At its Paris Board meeting two weeks ago, as ICANN passed its policy authorizing the creation of new generic top level domains, GAC spokesperson Janis Karklins expressed the governments’ concerns that not enough attention had been paid to promoting competition in the formulation of the policy. A reasonable and good sentiment, that. But wait: hasn’t the GAC also been insisting that existing country code top level domain monopolies be given new TLDs in any language scripts of their choosing? And didn’t GAC members also advocate that these new “internationalized” top level domains be handed to the incumbent ccTLD monopolies without being attached to any ICANN contract? Isn't this the same Janis Karklins who said in the same meeting that ccTLDs should get new multilingual TLDs “without any compulsory financial arrangements?” What kind of a competition policy is that?   more »