Egyptian software exec is ICANN’s new CEO

ICANN has named Fadi Chehade as its new CEO.
Lebanon-born Chehade is a California-based software industry executive currently CEO of Vocado, a maker of educational software.
“I’m here because I owe the internet everything I’ve achieved to date,” he said at a press conference (ongoing).
He’s not due to take over until October 1. Until then, COO Akram Atallah will hold the reins, ICANN confirmed.
Chehade has known Atallah since they were kids — they used to be in the same boy scout troop, he said — and they worked together at Core Objects, where Chehade was CEO.
ICANN chairman Steve Crocker pointed to Chehade’s role as founder of RosettaNet, a supply chain software standards consortium, as evidence of his experience of consensus-building work.

ICANN’s new gTLD director quits

Michael Salazar, director of ICANN’s new gTLD program, has quit.
He’ll be replaced on an interim basis by Kurt Pritz, senior director of stakeholder relations, according to a statement from ICANN this evening.
No reason for his resignation, which comes shortly after the Big Reveal and on the eve of ICANN’s public meeting in Prague, was given.
Salazar, a KPMG alum, joined ICANN in July 2009. Unlike Pritz, he’s not been a particularly public face of the program.
It’s not entirely unusual for people to leave companies after hitting project milestones, but the timing in this case, given ICANN’s ongoing public perception problem, is unfortunate.
The organization is due to reveal its new CEO in about 12 hours time, and from what I gather the new appointee isn’t expected to take on the role for a couple months.
Having another senior staffer with responsibility over the new gTLD program quit at the same time will look bad.

ARI: digital archery is a lottery and we can prove it

ARI Registry Services has tested ICANN’s digital archery system and concluded that it’s little better than a “lottery”.
The company today released the results of a network latency test that it conducted earlier this month, which it says proves that applicants in North America have a “significant advantage” over others in securing a place in ICANN’s first new gTLD evaluation batch.
ARI basically tried to figure out how important the geographic location of the applicant is on digital archery.
It concluded that the further away you were, there was not only more network latency, as you would expect, but also that the latency became less predictable, making archery less about skill and more about luck.
According to the company (with my emphasis):

The conclusion is simple; the closer an applicant is to the ICANN Data Centre in Virginia, the greater likelihood of repeatable results, allowing a significantly higher chance of calibrating the network latency and thus setting a low Digital Archery time. It is therefore a significant advantage being located as close as possible to ICANN’s Digital Archery target or employing an organisation who is.
It is ARI’s contention that the frequency and size of network changes seen in networks outside North America mean the greatest influence on an applicant’s Digital Archery shot is luck. The further one is from North America, the greater the influence luck has on an applicant’s Digital Archery shot. Those applicants without the resources to access systems or representative organisations within North America are to all intents and purposes, playing a lottery, hoping that latency remains consistent between their calibration tests and their actual shot. The applicant’s ability to influence this game of chance reduces the further they are from North American networks.

While it might read for the most part like a technical white paper, make no mistake: this is a strongly political document.
By putting this information out there and linking it directly to the legally scary word “lottery”, ARI knows that it is putting ICANN in a very uncomfortable position.
The reason ICANN settled upon the digital archery system in the first place — rather than the preferred option of random selection — was because gambling is illegal in California and the organization’s lawyers were worried about nuisance lawsuits.
ARI has, essentially, just given fodder to the kinds of legal vultures that will be thinking about such lawsuits anyway.
The company is one of the strongest opponents of digital archery. In a recent interview with DI, CEO Adrian Kinderis called for batching to be scrapped in favor of a single evaluation period of 10 to 12 months.
You can read ARI’s 19-page report here.

Delays likely as governments demand gTLD timetable rethink

If you think you’ll be able to launch your new generic top level domain in the first quarter of 2013, you can pretty much forget it.
The Governmental Advisory Committee told ICANN yesterday that it does not think it will be able to provide advice on new gTLD applications until April 2013 at the earliest.
It’s also told ICANN to seriously reconsider its controversial digital archery program and the whole gTLD application batching concept.
The current timetable calls for GAC Early Warnings – the “headsup” stage for applicants – to be submitted concurrently with the public comment period, which runs through August 12.
The more substantial GAC Advice on New gTLDs period is meant to track with the regular objection window, which is expected to close about seven months from now, in January 2013.
Now the GAC says it won’t be able to meet either of those deadlines.
In a letter to ICANN chairman Steve Crocker, GAC chair Heather Dryden gave applicants several excellent reasons to believe that the Applicant Guidebook’s timetable will not be met:

the GAC has identified several benefits from having a single Early Warning period in relation to all applications (these relate to efficiency, consistency, and timeliness). On this basis, the GAC advises the Board that it is planning to issue any Early Warnings shortly after the Toronto ICANN meeting, in October 2012.
…
Given the delays to the gTLD application process, the timing of upcoming ICANN meetings, and the amount of work involved, the GAC advises the Board that it will not be in a position to offer any advice on new gTLD applications in 2012. For this reason, the GAC is considering the implications of providing any GAC advice on gTLD applications. These considerations are not expected to be finalised before the Asia-Pacific meeting in April 2013.

The bold text was in the original, indicating that this is official GAC advice that should not be ignored.
Given the bigger picture, with the looming threat of the ITU’s big summit in December, ICANN is likely to be extra receptive to governmental advice.
Readers will notice that Dryden isn’t saying that the GAC will provide its objections before April 2013, merely that it won’t have finished thinking about the “implications” of such advice before April 2013.
What this means for the gTLD evaluation timeline is anyone’s guess. I expect more clarity will be requested during ICANN’s public meeting in Prague next week.
These two pieces of timing advice have the effect of focusing ICANN’s mind on the more immediate problem of application batching.
The GAC seems to be backing calls from registries and intellectual property interests to scrap the batching concept and the ramshackle “digital archery” system.
Dryden wrote (pdf):

the GAC is concerned that the potential risks associated with the digital archery and batching mechanisms may outweigh the benefits. In light of ICANN’s decision to initiate digital archery on 8 June 2012, the GAC advises the Board to consult with the community as a matter of urgency to consider ways to improve its assessment and delegation processes in order to minimise the downside risks and uncertainty for applicants.
In line with the concerns raised by the community, this should include a focus on competition and fairness with delegation timing.

Far be it from me to suggest that the GAC picked its revised advice deadlines strategically, but they do seem to fit quite nicely into a batchless Initial Evaluation period that lasts about a year, as some community members have recently proposed.
Those who were paying attention during the panel discussion portion of Reveal Day last week will have noticed me and a couple of audience members putting Cherine Chalaby, chair of ICANN’s board new gTLDs committtee, on the spot about batching.
Chalaby confirmed that the committee – which has the powers of the board when it comes to new gTLDs – wants to hear from the community about batching during the Prague meeting.
The trick, he indicated, is to be able to reconsider batching without simply relocating it to the pre-delegation phase of the program, which will probably be next year.
“We will listen to alternatives and we will think about it, there’s no doubt, you have to be open minded about it,” he said.
My sense is that if opponents of batching want to have a shot at getting it killed off, they’re going to have to present a strong case – with a fully considered alternative – during their face-to-face with the ICANN board of directors on Monday.
Moaning and whining isn’t going to cut it this time, ICANN is going to want to see dates, delegation models, the works.

ICANN CEO to be announced Friday

ICANN will reveal the identity of its new CEO at a press conference this coming Friday.
But there’s a rumor going around that he or she is not expected to actually join the organization until September.
ICANN has just issued a press release stating that it will hold a news conference in Prague at 1600 local time (1400 UTC) during which Rod Beckstrom’s replacement will take questions from reporters.
People have been asking me for months if I know who it is and I have to say I haven’t got a clue.
The latest rumor doing the rounds, however, is that whoever has been selected will not actually take the helm until later this year.
I’ve heard September from some sources and October from others, but ICANN is currently declining to confirm or deny the rumor.
Beckstrom announced his departure from ICANN a year ago. His contract expires at the end of the month and is not expected to be extended.

China proposes to split up the DNS

A trio of Chinese techies have proposed a new IETF standard to enable governments to break up the Domain Name System along national borders.
Named “DNS Extension for Autonomous Internet (AIP)”, the spec describes a way to operate alternate DNS root servers within national boundaries using gateways for translation.
For internet users subscribed to one of these “AIP” networks, DNS requests would carry an extra TLD, such as .a or .b, to flag the fact that the requests are headed for an alternate root:

Domain node “www.yahoo.com” in network B is expressed as “www.yahoo.com.B” for its external domain name.

Written in broken English, the Internet Draft is a poorly masked description of a way to install government censorship via officially sanctioned domain name system Balkanization.
It appears to be designed to enable governments to cut ICANN and the authoritative DNS root out of the picture entirely in favor of a national peering system more akin to traditional telecoms networks.
The paper reads:

In order to realize the transition from Internet to Autonomous Internet, each partition of current Internet should first realize possible self-government and gradually reduce its dependence on the foreign domain names, such as COM, NET et al.
…
It is not likely the whole Internet can be transformed synchronally in one time. In order not to affect existing domain name resolution before the Internet core part transforms into an AIP network, any country can set up an AIP DNS independently and connect to the Internet through the original link; or any two countries in agreement can set up their AIP networks and connect to each others.

The paper was written by Yuping Diao of Guangdong Commercial College, Yongping Diao of China Telecom and Ming Liao of China Mobile.
It’s just an Internet Draft at this stage, and probably nothing to get too worked up about, but it does reflect the Bigger Picture framing the ICANN expansion of the DNS.
During the ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications this December, backwards governments are expected to proposed a greater degree of government control over the internet.

ICANN takes down gTLD apps after revealing applicants’ home addresses

ICANN has temporarily blocked access to its newly revealed new gTLD applications after accidentally publishing the home addresses of many applicants.
Some applicants noticed today that the personal contact information of their named primary and secondary contacts had been published during yesterday’s Big Reveal.
In many cases this included these employees’ home addresses, despite the fact that the Applicant Guidebook specifically states that this information would not be published.
After being notified of the snafu by DI, ICANN confirmed that the addresses were published by mistake.
It’s taken down all the applications and will republish them later with the private data removed.
“This was an oversight and the files have been pulled down,” ICANN’s manager of gTLD communications Michele Jourdan said. “We are working on bringing them back up again without this information.”
It’s another big data leakage embarrassment for ICANN, following the recent outage caused by the TLD Application System bug.
It’s not likely to win ICANN any friends in the dot-brand community, where ICANN’s demands for background information on applicants’ directors caused huge procedural problems for many companies.
For applicants for controversial gTLDs, the revelation of this private data may carry its own set of risks.

It’s Reveal Day and there are 1,930 new gTLD bids

ICANN received 1,930 new generic top level domain applications, 751 of which were for contested strings.
While the unveiling of who applied for what is not expected to happen until early this afternoon in London, the organization just published a bunch of facts and figures about the bids.
A grand total of 230 strings are in direct contention, covered by 751 applications (39%) or an average of three or four applicants per string.
There are 66 self-designated geographic applications, aiming to represent many of the world’s cities and regions. That’s 3.4% of the total.
Internationalized domain names — gTLDs in non-Latin scripts — account for 116 applications, or 6% of the total.
Applications that have been pushed into the the tricky “community” route stand at 84, or 4.6%.
Organizations from a total of 60 countries are participating in the round.
North American businesses account for a little under half of all applications, with 911 (47.2%) active bids. Europe is the next largest with 675 (35%), followed by Asia-Pacific with 303 (15.7%)
It’s good news for applicants from Latin America and the Caribbean and from Africa. With just 24 (1.2%) and 17 (0.9%) applications respectively, they’re pretty much all guaranteed a spot in the first evaluation batch.
The names of every applicant — and possibly the public parts of their applications — will be revealed during an official ICANN event at Kings Place, here in London, today.
The gig starts at noon UK time (11am UTC), and will be webcast from 1pm here at icann.org for those not attending in person.
There’ll be a press conference, a panel discussion (which I’m moderating) and a networking event.
Some attendees are retiring to a hotel opposite the venue for drinks afterwards, but I suspect a lot of eyes will be glued to laptops.
Don’t expect many more posts from DI today, but please follow @domainincite for updates if you’re not already.

YouPorn says ICANN not immune from .xxx antitrust

YouPorn owner Manwin Licensing has rejected ICANN’s claim to be immune from antitrust liability.
The company has told a California court that its lawsuit against ICANN and .xxx operator ICM Registry is little different from the landmark case Coalition For ICANN Transparency v Verisign.
Manwin sued ICANN and ICM last November, claiming the two illegally colluded to create a monopoly that, among other things, extorted defensive registration money from porn companies.
But ICANN has said in its attempts to have the case dismissed that the antitrust claims could not apply to it as, for one reason, it “does not engage in trade or commerce”.
Manwin’s oppositions to ICANN’s and ICM’s motions to dismiss rely heavily on the fact that the court allowed CFIT v Verisign, which challenged Verisign’s 2006 .com registry agreement, to go ahead.
Essentially, ICANN is trying to wriggle out of the suit on legal grounds at an early stage, but Manwin reckons there’s precedent for it to have to answer to antitrust claims.
You can read Manwin’s latest court filings here and here.
The case continues.

Neustar adds voice to anti-batching chorus

Neustar and MarkMonitor have come out in opposition to digital archery and new gTLD batching.
In letters to ICANN this week, both companies have asked for delays in the digital archery process to give the community time to come up with better solutions.
Neustar’s new deputy general counsel Becky Burr wrote:

A modest delay would permit both ICANN and the community of affected stakeholders to consider the validity of those assumptions in light of actual applications.
…
Informed reflection by the community could result in greater efficiencies and fewer disputes down the road.
On the other hand, launching the Digital Archery process prior to publication of the list of applications is going to create winners and losers that will unnecessarily complicate, and perhaps prevent, thoughtful adjustments to the approach.

MarkMonitor’s Elisa Cooper simply wants to know “Why should some TLDs receive the benefit of being delegated before others?” She asked ICANN to reconsider whether batching is necessary.

While it is understandable that not all 1900+ applications cannot be simultaneously processed, why not just wait until all applications have completed the Initial Evaluation before announcing results. Why should some TLDs receive the benefit of being delegated before others?
If batching is even required, allow the Community to see the entire list of applications so that they can provide meaningful feedback. It may become apparent that certain types of strings should be processed together.

MarkMonitor also expressed concern that ICANN’s TLD Application System terms of use may prohibit applicants from using third-party archery services, such as those offered by Pool.com and Digital Archery Experts.
Sharing TAS passwords seems to be against the rules, but would be necessary to let a third party into your TAS account.
(I reported earlier in the week that it would also let the third-party view the confidential portions of your application, but that appears not to be the case after all.)
By officially coming out against batching and archery, Neustar and MarkMonitor join Melbourne IT, Group NBT, ARI Registry Service and the Intellectual Property Constituency.
Digital archery nevertheless is already underway, ICANN having launched the system on schedule yesterday.
All the applicants I’ve spoken to about this seem to be planning to wait until after the Big Reveal next Wednesday before taking their shots.