a lot of people out there who oppose new TLDs. I know ICANN would agree with that.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean ICANN didn’t go through its consensus process. It did. Maybe the argument is that the process was flawed.
As I’ve argued before, ANA is not the group to lead this charge. It was aware of the new TLD program and waited until it was finalized before making the program its cause célèbre.
Lots of other organizations can legitimately say they had no idea about new TLDs until the program was approved this summer. ANA can’t.
Tom G says
All the organizations mentioned combined represent just one group of stakeholders.
Consensus can be reached without support of one group.
This stakeholder group had opportunity to participate and did so. Concessions and compromises were made to accommodate their concerns.
But, it wasn’t enough, it was never going to be enough, because the 1% prefers the status quo.
DotCom says
It doesn’t matter… 100 TLDS 1000 TLDS… There can only be one highlander.
rs says
ICANN has no consensus process, that is all meaningless ICANN-speak. What ICANN did was torpedo all the attempts to create new TLD’s, even to the point of kicking out one of the Board members. That board member wanted to allow new TLD’s on principle (not a financial interest) because it is the obvious thing to do and he was ridiculed and ostracized. Instead, ICANN went on its merry way destroying small businesses and alternate roots because they had no way to control and profit off the situation. Once they figured out a way to charge $hundreds of thousands (for a process that would have cost next to nothing if done a long time ago) did they come with this so-called consensus, bottom-up nonsense. It is interesting to see how young people just getting involved over the past few years get completely hoodwinked by all this nonsense. By the time they get disgusted and drop out there is whole new crop of young people and the process starts all over again.
Tony Kirsch says
More interesting than all of this, we now know who these brands are that are supporting the ANA.
Let’s watch the ICANN homepage on May 1 to see how many of them actually apply for their .brand TLDs (given their sudden staunch objection to a program they’ve been aware of for a number of years).
I’ll be happy to have a small bet that the answer will be greater than zero 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
Tony, the question will be how many brands applied because they wanted to vs. They felt bullied into it.
That said, clearly some of ana’s members want to apply.
Tom G says
@rs – If you can’t beat em’ . .