CircleID

Acting in the public interest, ICANN supports and defends the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model that has produced carefully crafted policies that promote competition and user choice while creating a safer, more stable Domain Name System.
The assertions in your letter are either incorrect or problematic in several respects. Perhaps the most severe mischaracterizations concern the ICANN process.

The entire ICANN Internet community, including businesses, ISPs, intellectual property holders and experts, governments, registries and registrars, and representatives of Internet users around the world — carefully considered the implications of the New gTLD Program at each stage of the process. A strong consensus for moving forward was demonstrated by the Generic Names Supporting Organization's super-majority approval and by the active participation of all these groups in determining the details of implementation.

Opening the name space to the introduction of new gTLDs in a responsible manner was one of the main objectives of the U.S. Government and interested stakeholders present at ICANN's creation.1 The June 2011 decision to proceed with the program followed six years of inclusive policy development and implementation planning. Significant actions have been taken to balance the concerns of all interested parties, provide protections for rightsholders, registrants and users, and to ensure that the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet are not compromised.