On May 13, 2015, the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet held a hearing on "Stakeholder Perspectives on ICANN: The .SUCKS Domain and Essential Steps to Guarantee Trust and Accountability in the Internet's Operation." During the hearing, testimony was presented by Mei-lan Stark, Immediate Past President of the International Trademark Association (INTA); Paul Misener, Vice President of Global Public Policy for Amazon.com; John Horton, President of LegitScript; Steven Metalitz, Counsel for the Coalition for Online Accountability (COA); Bill Woodcock, Executive Director of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA); Phil Corwin, Counsel for ICA; Steve DelBianco, Executive Director of NetChoice; and Jonathan Zuck, President of ACT | The App Association.
The high-level focus of the hearing was fixed squarely upon Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accountability in conjunction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition. However, several specific failures in accountability dominated the discussion, including: the perceived predatory and illicit pricing in the .SUCKS new gTLD; improper governmental influence exerted over failed applications for the .AMAZON gTLD and its IDN equivalents; and lack of transparency or responsiveness from ICANN contractual compliance when disposing of complaints regarding recalcitrant registrars housing domain names used to disseminate everything from counterfeit pharmaceuticals to pirated copyrighted content.
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