ICANN board meets to consider PIR acquisition TODAY

ICANN’s board of directors will gather today to consider whether the acquisition of Public Interest Registry by a private equity company means that it should reverse its own decision to allow PIR to raise .org price arbitrarily.

Don’t get too excited. It looks like it’s largely a process formality that won’t lead to any big reversals, at least in the short term.

But I’ve also learned that the controversy could ultimately be heading to an Independent Review Process case, the final form of appeal under ICANN rules.

The board is due to meet today with just two named agenda items: Reconsideration Request 19-2 and Reconsideration Request 19-3.

Those are the appeals filed by the registrar Namecheap in July and rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation in August.

Namecheap and EFF respectively wanted ICANN to reverse its decisions to remove PIR’s 10%-a-year price-raising caps and to oblige the registry to enforce the Uniform Rapid Suspension anti-cybersquatting policy.

Both parties now claim that the sale by the Internet Society of PIR to private equity firm Ethos Capital, announced last week, casts new light on the .org contract renewal.

The deal means PIR will change from being a non-profit to being a commercial venture, though PIR says it will stick to its founding principles of supporting the non-profit community.

I reported a couple of weeks ago that the board had thrown out both RfRs, but it turns out that was not technically correct.

The full ICANN board did in fact consider both appeals, but it was doing so in only a “preliminary” fashion, according to an ICANN spokesperson. ICANN told me:

On 3 November the Board considered “proposed determinations” for both reconsideration request 19-2 and 19-3. In essence, the Board was taking up the Board Accountability Mechanism Committee (BAMC) role, as the BAMC had not been able to reach quorum in early November due to certain recusals by BAMC members.

Once the Board adopted the proposed determinations (in lieu of the BAMC issuing a recommendation to the Board) the parties that submitted the reconsideration requests had 15 days to submit a rebuttal, for the Board’s full consideration of the matter, which is now on the agenda.

Normally, RfRs are considered first by the four-person BAMC, but in this case three of the members — Sarah Deutsch, Nigel Roberts, and Becky Burr — recused themselves out of the fear of appearing to present conflicts of interest.

The committee obviously failed to hit a quorum, so the full board took over its remit to give the RfRs their first pass.

The board decided that there had been no oversights or wrongdoing. Reconsideration always presents a high bar for requestors. The .org contract was negotiated, commented on, approved, and signed completely in compliance with ICANN’s governing rules, the board decided.

But the ICANN bylaws allow for a 15-day period following a BAMC recommendation during which rejected RfR appellants can submit a rebuttal.

And, guess what, both of them did just that, and both rebuttals raise the PIR acquisition as a key reason ICANN should think again about the .org contract changes.

The acquisition was announced a week ago, and it appears to have come as much of a surprise to ICANN as to everyone else. It’s a new fact that the ICANN board has not previously taken into account when considering the two RfRs, which could prove important.

Namecheap reckons that the deal means that PIR is now almost certain to raise .org prices. New gTLD registry Donuts was bough by Ethos affiliate Abry Partners last year, and this year set about raising prices across the large majority of its 200-odd gTLDs. Namecheap wrote in its rebuttal:

Within months of be acquired by Abry Partners, it raised prices in 2019 for 220 out of its 241 TLDs. Any statements by PIR now to not raise prices unreasonably are just words, and without price caps, there is no way that .org registrants are not used a source to generate revenue for acquisitions or to pay dividends to its shareholders.

It also said:

The timing and the nature of this entire process is suspicious, and in a well-regulated industry, would draw significant scrutiny from regulators. For ICANN not to scrutinize this transaction closely in a completely transparent and accountable fashion (including public disclosure of pertinent information regarding the nature, cost, the terms of any debt associated with the acquisition, timeline of all parties involved, and the principals involved) would demonstrate that ICANN org and the ICANN Board do not function as a trusted or reliable internet steward.

Namecheap also takes issue with the fact that ICANN’s ruling on its RfR (pdf) draws heavily on a 2009 economic analysis by Professor Dennis Carlton, which concluded that price caps were unnecessary in the new gTLD program.

The registrar trashes this analysis as being based on more opinion than fact, and says it is based on outdated market data.

Meanwhile, the EFF’s rebuttal makes the acquisition one of four reasons why it thinks ICANN should reverse course. It said;

ICANN must carefully reexamine the .ORG Registry Agreement in light of this news. Without the oversight and participation of the nonprofit community, measures that give the registry authority to institute new [Rights Protection Mechanisms] or make other major policy changes invite management decisions that conflict with the needs of the .ORG community.

Quite often, RfRs are declined by ICANN because the requestor does not present any new information that the board has not already considered. But in this case, the fact of the PIR acquisition is empirically new information, as it’s only week-old news.

Will this help Namecheap and the EFF with their cause? The board will certainly have to consider this new information, but I still think it’s unlikely that it will change its mind.

But I’ve also learned that Namecheap has filed with ICANN to trigger a Cooperative Engagement Process procedure.

The CEP is an often-lengthy bilateral process where ICANN and an aggrieved party attempt to resolve their differences in closed-door talks.

When CEP fails, it often leads to an Independent Review Process complaint, when both sides lawyer up and three retired judges are roped in to adjudicate. These typically cost both sides hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

CEP and IRP cases are usually measured in years rather than months, so the PIR acquisition could be under scrutiny for a long time to come.

I attempt to answer ICA’s questions about the “terrible blunder” .org acquisition

The Internet Commerce Association launched a withering attack on ICANN late last week, accusing the organization of a “terrible blunder” by lifting pricing restrictions on .org domain names.

As by now you’re no doubt aware, .org manager Public Interest Registry was acquired last week by a private equity firm with ties to ICANN’s former CEO, in a deal likely to have delivered hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, to former owner the Internet Society.

The deal means PIR is now almost certain to exercise its newfound right to raise its prices arbitrarily, adding tens of millions to its annual top line at the expense of .org registrants.

While such a price increase is likely to have little impact on most registrants — an annual increase of even 100% would only add about $10 to the per-domain cost — it would certainly prove onerous to many of the high-volume domain investors ICA represents.

So ICA chief Zak Muscovitch whipped off a letter to ICANN (pdf) on Friday, demanding that ICANN use its contractual powers to terminate PIR’s registry agreement and put .org out for open tender. He wrote:

If you were led to believe that removing price caps on .Org domain names was a sound approach because the registry would remain in the hands of a nonprofit foundation, you have clearly been misled. If you were led to believe that despite being the effective owner of the .org registry, you were somehow forced to let your service providers tell you how much they can charge, instead of the other way around, you have been led astray. If you have been told that .Org does not have market power within the nonprofit sector, you have been led astray. If you have been told that competition from other gTLDs will constrain .org prices, you have been led astray.

I think the letter has about as much chance of working as an ice sculptor in hell, but Muscovitch does include a list of seven questions for ICANN that I’m going to attempt to answer to the best of my ability here.

First, he asks:

Were you aware whether ISOC was in talks to sell the registry when you approved the removal of the price caps?

I put the same question to PIR CEO Jon Nevett last week, and he told me: “I don’t know when the talks started with ISOC and the buyer, but neither ICANN nor PIR knew about it when finalizing the .ORG [Registry Agreement].”

I’ve no particular reason to believe he’s lying.

If ISOC was in such talks at that time, why was this material fact not disclosed to you by the registry operator, prior to you approving the renewal agreement?

The acquisition talks between ISOC and Ethos Capital certainly could have been going on prior to the .org contract being signed, which happened June 30 this year.

The main piece of evidence here is that Fadi Chehadé of private equity firm and presumed Ethos affiliate Abry Partners registered the domain ethoscapital.org on May 7, according to Whois records. A company of the same name was formed in Delaware a week later.

Given that Ethos appears to be an Abry vehicle set up purely to acquire PIR, it seems likely that talks were already underway at this point.

The domain ethoscapital.com, which Ethos is currently using as its primary, seems to have been acquired on the secondary market around August. The acquisition was announced November 13.

To Muscovitch’s question, though, I return to Nevett’s line that PIR knew nothing about the acquisition talks before the RA was finalized.

The RA was finalized and opened to public comment in March.

It’s quite possible Ethos and ISOC entered talks in the three months after the deal had been finalized but before it had been signed.

When did you first learn of the negotiations to sell the .Org registry?

An excellent question I’ve also posed but as yet have no answer to.

Did you base your decision to approve the removal of price caps, at least in part, on the expectation or belief that the registry would continue to be operated by a nonprofit organization with a public commitment to maintaining a stable pricing environment, instead of on behalf of a private equity firm whose objective is to maximize profits for its funders?

Cheekily, I’m going to take ICANN at its word and say the answer is “yes”.

One of the controversies concerning the .org renewal was that ICANN seemingly ignored thousands of comments calling for the retention of price caps.

This, ICANN has denied, saying that it “reviewed and evaluated” every comment.

Among the very few comments that weren’t outright condemnations of the decision to remove price caps were two nuanced, arguably ambivalent, analyses from two influential ICANN structures — the At-Large Advisory Committee and the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group.

ALAC’s eight-page comment (pdf) was very much of the “on the one hand…” variety, but it paid special attention to ISOC’s public interest works when putting forward the view that uncapped pricing might be a good thing, noting (and quoting itself):

a significant portion of .ORG registration fees “are returned to serve the Internet community [through] redistribution of .org funds into the community by the Internet Society, to support Internet development.”… ISOC’s goals and priorities, while far broader than At-Large (and even ICANN), parallel those of At-Large and the interests of end-users. Many At-Large Structures are also ISOC Chapters, further demonstrating the commonality of interests.

NCSG, meanwhile, said in its comments (pdf) that price caps should remain, but increased from the 10%-per-year level. It acknowledged that some .org money flows into funding NCSG.

So there’s two influential groups, both with organizational and/or funding ties to ISOC, saying price increases may be a good thing because ISOC acts in the public interest.

And ICANN said it read and absorbed all the comments, so I’m cheekily going to say that yes, ICANN at least in part renewed the .org contract in the belief that PIR would continue to be a non-profit and act in the public interest.

Had you been aware of the planned sale of the .Org registry to a private equity firm, would you have treated the renewal of the .Org registry agreement and the removal of price caps as worthy of robust discussion and a vote by the Board, such that perhaps the terms of the agreement would have been modified?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say hell, no. ICANN doesn’t want to be a pricing regulator, regardless of the registry operator, in my view. It’s only the US government that’s preventing it lifting price restrictions on .com, I reckon.

What involvement did your former CEO, Mr. Chehade and your former SVP, Ms. Abusitta-Ouri, have in the decision to employ the base gTLD registry agreement for legacy TLDs during their tenure, if any?

In Chehadé’s case, the answer is fairly clear. Even if he did not have a hands-on role in the decision to cajole legacy gTLD registries toward the 2012 agreement, it all happened on his watch so he bears ultimate responsibility.

It’s worth noting, perhaps, that most of the legacy gTLD agreements that migrated over to the new gTLD agreement’s standard language happened not only while Chehadé was at the helm, but also after he’d already accepted his new job at Abry.

He announced his early resignation in May 2015, telling the AFP at the time that he already had a job lined up in the commercial sector, but he declined to give specifics.

He’d probably made his mind up to quit some time before the announcement. He registered the domain name chehade.company, which he now uses for his investment vehicle Chehadé & Company, in the April.

He revealed he was joining Abry as senior advisor on digital strategy in August that year, but didn’t actually leave until March 2016.

During that interim, lame-duck period ICANN negotiated and signed (all in October 2015) renewals for 2003-round gTLDs .pro, .cat and .travel, all of which incorporated 2012 contract language related to, for example, the Uniform Rapid Suspension process.

Three months before Chehadé’s resignation announcement, ICANN signed a very similar deal with .jobs, the first time it had incorporated 2012 language into a legacy gTLD contract.

These contracts were all signed for ICANN not by Chehadé but by his long-time buddy, frequent co-worker and then-president of the Global Domains Division, Akram Atallah (who is now CEO of Donuts, which is owned by Abry).

Since Chehadé’s departure, ICANN has also taken the same contract renewal stance with TLDs including .xxx, .mobi, .museum and .aero.

By 2016 it had become standard operating practice at ICANN to nudge registries towards the 2012-round contract, as Atallah explained to then-ICA lead Phil Corwin at ICANN’s Hyderabad meeting in November 2016. Atallah stated (pdf):

So basically the negotiations are — the registries come and ask for something, and we tell them please adopt the new gTLD contract. And if they push back on it and they say they don’t want something, we can’t force them to take it. It’s a negotiation between two parties. And I think it’s within the remit of the corporation to negotiate its contracts. If the policy comes back and says that the URS is not something that we want to have as a policy, of course, we would support that.

As regards Nora Abusitta-Ouri, Ethos’s “chief purpose officer”, her former job title of “senior VP for development and public responsibility programs” suggests she had little to no involvement in gTLD contractual issues.

While her LinkedIn profile doesn’t mention it, she appears to have become chief engagement officer at Chehadé & Company after her stint at ICANN ended in July 2016.

What restrictions do you have in place with respect to cooling-off periods for former executives?

Fuck all, clearly.

ICANN going back to Puerto Rico for a third time

ICANN has selected Puerto Rico for its ICANN 73 public meeting.

The meeting is slated to be held at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan from March 5 to March 10, 2022.

That’s the same venue ICANN visited in March last year, in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which caused extensive damage and loss of life on the island. Indeed, the convention center had just months earlier been used as a command and control center for the recovery effort.

San Juan will become just the third city that ICANN has visited three times. It’s been to Singapore four times and its home city of Los Angeles (if you include Marina Del Rey) six times.

Puerto Rico had also been scheduled as the venue for ICANN 57 in 2016, but the meeting was moved to India instead, because of the Zika virus that was causing international concern at the time.

In 2020, meetings are to be held in Cancún, Kuala Lumpur and Hamburg, in that order. In 2021, ICANN’s going to Cancún (again), The Hague and Seattle.

Former NTIA chief Redl now working for Amazon

David Redl, the former head of the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration has joined Amazon as an internet governance advisor, I’ve learned.

I don’t know whether he’s taken a full-time job or is a contractor, but he’s been spotted palling around with Amazon folk at ICANN 66 in Montreal and knowledgeable sources tell me he’s definitely on the payroll.

Redl was assistant secretary at the NTIA until May, when he was reportedly asked to resign over a wireless spectrum issue unrelated to the domain names after just 18 months on the job.

His private sector career prior to NTIA was in the wireless space. I don’t believe he’s ever been employed in the domain industry before.

NTIA is of course the US agency responsible for participating in all matters ICANN, including the ongoing fight over Amazon’s application for the .amazon brand gTLD.

The proposed dot-brand has been in limbo for many years due to the objections of the eight nations of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, which claims cultural rights to the string.

ACTO nations on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee want ICANN to force Amazon back to the negotiating table, to give them more power over the TLD after it launches.

But the NTIA rep on the GAC indicated at the weekend that the US would block any GAC calls for .amazon to be delayed any longer.

As I type these words, the GAC is debating precisely what it should say to ICANN regarding .amazon in its Montreal communique, using competing draft texts submitted by the US and European Commission, and it’s not looking great for ACTO.

As I blogged earlier in the week, another NTIA official, former GAC rep Ashley Heineman, has accepted a job at GoDaddy.

UPDATE: As a commenter points out, Redl last year criticized the revolving door between ICANN and the domain name industry, shortly after Akram Atallah joined Donuts.

US official Heineman joins GoDaddy

Former US government official Ashley Heineman has joined the staff of GoDaddy.

Heineman was until quite recently a policy specialist at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the US representative on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee.

But GoDaddy confirmed to DI today that she’s now left NTIA and joined the market-leading registrar.

I don’t know what her job title is yet. One assumes it’s related to policy or legal issues.

Heineman spent 15 years at NTIA and has been the ICANN GAC rep for the US for the last few years.

She’s had a respectably hands-on role, for a GACer, including being a member of the ongoing “EPDP” cross-community working group conducting a post-GDPR review of Whois policy.

Judging by my embarrassing error at the weekend, the US is currently being represented on the GAC by the NTIA’s Vernita Harris.

I’ve also heard rumors from ICANN 66 that another former NTIA official has also recently moved into the domain name industry. I’ll blog it up just as soon as I get confirmation.

Surprise! ICANN throws out complaints about .org price caps

ICANN has rejected two appeals against its decision to lift price caps and introduce new anti-cybersquatting measures in the .org space.

In other news, gambling is going on in Rick’s Cafe.

NameCheap and the Electronic Frontier Foundation both filed Requests for Reconsideration with ICANN back in July and August concerning the .org contract renewal.

NameCheap argued that ICANN should have listened to the deluge of public comments complaining about the removal of price caps in Public Interest Registry’s .org contract, while EFF complained about the inclusion of the Uniform Rapid Suspension rights protection mechanism.

Reconsideration requests are usually handled by the Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee but this time around three of its four members (Sarah Deutsch, Nigel Roberts, and Becky Burr) decided to recuse themselves due to the possibility of perception of conflicts of interest.

That meant the committee couldn’t reach a quorum and the RfRs went to ICANN’s outside lawyers for review instead, before heading to the full ICANN board.

This hasn’t happened before, to my recollection.

Also unprecedented, the board’s full discussion of both requests was webcast live (and archived here), which negates the need for NameCheap or the EFF to demand recordings, which is their right under the bylaws.

But the upshot is basically the same as if the BAMC had considered the requests in private — both were denied in a unanimous (with the three recusals) vote.

Briefing the board yesterday, ICANN associate general counsel Elizabeth Le said:

There was no evidence to support that ICANN Org ignored public consultation. Indeed both renewals went out for public comments and there were over 3,700 comments received, all of which ICANN reviewed and evaluated and it was discussed in not only the report of public comments, but it was discussed through extensive briefings with the ICANN board…

Ultimately, the fact that the removal of the price caps was part of the Registry Agreements does not render the public comment process a sham or that ICANN failed to act in the public benefit or that ICANN Org ignored material information.

General counsel John Jeffrey and director Avri Doria both noted that the board may not have looked at each individual comment, but rather grouped together based on similarity. Doria said:

Whether one listens to the content once or listens to it 3,000 times, they have understood the same content. And so I really just wanted to emphasize the point that it’s not the number of comments, it’s the content of the comments.

This seems to prove the point I made back in April, when this controversy first emerged, that letter-writing campaigns don’t work on ICANN.

As if to add insult to injury, the board at the same meeting yesterday approved paying an annual bonus to the ICANN Ombudsman, who attracted criticism from NameCheap and the Internet Commerce Association after dismissing many of the public comments as “more akin to spam”.

Somber mood as ICANN 66 opens in Montreal

The opening ceremony of ICANN’s 66th public meeting set a somber tone, as leaders bade farewell to recently departed and departing colleagues.

Outgoing chair Cherine Chalaby and CEO Göran Marby delivered eulogies respectively to senior vice president Tarek Kamel, and long-time industry/community participant, Don Blumenthal, both of whom died over the last several weeks.

Apparently choking up at one point, Chalaby described Kamel as a “good friend” and “great man” who “always made time for me, always encouraged me, and always advised me with great sincerity”.

Marby later announced that ICANN will create a new annual award, named after Kamel, which will honor “individuals significantly contributing to capacity building and creating diversity within our community”.

He also said that the dinner held by the CEO with the technical community at the end of every ICANN meeting will in future be named after Blumenthal, a long-serving member of the security community.

“His expertise, hard work and humor will be sorely missed,” Marby said.

Chalaby himself is leaving ICANN under less sad circumstances on Thursday, when the third and final of his terms comes to an end and he leaves the board of directors for good. He’s been on the board for nine years and chair for two.

Marby presented him with ICANN’s Leadership Award in recognition of his time served.

Chalaby will be replaced by Maarten Botterman.

ICANN 66 runs through Thursday in Montreal, Canada.

America has Amazon’s back in gTLD fight at ICANN 66

The United States looks set to stand in the way of government attempts to further delay Amazon’s application for .amazon.

The US Governmental Advisory Committee representative, Vernita Harris, said today that the US “does not support further GAC advice on the .amazon issue” and that ICANN is well within its rights to move forward with Amazon’s controversial gTLD applications.

She spoke after a lengthy intervention from Brazilian rep Ambassador Achilles Zaluar Neto, who said South American nations view the contested string as their “birthright” and said ICANN is allowing Amazon “to run roughshod over the concerns and the cultural heritage of eight nations and tens of millions of people”.

It was the opening exchange in would could prove to be a fractious war of words at ICANN 66 in Montreal, which formally opens tomorrow.

The .amazon applications have been controversial because the eight countries in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization believe their unwritten cultural rights to the word outweigh Amazon’s trademark rights.

Forced to the negotiating table by ICANN last year, the two sides each posed their own sets of ideas about how the gTLD could be managed in such a way as to protect culturally sensitive terms at the second-level, and taking ACTO’s views into account.

But an ICANN-imposed deadline for talks to conclude in April was missed, largely as a result of the ongoing Venezuela crisis, which caused friction between the ACTO governments.

But today, Brazil said that ACTO is ready and willing to get back to the negotiating table asked that ICANN reopen these talks with an impartial mediator at the helm.

As things stand, Amazon is poised to get .amazon approved with a bunch of Public Interest Commitments in its registry contract that were written by Amazon without ACTO’s input.

Neto said that he believed a “win-win” deal could be found, which “would provide a positive impetus for internet governance instead of discrediting it”. He threatened to raise the issue at the Internet Governance Forum next month.

ICANN’s failure to reopen talks “would set a bad precedent and reflect badly on the current state of internet governance, including its ability to establish a balance between private interests and public policy concerns”, he said

But the US rallied to Amazon’s defense. Harris said:

The United States does not support further GAC advice on the .amazon issue. Any further questions from the GAC to the Board on this matter we believe is unwarranted… We are unaware of any international consensus that recognizes inherent governmental rights and geographic names. Discussions regarding protections of geographic names is the responsibility of other forums and therefore should be discussed and those relevant and appropriate forums. Contrary to statements made by others, it is the position of the United States that the Board’s various decisions authorizing ICANN to move forward with processing the.application are consistent with all relevant GAC advice. The United States therefore does not support further intervention that effectively works to prevent or delay the delegation of .amazon and we believe we are not supportive and we do not believe that it’s required.

This is a bit of a reversal from the US position in 2013.

Back then, the GAC wanted to issue consensus advice that ICANN should reject .amazon, but the US, protecting one of its largest companies, stood in the way of full consensus until, in the wake of the Snowden revelations, the US decided instead to abstain, apparently to appease an increasingly angry Brazil.

It was that decision that opened the door to the six more years of legal wrangling and delay that .amazon has been subject to.

With the US statement today, it seems that the GAC will be unlikely to be able to issue strong, full-consensus advice that will delay .amazon further, when it drafts its Montreal communique later in the week.

The only other GAC member speaking today to support the US position was Israel, whose rep said “since it is an ongoing issue for seven years, we don’t believe that there is a need for further delay”.

Several government reps — from China, Switzerland, Portugal, Belgium and the European Commission — spoke in favor of Brazil’s view that ICANN should allow ACTO and Amazon back to the negotiating table.

The GAC is almost certain to say something about .amazon in its communique, due to drop Wednesday, but the ICANN board of directors does not currently have an Amazon-related item on its Montreal agenda.

UPDATE: The originally published version of this story incorrectly identified the US GAC representative as Ashley Heineman, who is listed on the GAC’s web site as the US representative. In fact, the speaker was Vernita Harris, acting associate administrator at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Had I been watching the meeting, rather that just listening to it, this would have been readily apparent to me. My apologies to Ms Heineman and Ms Harris for the error.

New (kinda) geo-TLD rules laid out at ICANN 66

The proposed rules for companies thinking about applying for a geographic gTLD in the next application round have been sketched out.

They’re the same as the old rules.

At ICANN 66 in Montreal today, a GNSO Policy Development Process working group team discussed its recently submitted final report (pdf) into geographic strings at the top level.

While the group, which comprised over 160 members, has been working for over two years on potential changes to the rules laid out in the 2012 Applicant Guidebook, it has basically concluded by consensus that no changes are needed.

What it has decided is that the GNSO policy on new gTLDs that was agreed upon in 2007 should be updated to come into line with the current AGB.

It appears to be a case of the GNSO setting a policy, the ICANN staff and board implementing rules inconsistent with that policy, then, seven years later, the GNSO changing its policy to comply with that top-down mandate.

It’s not really how bottom-up ICANN is supposed to work.

But at least nobody’s going to have to learn a whole new set of rules when the next application round opens.

The 2012 AGB bans two-letter gTLDs, for example, to avoid confusion with ccTLDs. It also places strong restrictions on the UN-recognized names of countries, territories, capital cities and regions.

It also gave the Governmental Advisory Committee sweeping powers to object to any gTLD it didn’t like the look of.

What it didn’t do was restrict geographic names such as “Amazon”, which is an undeniably famous geographic feature but which does not appear on any of the International Standards Organization lists that the AGB defers to.

Amazon the retailer has been fighting for its .amazon gTLDs for seven years, and it appears that the new GNSO recommendations will do nothing to provide clarity for edge-case applicants such as this in future rounds.

The group that came up with report — known as Work Track 5 of the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP Working Group — evidently had members that want to reduce geographic-string protections and those who wanted to increase them.

Members ultimately reached “consensus” — indicating that most but not all members agreed with the outcome — to stick with the status quo.

Nevertheless, the Montreal session this afternoon concluded with a great deal of back-slapping and expressions that Work Track 5 had allowed all voices, even those whose requests were ultimately declined, to be heard equally and fairly.

The final report has been submitted to the full WG for adoption, after which it will go to the full GNSO for approval, before heading to public comment and the ICANN board of directors as part of the PDP’s full final report.

Industry veteran Jay Daley tapped to lead IETF

The Internet Engineering Task Force has named domain industry veteran Jay Daley as its new executive director.

In a blog post last week, the IETF said that Daley beat 133 other “highly qualified applicants” for the job.

He’s the first person to hold the executive director title since the IETF formalized itself into an LLC entity owned by the Internet Society a year ago.

Daley’s most-recent activity in the domain industry was as interim CEO of Public Interest Registry between Brian Cute and Jon Nevett, a position he held for about six months last year.

He continues to sit on PIR’s board of directors

PIR is of course another ISOC subsidiary and its biggest funding source, due to the tens of millions of dollars of .org registry fees it donates every year.

Daley was previously CEO of .nz ccTLD registry NZRS and head of technology at .uk registry Nominet.