E-mail Exchange with Alan Ezeir (9 and 23 October 2000)

FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

Dear Alan,

Thank you for your 9 October 2000 e-mail (copied below) expressing concern over the establishment of a .web or .site top-level domain (TLD). Please accept my apologies for my delay in responding.

Your e-mail expresses concerns about establishment of either a .web or .site TLD on both policy and legal grounds, and inquires how these concerns might be formally presented. For comments about policy, ICANN has established two primary mechanisms. First, ICANN has established a web-based public comment forum, on which we encourage you to make public comments. ICANN will also be holding an in-person forum on 15 November in Marina del Rey, in connection with ICANN's second annual meeting. Please note that we expect that there will be many participants wishing to comment at the public forum so that the time permitted for each comment is likely to be limited.

Your legal concerns appear to arise from your company's provision of registrar services in the .ws top-level domain. You note that your company has "marketed" the .ws domain as "WEBSITE" and state that consumers might confuse this with a .web or .site top-level domain. In this context, it seems significant that the .ws top-level domain has been established to be operated to serve the needs of the Internet community in the country of Samoa (formerly called Western Samoa). The abbreviation .ws has been assigned because it is the alpha-2-code abbreviation for Samoa set forth on the ISO 3166-1 list, not as an abbreviation for "website" as stated in your e-mail. It seems ironic that your company, which is providing registrar services in the .ws domain under a one-year[*] contract with the .ws domain's sponsoring organization (Computer Services Limited of Apia, Samoa), would raise legal concerns about the establishment of .web and .site TLDs on the basis that some customers have been encouraged to think .ws stands for "website" rather than (Western) Samoa.

In all events, we believe that well-established legal authority demonstrates that the provision of registration services in a particular TLD does not give rise to trademark or service-mark rights in the name of the domain in which registration services are offered. Please see <http://www.icann.org/tlds/correspondence/> for more details.

Best regards,

Louis Touton

-------- Original Message --------

Louis,

We have reviewed the applicates that you are putting forward and are excited about the decisions that will be made for new gTLD's. We do have a couple concern about that use of ".web" and ".site" . Since we operate ".ws" and have marketed it for the past 9 months as "WEBSITE" we do see possible confusion being drawn to this choice. Who can I speak to regarding this issue? Our lawyers don't see any problem with the other choices but would not like to see the market get confused with a ".web" / ".site" and ".ws" since they both bring meaning to "web" " site " .

This is a concern that we will want to address with ICANN. What is the formal way ICANN will be receiving concerns of this matter?

Alan Ezeir a@ws.ws
Co-founder & President
Global Domains International, Inc.
http://website.ws
p: 760-602-3000 x5100
f: 760-602-3099