How will the Entertainment Industry and Brands protect, manage and exploit their Intellectual Property (IP), Trademarks and Copyrights leveraging a new ICANN Top-Level Domain (TLD) name extension?

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has spoken against government's plans to block access to illegal file-sharing websites, such as Pirate Bay. Schmidt alleges that such a move could set a "disastrous precedent" for freedom of speech.

Schmidt stated that "If there is a law that requires DNSs [which allows users to connect to websites] to do X and it's passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it."

"If it's a request the answer is we wouldn't do it, if it's a discussion we wouldn't do it," added Schmidt.

It is common knowledge that Google profits from ad placement no matter whether the content is licensed or not. According to recent studies, nearly 25% of global Internet bandwidth is used for downloading copyrighted works illegally. It is reasonable to assume that, since Google is beneficiary of traffic generation and profiting through it, they would be hurt financially by such a measure to protect copyright from infringers.

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Is the Web really dead? What is ICANN doing about it? Are ISPs and Google abusing copyright laws and using piracy to piggyback music, movie, book and software creators's work to profit? What can be done to expand the Internet and keep it open for all to access?

As the VeriSign lawsuit has shown, it is critical that ICANN does not shoot new entrants on the foot and cripple them from innovating and competing both in the domain industry and other industries if their model is suited for that function. Falling prey to the antiquated concept of Vertical Separation will create anti-trust problems. Top-level domain (TLD) new entrants already have all odds stacked up against them.