Just last week, the Washington Post ran a front-page article discussing the potential upcoming rollout of new TLDs.  While the article gave readers a good picture of what an unlimited number of new TLDs could mean for Internet users, it fell short in addressing the deeper issues of how ICANN has developed the policies surrounding the new TLD program, what sort of external justification it has for expanding the TLD space, and to whom ICANN is ultimately accountable.

CADNA penned a letter to the editor in response to the article, which ran in Sunday’s print edition and can be read online here. 

We were glad for the chance to bring in a new angle to the discussion. As we’ve said in the past, CADNA is not against new TLDs across the board. Rather, what we take issue with is the way ICANN has gone about developing the policy and the bias of the ICANN community that has advocated this policy. Specifically, we believe that ICANN should commission independent experts to perform a more robust economic, legal and social analysis of the impact new TLDs will have on the Internet.  This would shed light on the benefits and risks of the proposed new TLD roll out and serve as a big step towards a greater degree of transparency in ICANN’s policy-making processes.