Interview: Karla Valente, ICANN New gTLD Program Director

Posted June 1st, 2009

Karla Valente is the New gTLD Program Director for ICANN and veteran of the domain business. She recently sat down with us to discuss New gTLDS, IDNs and Women in DNS.

NameSmash: What is your role within ICANN in regard to new gTLDs?

Karla Valente: I joined ICANN in 2007, as the New gTLD Program Director to take the Program off the ground. My main focus recently has been on the Program’s communications, more specifically increasing global awareness, and overseeing and improving how information is made available to the various audiences, for example, potential applicants, brand owners, trademark professionals, governments, the general public and so on. We are also designing and implementing outreach, education and consultation activities. Outreach for us means increasing awareness of the Program around the world. Education activities cover more specific topics or processes. These educational activities will intensify towards the end of the year when we have the final processes in place. Perhaps the most critical activity at this stage is the consultations about the four overarching issues (trademark protection; potential for malicious behavior; market impact/demand; Security and Stability: Root Zone Scaling) that were identified based on the public feedback earlier this year.

NameSmash: What are these consultation activities?

Karla Valente: We will have one day events around the world where the community is invited to discuss these issues, learn more about the Program and what to expect next. The upcoming consultation events, focused on the overarching issues, will take place from June to August. The locations so far are: Sydney, London, New York, Hong Kong, and Abu-Dhabi. The details can be found at the Program’s web page.

NameSmash: Can you explain new gTLDs from ICANNs perspective?

Karla Valente: This is not the first time ICANN has introduced generic top-level domains or gTLDs into the market place, although I realize sometimes having the word “new” can be confusing.  ICANN had 2 previous rounds: one in 2000 with .aero  .biz  .coop  .info  .museum  .name  .pro; and another in 2003 when .asia  .cat  .jobs  .mobi  .tel .travel were added. We will soon see .post, also part of the 2003 group. Some of the well know gTLDs like .com  .net  .org  .edu, predated the official creation of ICANN.  Now, ICANN sees the expansion of the top-level space as an opportunity to allow for more innovation, choice and competition in the marketplace. The expansion of the top-level extensions could significantly change the Internet addressing system, which is now constrained by only 21 gTLDs. We also have to acknowledge that in a world with 1.5 billion Internet users, many non-English speaking, diversity, choice and competition are key to the continued success and reach of the global network. This is where the Internationalized Domain Names play a particularly important role.

NameSmash: For a lot of readers, IDNs might be a fairly new concept. Can you explain why they are important for users worldwide?

Karla Valente: Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs as we usually say, are domain names represented by local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese). Many people have probably seen websites in other languages, however, if you look closely at the address of the websites, you will notice that the top-level extension (what comes to the right of the dot) is usually in ASCII or, Latin-based characters. Now, there are some top-level domain names (generic and country codes) that offer “second” and “third-level” extensions in non-ASCII characters, but this is the first time that we are expanding the top-level space in this way. This is also, a natural part of the global evolution of the Internet as we see more access to the Internet in and around the world.

NameSmash: What are ICANN’s reasons for launching the new gTLDs?

Karla Valente: One of the core objectives in ICANN’s foundation was to promote choice, competition and innovation in the marketplace. You can actually find this in each of ICANN’s agreements with the USG from 1998 to the present and also in the 1998 White Paper. The innovative value is sometimes challenging to argue because we are talking about a future that might be, but ICANN should not be an obstacle to the expansion of the domain name space. The current system, of 21 gTLDs, seems quite limited in a world where three billion people don’t use the characters that can be in a top-level domain (among many others, Chinese, Indian and Arabic), where cultural groupings might be more important than a commercial brand, and where institutions such as corporations and educational institutions may not want to sublimate their brand/public identity to a .com.


NameSmash: What currently are the biggest tangible misconceptions about new gTLDs?

Karla Valente: The misconceptions vary depending on the audience, but some of the most common questions I get are:

  • How can I buy a domain name?
  • Why are you doing this now in the middle of a global financial crisis?
  • Why have you not consulted the business and intellectual property communities on whom much of the financial burden will fall?

NameSmash: How would you address those concerns?

Karla Valente: This could be a whole new interview!

How can I buy a domain name? A top-level domain name is not for sale in the sense that it’s not like buying a domain name at a registrar that one has to keep renewing year after year. The applicant for a top-level domain name is actually committing to a very specific business, entering the Domain Name System industry.

Why are you doing this now in the middle of a global financial crisis? The launch was obviously not planned to take place in the middle of a financial crisis and we are not launching in 2009. The launch has been postponed to Q1 2010 to address the overarching issues and to refine the Program processes.

Why have you not consulted the business and intellectual property communities on whom much of the financial burden will fall? ICANN has two constituencies for these 2 groups: intellectual property and business, and both have been part of the new gTLD Policy development since 2005 when the GNSO started working on this. ICANN has also provided on-going opportunity to give further input in the process development. We also have the Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) that was formed in March, 2009 due to a Board Resolution and they are proposing additional solutions to address trademark protection concerns raised by the consulted community [posted 29 May 2009, see HERE].

So, there have been consultations, but part of the challenge is the fact that now there is more awareness about the Program, and ICANN’s work. Many brand managers and TM attorneys are new to ICANN and this Program and are quite uncomfortable with the changes ahead and the pace of things considering the complexities involved.

NameSmash: There seem to be split feelings about new gTLDs. Some think it is the future of the Internet, others that it will be a dead end. What would you say to each of these groups?

Karla Valente: I think I understand both sides of the argument. I have been in this business for over 10 years now, most of this time working on the digital brand protection side. I sympathize with the brand owners and IP professionals when they raise the issues and face high costs of defending their brands’ and consumers from malicious behavior on the Internet. I also sympathize with governments and organizations trying to protect national and community interests; and the consumer organizations trying to protect the rights of internet users. There is certainly process complexity and we need to find a fine balance in order to fairly accommodate the needs of the various groups that have voiced their concerns. We understand these valid concerns and because of that we are extensively and proactively consulting to try to find viable solutions.

Now, are we 100% sure we will see all the current Internet issues proportionately multiplied in 5 years or so? Can we say with certainty that the issues in the future out-weight the potential for innovation? This is hard to know. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean by that. Today, many top-level domains have few restrictions, what if there was a New gTLD-only registered financial institution, that offered only the highest security web sites? What if there was a New gTLD that guaranteed the strictest standards of personal privacy for all of the names registered there? There might also be potential proposals for gTLDs that are directed towards geo-cultural or other types of communities that will not necessarily require defensive registrations by brand owners. There might be TLDs designed to create a space for the global community to better understand and act on environmental issues; TLDs that will allow linguistic communities around the world to unity in a different way; TLDs that could bring information and opportunity to developing countries in innovative ways. Will the current brand Internet presence and protection practices remain the same over time? Will we face the same e-crime issues augmented?  All of these discussions are valid and we are working with the Intellectual Property community and others to address these issues, and I think it is very likely that we will continue to work together in the future because we will probably face new challenges that we haven’t even conceived of today.

NameSmash: At NameSmash, we get a lot of the business perspective on the effects of new gTLDs, but not a lot of technical perspective. Can you briefly explain the technical impact that new gTLDs will have on the root and what the concerns (and realities) might be?

Karla Valente: Right now there are several levels of changes being contemplated and implemented for the Root Zone, for example, DNSSEC, IPv6, IDNs, New gTLDs. ICANN has done preliminary investigations to understand how adding an unlimited number of gTLDs would impact the root. These preliminary investigations did not anticipate any issues. We are now working with RSSAC/SSAC to further investigate the impact on the root not only with New gTLDs, but also taking into account all of the other changes. We expect a report from them some time in Q3.

NameSmash: Does ICANN view this initiative as an on-going event in which it will have indefinite application rounds or is this intended for a limited time?

Karla Valente: The Policy on which the Program is based is clear that the applications must initially be assessed in on-going rounds until the scale of demand is clear. We plan on launching this round in Q1 2010 and, at the same time, will announce when the next round will be.

NameSmash: Finally, what is “Women in the DNS”?

Karla Valente: First of all, “Women in the DNS” has nothing to do with New gTLDs nor ICANN. There is no business agenda here. This is a group that is being created to give women in the domain name system an opportunity for collaboration, networking, mentoring, and personal and professional development. We plan on meeting again in Sydney, virtually and in person and whenever we have the opportunity. The idea of forming a woman’s group has been informally discussed for years. Then, during the ICANN Mexico Meeting, about 10 of us were having breakfast one day and we decided to put this idea to work.

NameSmash: Where can we find out more about this group?

Karla Valente: The best way for now is to join http://blog.womendns.com/ where we can start learning more about each other. I think you will be amazed by what a talented and diverse group of women, professionals from all over the world work in the Domain Name System. This invitation is extended to all women in the Domain Name System. I am looking forward to meeting you virtually and in person!

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Posted in ICANN, gTLDS by Kelly Hardy