Dear Members and Subscribers:

Last week I attended TRAFFIC in Orlando for Internet Commerce Association. It was nice for a change to not have to travel to a conference. The conference was a great success despite a smaller than usual attendance. At TRAFFIC Orlando, ICA held its first meeting for members. We had a private room provided by TRAFFIC for a breakfast meeting. The meeting for members went over well and ICA will plan to meet at all major domain conferences going forward. Thank you to Rick and Howard for the

A week before the TRAFFIC conference in Orlando, I received a welcome email from Kevin Ham of Reinvent Technology. He increased Reinvent's support of ICA from the Gold level ($25,000) to a total of $100,000. This generous support from Reinvent Technology secures our association’s financial survival. Thank you to Kevin and all the great people at Reinvent. Now is time to move beyond survival mode and to concentrate on representing our members’ interests and improving member benefits. ICA still wants every domainer and domain service company to join our association. We can do so much more together than we can individually.

On that note, Parked joined ICA at the Silver level during TRAFFIC Orlando. Thank you to Sig Solares and the Parked team. Reminder – our membership list is online. Check to see if your service providers are members. If not, let them know that you prefer doing business with ICA members. Thank you.

The Snowe Bill – What’s going on?

Many domain investors and developers perceive that the Snowe bill isn’t making much headway in the Senate and are starting to relax. Relaxing is good for the spirit, but as an industry, we need to be vigilant about the threat of legislative initiatives that could cause great harm to the industry. Philip Corwin, Counsel to ICA and our lobbyist in Washington, continues to work to keep this bill and the new and overreaching trademark rights that would be created by this bill from getting any support. Are we successful for now? Yes, all is quiet now. ICA will keep a close watch for any movement by opponents of entrepreneurial businesses. You can see Phil’s speech at TRAFFIC about the Snowe bill and other domain issues at DomainNews.com.

What’s next?

ICA will be representing members and the domainer industry at the ICANN meeting in Paris next month. DomainerMeeting precedes the ICANN meeting by a few days and is held in the same hotel. It would be great to see a number of domainers stay over from DomainerMeeting to attend at least the first few days of the ICANN meeting. I will have more about both meetings in the next ICA newsletter.

Best regards,
Michael Collins
Internet Commerce Association