ACT today published a whitepaper identifying some of the risks surrounding domain name collisions arising from the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). The report — The Impact of Domain Name Collisions: A Business Perspective — follows up on the association’s work organizing industry efforts to highlight concerns with the pending changes.
“ACT has been closely monitoring the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) program at ICANN,” said ACT president Jonathan Zuck. “Attentive to risks and opportunities, we find that domain collisions continue to raise concerns and could have broad implications for online networks spanning the globe. Particularly worrisome is the potential for collisions caused by intranets designed around strings that will now be part of the public DNS, such as .OFFICE.
“We had extensive discussions with our member companies to review a range of scenarios resulting from the new domains. We felt it was critical to publish our findings because collisions could have a disruptive impact on member companies and their customers. Our whitepaper outlines the concerns we identified and provides the business prospective on domain name collisions.”
Industry outreach to ICANN has begun to bear fruit. In November, ACT led a business community effort to raise specific collision concerns. ICANN responded by creating a resource page on name collisions, including a paper with suggestions for mitigating the risk of such collisions. It has also initiated a number of efforts to identify sources of risk and possibilities for mitigation. These activities will culminate in a London conference featuring a competition for research in this area.
ACT and the business community will continue to monitor these developments and offer guidance to ICANN on how best to respond to issues arising from the new gTLDs.