WASHINGTON, May 5, 2009 — The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) regards tomorrow’s deadline for public comments to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) Implementation Recommendation Team’s (IRT) interim report as one more example of poor governance by ICANN. The IRT, which was established by ICANN to propose remedies to potential intellectual property violations caused by ICANN’s pending decision to issue new gTLDs, presented its report on April 24. ICANN only allowed the IRT to provide 12 days for public comment. While the IRT report contains many thoughtful and potentially useful comments, ICANN has not given the general public enough time to respond.

“ICANN continually imposes superficial deadlines on policy decisions, leading to rushed results,” said Josh Bourne, President of CADNA. The IRT was created by ICANN’s Board of Directors during its March 1 to March 6 international public meeting. The IRT held its first meeting for administrative purposes on March 25 and was directed by ICANN to produce a report in less than one month. Now, the public must submit comments on the 48 page document within a week and a half of the report’s publication if the comments are to be included in the IRT’s final report.

“Twelve days is simply not enough time to consider and develop meaningful comments,” said Bourne. “Moreover, the short timetable once again reflects ICANN’s lack of engagement with the public on major policy decisions.” Bourne continued, “The IRT thoughtfully took into account how new gTLDs will create threats to brand holders– however, its report tries to resolve problems that should not exist in the first place.”

CADNA regrets that ICANN created the IRT on the assumption that the introduction of new gTLDs is inevitable. The IRT report should make it self-evident to ICANN that issuing more gTLDs will create greater challenges for Internet governance and underscores the need to truly evaluate the commercial demand for new gTLDs.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the systemic domain name abuses that plague the Internet today. For more information, please visit www.cadna.org.