WASHINGTON, February 4 /PRNewswire/ --

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) held a policy forum for
government experts and brand owners yesterday, February 3, in Washington,
D.C. The purpose of the forum was to explore the state of the Internet and
discuss the shortcomings of existing Internet governance and policy
development. Attendees shared their ideas about what actions brand owners and
the US government can take to change the current course of the domain name
space and prevent the Internet from becoming increasingly dangerous and
unruly.

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One of the topics covered during the event was the decision by the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to issue a
potentially unlimited number of new Top Level Domains (TLDs). This move will
force businesses to spend millions of dollars to protect their brand on the
Internet. "In any new generic TLD, brands will have two avenues for defending
their trademarks; they can go and register as many domain names containing
their marks as they can to keep them off the market, or they can spend money
reclaiming those domain names that are registered by third-parties. In either
case, the introduction of hundreds of new TLDs will put an enormous strain on
brand owners," said Elisabeth Escobar, Senior Counsel for Intellectual
Property to Marriott, a CADNA member. CADNA estimates that brands are likely
to spend a total of US$1.5 billion to register their brands in new TLDs.
Furthermore, these registrations are unlikely to provide a return on
investment, since recently launched new TLDs have amounted to little and
there is no indication that future TLDs will be any different.

When ICANN was established as the governing body for the domain name
system (DNS), it was tasked with fairly representing all of the diverse
constituencies that compose the Internet community. In recent years, however,
ICANN policy has become strongly aligned with the special interests of the
registrars and registries that operate under contract with ICANN, resulting
in policies that often benefit these parties to the detriment of the rest of
the Internet community. The decision to allow the launch of such a large
number of new TLDs is a prime example of such a policy. Too much is at stake
from a user, security, and economic perspective to allow the system to
continue down this path.

Asked to comment on the forum, Eric Pearson, Senior Vice President of
Global Distribution Marketing for CADNA member InterContinental Hotels Group
(IHG), said, "ICANN must do more to ensure the safety and stability of
Internet. As a brand owner, IHG knows all too well how prevalent the
cybersquatting problem is in the current domain name space, and how much time
and money already goes into protecting both a brand and its customers online.
Now, with ICANN's decision to allow a potentially unlimited number of new
TLDs, Internet users will be even more vulnerable to online fraud and brand
owners will be forced to police an even bigger space."

Under ICANN's current plan, by summer of 2009, there may be hundreds of
new TLDs from dot-ART to dot-ZURICH slated for deployment.

Vice President of the Corporate Internet Department for CADNA member New
York Life Insurance Company, Ken Hittel, questioned the need for such a move.
"ICANN has yet to prove a market demand for more extensions, and there seems
to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Most brands already own
hundreds, and some own thousands, of domain names in dot-COM, dot-NET,
dot-INFO, dot-BIZ, dot-MOBI, and other TLDs," he said. "Few if any of them
will ever be put to use, because virtually all of them were purchased for
purely defensive reasons and it has proven to be exceedingly difficult to get
anyone to go to addresses that don't end in dot-COM. Online users have
spoken: they expect businesses to be reachable via dot-COM and they won't go
through the trouble of trying to locate a destination at dot-NET, dot-ORG or
dot-INFO."

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit
organization dedicated to ending the systemic domain name abuses that plague
the Internet today. For more information, please visit www.cadna.org.