Posts tagged amid
CEO Beckstrom to Leave ICANN in July Amid gTLD Controversy
Aug 17th
His vision was to internationalize the oversight body of the Internet naming system, to structure it less like a spider and more like a starfish. (A starfish, you see, can regrow lost limbs.) To some extent, the dashing security expert Rod Beckstrom has accomplished that as President and CEO of ICANN since mid-2009, most notably by removing the U.S. Dept. of Commerce from its direct oversight role over ICANN.
Come the end of his term next July, Beckstrom will leave the President and CEO role of ICANN, presumably to resume his career as a world-renowned security expert. But the twilight period of his term he may have to fight at least two more significant battles, neither of which may conclude before his departure. First and foremost is ICANN’s adoption of a controversial generic top-level domain (gTLD) plan for the domain name system – one which would give any applicant with $185,000 to spare (PDF available here) a new root domain of its own alongside .com, .net, and .org.
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The latest criticism of this plan came Monday from Randall Rothenberg, CEO and President of the Internet Advertising Bureau. The IAB represents some 500 leading media firms that represent as much as 86% of the ad buys in the United States.
“ICANN’s potentially momentous change seems to have been made in a top-down star chamber,” Rothenberg said. “There appears to have been no economic impact research, no full and open stakeholder discussions, and little concern for the delicate balance of the Internet ecosystem. This could be disastrous for the media brand owners we represent and the brand owners with which they work. We hope that ICANN will reconsider both this ill-considered decision and the process by which it was reached.”
Rothenberg’s comments follow up on a letter sent earlier this month to Beckstrom by Robert Liodice, the President and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which alleges the proposed gTLD system violates the world’s existing system of trademarks.
“Implementation of a program with unlimited TLDs is economically unsupportable and likely to cause irreparable harm and damage,” Liodice wrote. “At the same time, the program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardizes the safety of consumers. By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace. Brand confusion, dilution, and other abuse also poses risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft, and cyber security breaches.”
All that together might mean a fairly negative legacy for an outgoing ICANN chief. But in his response to Liodice a few days later, Beckstrom stated that Liodice had not done his homework, failing to account for strict guidelines for gTLD applicants (PDF available here) that were developed with the full cooperation of both major DNS stakeholders and the U.S. Government.
Multiple public meetings and at least 45 lengthy public comment periods were conducted and thousands of comments, representing a broad range of interests, were received. Every comment submitted (including those submitted by the ANA) was read, summarized, posted for all to see, and factored into the decision-making process. The extent of this collaborative process, the responsiveness to public comment, and the volume of changes (across seven full drafts of the Applicant Guidebook) in response to stakeholder input are well documented.
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Your quotations from the economic studies are highly selective and lead to an unsupported conclusion that more domain names will lead to cyber security lapses or consumer privacy violations. Your claim of “enormous financial burdens” and other broad statements are offered without supporting data or rationale. I invite you to review the entire set of economic studies, which explored the current marketplace, and applied expert analysis to an examination of the potential risks and benefits as far as possible (noting that the benefits of innovation are difficult to predict). As you point out, these studies recommended the implementation of additional protections against trademark abuse and malicious conduct. ICANN formed teams of internationally recognized experts to adopt both these recommendations and incorporate many significant new safeguards into the program.
Beckstrom went on to respond to Liodice’s allegation that companies would be forced to shell out a six-digit figure to protect their trademark interests on the Web, by saying protections will be put in place to prevent any applicant from violating the legal interests of any other parties. As for whether new gTLDs will bring appreciable benefits to the Internet as a whole – as Web creator Tim Berners-Lee suggested in 2004 that they should – Beckstrom suggested that hopefully anyone taking on the task of buying a gTLD would recognize the enormous responsibility that would be assumed. “This is clearly not for everyone,” he wrote.
Is ICANN concerned that the fallout from this dispute may not subside prior to the close of Beckstrom’s tenure? ICANN spokesperson Jim Trengrove told RWW, “By the time Rod Beckstrom’s term comes to end, the new gTLD program application period will have been completed and the evaluation of those applications will be well underway. Rod already has remarked on the solid professional executive staff he has put together which will carry on implementation of the gTLD program even while a professional search for his successor is underway.”
Meanwhile, the other battle that ICANN is mitigating concerns another aspect of Beckstrom’s bold internationalization plan: It wants the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to remove itself from responsibility for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which manages the assignment of names to country-code TLDs (like .co and .tv), as well as to the zone where gTLDs would be managed.
ICANN administrator Fiona Alexander made it very clear last March: It wants IANA to step aside. “Narrowing the scope of the IANA functions framework would promote the global public interest. Narrowing the scope of the framework subject only to [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] oversight would increase global confidence in the performance of these functions.”
Is ICANN concerned this situation may not be resolved before next year? “Rod is pleased with the increased internationalization of ICANN during his watch, beginning with the Affirmation of Commitments agreed to within months of his taking over as president and CEO of ICANN,” ICANN’s Trengrove tells us. “He believes ICANN’s relationship with IANA continues to evolve in a positive direction.”
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Korean Stock Broker Leaps to Death Amid Market Plunge – NBC Los Angeles
Aug 10th
 AsiaOne |
Korean Stock Broker Leaps to Death Amid Market Plunge
NBC Los Angeles The 48-year-old broker, identified only as "Seo," sent text messages to colleagues expressing regret over severe losses, just minutes before leaping to his death in the city of Daegu, according to Chief investigator Lee Kang-ho. Lee said Seo's text … SKorean police say stock broker jumped off building after suffering heavy losses South Korean man kills himself after market falls |
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Demand for Seo’s music soars amid scandal – Korea Times
Apr 26th
 Korea Times |
Demand for Seo's music soars amid scandal
Korea Times As Seo Tai-ji's marriage and divorce with actress E Ji-ah continues to create a stir, the demand for the singer's music has increased by four times. “A survey of major domestic music websites such as Melon, Bugs and Dosirak shows that sales for music … |
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Amid E-Book Growth, Students Still Prefer Paper Textbooks
Jan 7th
Over the past half-year, we have written extensively about e-books and e-readers. We’ve discussed the merits of e-books over paper books. We’ve covered Kindle e-books outselling hardcover best-sellers and their strength over the holiday season. We’ve even included the growth of e-readers and e-books in one of our Top Trends of 2010 posts.
But, as ReadWriteWeb editor Richard McManus discussed in “5 Ways that Paper Books are Better than E-Books,” everything from price to packaging to, most importantly, the feel of physical books may keep them on the shelves for a long time to come. Now, in a study called “Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education,” another round in the debate has been settled on the side of paper. 75% of student preferred old-fashioned, paper-and-board textbooks over electronic versions.
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The surveying entity, the Book Industry Study Group, announced the results yesterday. The 75% who preferred paper textbooks cited “a fondness for print’s look and feel, as well as its permanence and ability to be resold.”
Additional findings:
- Students love a bargain. Survey respondents said they often buy previous editions of a textbook (16% did this for their current class ) or international versions (18% did this at least once).
- Piracy is pervasive. More than 40% of survey respondents said they bought a textbook from a pirate website, or know others who have. In addition, many respondents reported copying their friends’ textbooks.
- Some learning tools have high value. Print study guides, Campus Learning Management Systems — such as Blackboard and WebCT — and diagnostic self-tests held high value for survey respondents.
- Some learning tools have low value. Online tutoring, audio study guides and “clickers” used in the classroom by instructors held low value for survey respondents.
The 12% who did favor e-textbooks — “mostly males, and often MBA-seeking or distance learners” — said they valued the “lower cost, convenience and portability.”
Textbook photo by Nina Scaletti | other sources: ResourceBlog
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Google’s Click-to-Call Growing Amid Booming Mobile Activity
Dec 22nd
The number of advertisers using click-to-call features on Google ads has grown an average of 28 percent month-over-month over the last few months, the company confirmed. The 28 percent stat represents all of Google’s advertisers, in both search and display, around the globe. As first reported by…
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South Korea’s Industrial Production Exceeded Estimates Amid Export Gains – Bloomberg
Aug 30th
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South Korea's Industrial Production Exceeded Estimates Amid Export Gains
Bloomberg South Korea's industrial production grew faster than estimated in July, logging the 13th … |
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Bing, Yahoo Queries Up Amid “Interface Inflation,” Google Down Slightly
Jul 13th
The financial analysts put out their research notes and take on comScore’s June search data yesterday. That data continues to be affected by “contextual searches,” or slideshows that count a new search query with each page turn. The metrics firm has vowed to change its methodology to discount this phenomenon.
Overall search volume increased almost 17 [...]
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NKorea eases market crackdown amid economic woes
Feb 8th
NKorea eases market crackdown amid economic woes
(AP:SEOUL, South Korea) North Korean officials reopened hundreds of markets two months after a major economic upheaval sparked riots and left scores starving in the impoverished communist nation, an activist said Thursday.
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