The curtain rises on January 12th 2012 but key players are still singing different
tunes. Let’s peek into their performance as they start taking center stage.

FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, has sent a letter to ICANN on December 16th
2011. Re: Consumer Protection Concerns Regarding New gTLDs. They write; "We write
now to highlight again the potential for significant consumer harm resulting
from the unprecedented increase in new gTLDs." The following paragraph clearly
highlights the lack of information about the ICANN gTLD platform, as the continue;

"A rapid, exponential expansion of gTLDs has the potential to magnify both the
abuse of the domain name system and the corresponding challenges we encounter
in tracking down Internet fraudsters. In particular, the proliferation of existing
scams, such as phishing, is likely to become a serious challenge given the infinite
opportunities that scam artists will now have at their fingertips. Fraudsters
will be able to register misspellings of businesses, including financial institutions,
in each of the new gTLDs, create copycat websites, and obtain sensitive consumer
data with relative ease before shutting down the site and launching a new one."

It’s about time to smell some coffee, as this mantra of ‘fraudsters and cyber
squatting’ has become the theme song of the dancing opposition troupe. A quick
lyrical analysis will turn this fake opera into a lost and off base noise. The
questions are why is this topic is being regurgitated by the so many otherwise
very smart teams. Either they really have no idea what a GTLD is or they are
simply being fed, a biscuit. They continue and sing unison, "Fraudsters will
be able to register misspellings of businesses, including financial institutions,"
the naive audience confusing applauds.

Let’s analyze, in the first place, where are those not so intelligent fraudsters,
so badly needed for the TV reality shows, who will invest a minimum of USD185K,
toil over months, disclose to their IQ, file a ream thick application, subject
to dozens of scrutiny and audits, but still aggressively pursue some half-wittedly
proposed ‘misspelled’ names to create fraudulent domain names for example ‘citybank’
or ‘citybanq’ ‘cityloans’ ‘citycard’ or ‘cityinvest’. Yes, yes yes, the opposition
screams.

Two questions emerge. Would someone really enjoy a successful return on this?
Not really, such dumb ideas would die even before they happen, the general public
is getting more mature by the day and the trademark laws will clearly identify
and stop such blatant ‘passing off’ of established banking name brand. Would
ICANN allow such a name approval? Not really, the application process will simply
kill such ideas in the diligent process.

Then still where all this out of tune noise is coming from? Basically, the major
brand holders and their advertising agencies from all over the world spending
hundreds of billions promoting their cherished names while another and bit lesser
amount is being spent by trademark lawyers to protect such names is causing all
this fuss? But doesn’t trademark protection mean some layer of protection? This
fear mongering that ICANN GTLD’s expensive and time consuming processes will
freely allow ‘misspelled name’ while such ‘misspelled names’ are already available
on dot com. Today, for example, the following domains are available instantly
at $10 each,‘citiinvestplus.com’ ‘citiinvestplanner.com’ ‘citiinvestplan.com’
or ‘citybanq’. Guess what, should we now shut down the entire domain name system?

To hit a real high note here, cyber-squatting fear mongering is nothing but smoke
screens. If we accept the fact that domain name variations of choices are freely
available all over the world then obviously there would be some cyber-squatting
and for those well protected trademark holders, which is just another routine
trademark defense exercise.

Change the backdrop of this noisy theater, if there are millions of registered
logos all over the world then there are billions of unregistered highly identical
logos also. However, well protected and unique logos are always protected under
the trademark laws and violators are routinely fined. So what do we do now, stop
the usage of art work supplies, graphic design software, and snatch away colored
pencils. The world has already come to the realization that when you have something
very unique and worthy of protection only than a well defined protection plan
would work.

They further boldly lay out a real life example. "The potential for consumer
confusion in other variations of these types of scams is significant. As an example,'ABC
bank' could be registered in .com, but another entity could register “ABC” in
a new .bank gTLD, and a different entity could register 'ABC' in a new .finance
gTLD. Scam artists could easily take advantage of this potential for confusion
to defraud consumers."

Now, the supposed 'ABC bank' could be registered as a dot com. Why not? Now this
name identity applies to the holders of .bank. Dot bank is a consortium under
American Bankers Association, which intends to file on behalf of the banks, where
smaller banks would wish to use .bank as a suffix. Did the NTC committee and
all the other related parties miss the most important reason why ABA pursuing
.bank; it is to create a ‘closed and restricted .bank registry only for the qualifying
banks’.

This .bank program alone proves the fact that restricted and closed use of a
suffix will protect consumer and create ‘certified domain name’ which until now
was never available on the traditional hit-and-run, free for all, no question
asked, buy one get 2 free domain name system. Behold the liberated registration,
that created thousands of cases of cyber squatting and in reality responsible
for creating a vibrant cyber-squatting defense registration industry.

A new book has been announced to deal with the global naming complexities and
the thick fog of confusion created by mythical fear mongering, that have tried
to disrupt the domain name expansion. In order to move beyond all this and to
explore various models of market domination via name identity, the new book "Domination:
The GTLD Name Game" (http://naseemjaved.wordpress.com/) is being released worldwide
on February 12th 2012. The book is written in simple language for the boardroom
where issues of global market domination are top of the agendas.

Most so called famous brand names have already reached their peak and are not
worthy of the global ‘one internet one world’ platform, where to dominate that
space a ‘one name one owner’ capability is most desirous. Unfortunately, the
largest group falls into ‘one name and thousand owners’ category. Hence the fake
opera and now the music begs for a crescendo.

Naseem Javed, founder of ABC Namebank, is a globally recognized authority on
corporate nomenclature and related issues of global naming complexities and especially
market domination via name identity. He is a lecturer, syndicated columnist,
and the author of Naming for Power. www.abcnamebank.com