Categories: ICANN’s Recurring Malady
Some bad ideas at ICANN crop up again and again, stubborn and persistent like a case of herpes. These ideas seem innocent at first, but after they take root they turn out to be difficult to control and are guaranteed to scare people away. Even after treatment, they re-appear with unnerving regularity.
Such is the idea of categorizing and segregating and prioritizing new top-level domain names. In 2001, we had the Board picking names (category: “We like them!”); in 2005, sponsored TLDs (category: “They’re safer!”); now in the current round we have communities (category: “They’re worthy!”) and geographical names (category: “Government property!!”). If some people have their way, we’ll soon be adding any number of other gradations of purity to the selection criteria (category: “Priority for strings I approve of!”). These last are the supposedly “uncontroversial” strings — except that nothing about categories is uncontroversial when you get down to the details, as we shall see.
Over the last ten years, the ICANN mania for categorization has prompted an enormous collective yawn from Internet users, as they issue one boring TLD after another. (The one interesting TLD, .xxx, was introduced only after ICM Registry, the proposer, spent millions of dollars to force ICANN to approve it.) Even the biggest winner among these “picked for success” TLDs, .info, was at one point was reduced to giving away domain names to try to stimulate usage. People have said that some of these TLDs are successful according to their own lights, and perhaps they are, but let’s be serious — every other Internet initiative is judged successful or not according to adoption and usage, and in this sense TLDs in the “chosen” category are failures. The extensive history of the use of categories in domain names — at both the top level and the second level — has shown that they have one overwhelming effect, which is to limit interest and use.
History of a Bad Idea
The idea of TLD categories has been around since before ICANN. One of its more extreme manifestations comes in a 1996 proposal from Simon Higgs, in which he says:
This document covers… the framework necessary to define the function, delegation, and use of new top level domains. Several factors need to be addressed such as why the TLD exists in the first place, who accepts registrations for the TLD, and what special purpose (if any) the TLD serves. These questions can be answered by the recognition of TLD “classes”.
Sounds sensible and innocuous, right? Yes, until you get to the conclusion — that all TLDs should be shoe-horned into 45 categories, including such doozies as:
- .ARTIF – for artificial limbs, eyes, and teeth
- .DERM – for leather goods (and Valtrex?)
- .CUL – for culture (works particularly well in French)
- .ITAR – for guns and ammo, I kid you not
- .WEAR – for clothing
… etc.
Chanel, under this scheme, would be required to register its name as chanel.wear, and Coach to sell its leather luggage under the super-sexy name coach.derm. This is a vision of the Internet, the most powerful commerce engine ever devised, crippled and turned into a branding nightmare. This is a vision of the Internet, the most powerful means of finding information ever invented, categorized into a reductionist caricature of trademark law. (In fairness to Mr. Higgs, the list of names was presented as a draft, with room for improvement. But still….)
We can wonder at this logical but hare-brained scheme from 1996, but domain classification schemes are still in force today, with depressing results. From the Higgs proposal to the seven TLDs proposed by the IAHC, from the “beauty contest” of the initial ICANN round to the “proof of concept” sponsored TLD round, not one categorized TLD has achieved anything resembling widespread approval or adoption. Contrast and compare to the market-driven launches of .RF (Cyrillic) and .CO, which have been instant successes.
What the Research Says
So what does drive adoption of a new TLD? Dr. Matthew Zook of the University of Kentucky was commissioned by APTLD to do a study of the factors that lead to acceptance and adoption of top-level domains, in this case ccTLDs. He identified three essential factors: population size (in other words, the addressable market), income level, and finally registration policies, which turn out to be a key factor. TLDs that restricted delegations based on categories of applicants, for instance allowing only businesses to register, or requiring applicants to submit proof of identity, were found to be very poorly received — not least because each restriction meant instituting a time-consuming and frustrating bureaucracy to verify an applicant’s eligibility. Going beyond Zook’s study, we can also observe some restricted TLDs, for instance .FR and .SE, abandoning their rules and seeing adoption rates go up substantially.
Administrators of some ccTLDs early on put into place categories and distinctions whose effects still ripple through the domain name industry today, resulting in inefficiencies and costs for registrants. I know this well: I built and sold two successful businesses, NetNames USA and NameEngine, that were devoted to helping corporations figure out how to register names in different ccTLDs, and how to “comply” with various restrictions on eligibility. For instance, if the rules required that a registrant needed to have an in-country contact, we would supply one. The net effect of the TLD categories and restrictions was to increase costs to applicants, thereby ensuring that those with resources got what they wanted, while the poor were hampered by the rules. Today, Mark Monitor and others continue to run successful businesses that help corporations decipher and exploit the arcana of domain name eligibility policies.
Categories = Restricted Access
“But,” (some will say) “this is not the fault of categories, but of the restrictions themselves.” That’s a false distinction. The fact is that there never was a domain name category that was not used to restrict access or eligibility in some way. Restrictions are the other face of categories, they are inseparable. Eligibility restrictions are the whole point of categories. And restrictions lead to cost, delays and depressed levels of adoption.
No Such Thing As a Simple Category
Categories are chimerical. They appear simple, commonsensical, real, but has there ever been a category as simple as it seems? One category that ICANN has allowed, in a nod to governments, is that of geographical names. This grouping, which seems uncontroversial — what could be easier than place names? — has proven to be fraught with intractable nuance. What, for instance, is a city? The GAC member from Greece said at the ICANN meeting in San Francisco that a “city” was any place on earth where more than one person had settled. Absurd as that may seem, in a testy twenty-minute exchange on the subject between the ICANN Board and the GAC, that’s as close as anyone got to a definition.
As well as having calamitous practical effects, categories are inherently unfair because they are impossible to define. This always leads to a subjective judgment of who is in, and who is out.
The Guardians of Rectitude
Dividing up applicants or strings into groups sounds easy and simple, but when you get down to the details categories are difficult to define, devilish to administer, and unfair and expensive to applicants. If you’ve worked at a registry or registrar, you know this.
If you haven’t, you may nonetheless notice the unpleasant whiff of grinch emanating from certain quarters of ICANN. The very idea that people could have any domain name they want, just because they want it, is intolerable to the misanthropes who would like to exercise permanent micro-regulation over new gTLD registrations. Categories are their weapon, because with categories come boundaries, and with boundaries come infractions, and with infractions come punishments, and for punishments you must have judges — and here they come, the merry judge-volunteers, ready to rain red tape on unwitting registrants and registries. “How dare you want allow a flip-flop company to register a .shoe domain? Everyone knows that flip-flops are not real shoes! The registration must be revoked!”
Abstinence Is a Virtue
Categories in the domain name world have proven to be pernicious. The registration requirements they engender depress demand, introduce costs and bureaucracies and delays, and because those with money and persistence will always find a way around the rules, they exacerbate inequalities of access. Add to this the near impossibility of coming up with a category that can be defined with any precision. The same dynamic that has turned some ccTLDs into ghost towns will take hold in the new gTLD program if new categories are introduced into the process.
The ICANN Board and staff are reluctant to expand TLD categories. That is very wise; seductive as they are, domain name categories are a disease with symptoms that are painful, embarrassing, and difficult to manage. And also gross and itchy.
