Dive Summary:
- As Icann, the Internet's organizing body, meets this week in Durban, South Africa, to initiate a major domain name expansion, a battle is heating up among Jewish groups as to who can operate and license "dot-kosher" as a Web address suffix.
- Kosher Marketing Assets, the sole applicant for dot-kosher, is being opposed by a coalition of five Jewish organizations, and though both sides are in the kosher certification business, they disagree on the commercialization of the term.
- Rabbi Don Yoel Levy, CEO of OK Kosher Certification, which owns Kosher Marketing Assets, says he never intended to completely control the disputed domain name and that he is willing to work with the other five organizations, but that potential unilateral control could result in one owner having sway over the $17 billion kosher market's supply chain.
From the article:
... Exclusive control of the domain name could give its owner sway over the kosher supply chain, said Larry Finkel, director of food research at Packaged Facts.
“It’s like losing access if you’re not tying into that domain,” Finkel said in an interview. “It’s sort of like being excluded from Wal-Mart.” ...
