No single organisation can lay claim to cloud

Andy Burton says the move to restrict use of .cloud is against common sense and must be challenged

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) last year released new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) including the likes of .cloud, .app, and .search. Some large companies are appying for gTLDs reflecting the industries in which they compete, and intend to operate them as closed registries – .book, .news, .insurance and .cloud.

If these applications are granted, only the successful applicants will be able to register second-level domains with those gTLDs. This will help the lucky few exclude competitors and exploit the new gTLD for their sole benefit.

This situation could damage both market education and competition, even restricting the openness of the internet, and should therefore be resisted.

It should be a huge concern for anyone keen to see an open market and the preservation of common sense. No single entity should be able to lay claim to the word "cloud" or dominate the use of it on the web as a gTLD.

Unfortunately, the broader market appears oblivious to these risks.

ICANN has been working on the new gTLD domain programme since at least 2003, with major consultations taking place until 2008, when the ICANN board adopted several policy recommendations for introducing the new gTLDs, which included a number of allocation criteria and contractual conditions.

In 2009, ICANN signed a so-called Affirmation of Commitments with the US Department of Commerce. In that document ICANN agreed that its mission statement would include a commitment to promoting competition, consumer trust and consumer choice.

The point of gTLD expansion is to help organise the web and foster competition and consumer choice as set out in the Affirmation. But gTLDs that can be used only by certain participants will have the opposite effect, favouring the owners of closed registries.

Closed registries are fine where a brand or trademark is involved, but if it involves a generic or commonly used word such as "cloud", it is completely inappropriate to lock out the wider market.

Common sense must come into play in this process. So we should approach generic TLDs the way we would a trademark. After all, there have been plenty of times when an organisation has attempted to trademark a generic industry term and been shot down by the courts. This logic needs to be applied again now.

If one commercial organisation wins control over the .cloud registry, nobody else will be able to register and use a second-level .cloud name for their website without that owner's permission. We require .cloud to be an open registry where the rules of access are not limited to a single commercial entity but are operated on an industry basis.

As we know, the wider market is often confused enough about the term "cloud". It is important that we raise this matter on the public agenda and encourage people to have their say through the formal processes available – but we all have to act quickly if we want to ensure common sense prevails.

Andy Burton is chairman of the Cloud Industry Forum