Internet Commerce Association - ICA

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) was established in September 2006 following the .com settlement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign. After reviewing that back room-negotiated no-bid perpetual contract, domain name monetization industry leaders concluded that permanent representation within ICANN, in Washington, and in other critical decision-making arenas was needed to protect its collective interests.

ICA has strongly opposed the current versions of the PIPA and SOPA anti-piracy bills because of the grave threat they pose to all domain name industry intermediary companies of being alleged to be trafficking in domains constituting “counterfeit marks” under the bill’s overbroad and vague definitions, and to being deprived of essential payment and advertising services as a result.

On Wednesday, October 26^th a Workshop on the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) was held at the ICANN meeting in Dakar. The TMCH is a key global database that will be used for both sunrise services for new gTLDs as well as trademark claims. The workshop revealed that implementation of the TMCH involves the resolution of multiple complex issues within a very short timeframe.

On Wednesday, October 26^th Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, along with eight other cosponsors, introduced HR 3261, the ‘‘Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act of 2011’’, also known as the “E-PARASITE Act”.

On Sunday, October 23^rd ICANN senior staffer Kurt Pritz made a lengthy presentation on “New gTLD Program Activities” to the GNSO Council meeting in Dakar.

ICANN’s GNSO Council, which sets policy for all gTLDs, engaged in a spirited one hour discussion of UDRP reform during its first day of meetings at the 42^nd ICANN gathering in Dakar, Senegal.

In a September 21^st letter sent by Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Lawrence Strickling to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) disclosed that it is “actively exploring how to best meet this requirement” for “a clear and enforced ethics and conflict of interest policy” in the next version of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt found himself in the crosshairs of a high-profile hearing held at the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee on September 21^st. The inquiry, titled “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?, focused primarily on whether Google’s search engine results tended to favor its growing portfolio of Internet-based businesses over those of competitors, using its search engine dominance to steer consumers to its own services.

In an afternoon keynote address presented to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) USA meeting (http://www.igf-usa.us/) held July 18^th at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, DC, Larry Strickling, the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce, indicated a much more favorable view of ICANN in the wake of its adoption of accountability and transparency recommendations, as well as approval of a Final Applicant Guidebook (AG) fo