ICANN says Verisign should stay in charge of root zone

Verisign should stay in its key role in root zone management after the IANA transition process is complete, according to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade.
The company currently acts as “maintainer”, alongside the US government as “administrator” and ICANN/IANA as “operator”.
This means Verisign is responsible for actually making changes — adding, deleting or amending the records for TLDs — in the root zone file.
In a blog post yesterday, Chehade said that ICANN will “establish a relationship directly with the third-party Maintainer”, adding:

As a means to help ensure stability, ICANN’s recommended implementation option is to have Verisign continue its role as the Maintainer. However, we will be working closely with all relevant parties including the Root Zone Operators to ensure there are contingency options in place to meet our absolute commitment to the stability, security and resiliency of the Domain Name System.

I wholeheartedly agree that Verisign should stay in its role, or at the very least that ICANN should not take over.
As we’ve learned over the last couple of years of software glitches in the new gTLD program, some of them security-related, ICANN would be a poor choice today to maintain this critical resource.
Chehade noted that the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration would be replaced in its “administrator” role by whatever mechanism the ICANN community comes up with during the transition process.

2 Comments Tagged: iana, iana transition, ICANN, root zone, verisign

ICANN snubs Belgium, gives Donuts the all-clear for .spa

ICANN has rejected demands by the Belgian government by giving Donuts the go-ahead to proceed with its application for .spa, which Belgium says infringes on a geographic name.
Noting that the Governmental Advisory Committee had submitted no consensus advice that Donuts .spa bid should be rejected, the ICANN board’s New gTLD Program Committee said last week “the applications will proceed through the normal process.”
That means the two-way contention set is presumably going to auction.
The English dictionary word “spa” derives from Spa, a small Belgian town with some springs.
The other applicant is Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council, which has made a deal with Spa to donate some of its profits to local projects and give the city some control over the registry.
Donuts refused to sign a similar deal, leading to Belgium last month asking ICANN to delegate the gTLD to ASWPC and not Donuts.
The GAC’s last word on .spa was this, from the recent Singapore meeting:

Regarding the applications for .spa, the GAC understands that the relevant parties in these discussions are the city of Spa and the applicants. The GAC has finalised its consideration of the .spa string and welcomes the report that an agreement has been reached between the city of Spa and one of the applicants.

There’s no ICANN fudging here; if the GAC wanted to issue a consensus objection it could have.
The question is: why didn’t it?
Why does the string “amazon”, which does not exactly match the name of a place in its local languages, qualify for a GAC objection, while “spa”, which exactly matches the name of a city, does not?

6 Comments Tagged: .spa, amazon, belgium, donuts, gac, geographic names, governmental advisory committee, new gTLDs

Will anyone buy .luxury names?

The new gTLD .luxury went into general availability this afternoon, having reported a surprisingly promising sunrise period, but will it attract any interest from early-bird registrants?
The gTLD’s names are priced at roughly $700 retail, regardless of name, which is usually high enough to deter many professional domainers. This should mean volumes on day on will be low.
But the registry, Luxury Partners, reckons it had over 600 sunrise registrations — made mostly by recognized luxury brands — which it said made it the biggest new gTLD sunrise to date.
Does that show demand by luxury brands, as the registry posits, or merely targeted defensive registration strategies by companies that feel a particular affinity with the “luxury” tag?
The registry said in a press release:

While most registrants expressed interest in securing their brand name under .LUXURY, the namespace also holds great appeal to companies and investors wanting to secure premium generic terms to target specific market verticals within the luxury sector.

For a high-priced name, it’s also got a surprising amount of registrar support. I count something like 50 accredited registrars listed on its nic.luxury web site.
GA started at 1500 UTC today. If the registry approves our request for zone file access we’ll have its day one numbers tomorrow.

1 Comment Tagged: .luxury, luxury partners, new gTLDs

.club pips .berlin to #2 spot

.CLUB Domains moved into the number two spot on the new gTLD league table overnight, but its growth appears to be slowing.
In today’s zone files, .club has 47,362 domains under management, having added 734 on Sunday; .berlin stood at 47,243, having added 33 yesterday.
.guru still leads with 56,813 names.
Sunday is typically a slow day for domain registrations across the industry, but .club’s growth does appear to be slowing compared to its first few days of general availability, regardless.
It saw 1,141 net new names on Friday and 1,351 on Saturday. The previous Friday and Saturday adds were at 4,904 and 3,828.
It’s difficult to get a comprehensive picture of daily growth due to the registry missing a few days of zone files last week.

Comment Tagged: .berlin, .club, .club domains, .guru, new gTLDs

Amazon’s bid for .amazon is dead

ICANN has killed off Amazon’s application for the new gTLD .amazon, based on longstanding but extremely controversial advice from its Governmental Advisory Committee.
According to a New gTLD Program Committee resolution passed on Wednesday and published last night, the applications for .amazon and Chinese and Japanese translations “should not proceed”.
That basically means all three applications are frozen until Amazon withdraws them, wins some kind of appeal, manages to change the GAC’s mind, or successfully sues.
Here’s the last bit of the resolution:

Resolved (2014.05.14.NG03), the NGPC accepts the GAC advice identified in the GAC Register of Advice as 2013-07-18-Obj-Amazon, and directs the President and CEO, or his designee, that the applications for .AMAZON (application number 1-1315-58086) and related IDNs in Japanese (application number 1-1318-83995) and Chinese (application number 1-1318-5581) filed by Amazon EU S.à r.l. should not proceed. By adopting the GAC advice, the NGPC notes that the decision is without prejudice to the continuing efforts by Amazon EU S.à r.l. and members of the GAC to pursue dialogue on the relevant issues.

The NGPC noted that it has no idea why the GAC chose to issue consensus advice against .amazon, but based its deliberations on the mountain of correspondence sent by South American nations.
Peru and Brazil, which share the Amazonia region of the continent, led the charge against the bids, saying they would “prevent the use of this domain for the purposes of public interest related to the protection, promotion and awareness raising on issues related to the Amazon biome”.
Amazon had argued that “Amazon” is not a geographic term and that it was against international law for governments to intervene and prevent it using its trademark.
ICANN commissioned a legal analysis that concluded that the organization was under no legal obligation to either reject or accept the applications.
Under the rules of the new gTLD program, the NGPC could have rejected the GAC’s advice, which would have led to a somewhat lengthy consultation process to resolve (or not) their differences.
The big question now is what Amazon, which has invested heavily in the new gTLD program, plans to do next.
A Reconsideration Request would be the simplest option for appeal, though almost certainly a futile gesture. An Independent Review Process complaint might be slightly more realistic.
There’s always the courts, though all new gTLD applicants have to sign legal waivers when they apply.
A fourth option would be for Amazon to negotiate with the affected governments in an attempt to get the GAC advice reversed. The company has already attempted this — offering to protect certain key words related to the region at the second level, for example — but to no avail.

5 Comments Tagged: amazon, geographic names, ICANN, new gTLDs

.club misses first target but hopes to be #1 new gTLD “within days”

.CLUB Domains failed to overtake .guru in its first week of general availability as promised, but the company is nevertheless upbeat about taking the number one spot “within days”.
The last zone file available for .club shows 41,203 names, but that’s the May 14 file. The company, or its back-end, has been having trouble keeping its zone file current in the ICANN system this week.
That was an increase of of 10,523 over five days, or 2,104 per day on average.
As of 1500 UTC yesterday, the company reckoned it had 44,450 sales.
That would still place it at #3 in the league table behind .guru with 56,097 (up 200 names today) and .berlin with 47,079 (up 60 names).
If the growth rates stay roughly the same, .club may well overtake .guru in less than a week.
CEO Colin Campbell told us in March that “I firmly believe that .CLUB will exceed all other new generic top level domains in the first week of launch in registrations and overtake .GURU as the leader.”
The company is hosting a party in New York with celebrity endorser 50 Cent next Thursday (disclosure: I’m attending on .CLUB’s dime) which may or may not lead to a spike.

23 Comments Tagged: .berlin, .club, .club domains, .guru, 50 cent, new gTLDs

OpenDNS raises $35 million

DNS service provider OpenDNS has raised $35 million in Series C funding, doubling its total raised capital to date, according to the company.
The laundry list of participating venture capitalists comprised Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Glynn Capital, Cisco, Evolution Equity, Lumia Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Northgate Capital.
The company offers DNS-based security services for enterprises, such as malware and phishing detection, and content filtering for schools and universities.
CEO David Ulevitch said in a blog post that OpenDNS has over 50 million daily users. Its prices range from $28 t $42 per user per year.

Comment Tagged: funding, opendns

DNA has new plan for gTLD auctions: give us your money!

The Domain Name Association is hoping to raise funds for marketing by hosting private new gTLD auctions, according to executive director Kurt Pritz.
Chair Adrian Kinderis made the pitch at a meeting of the New TLD Applicants Group today.
The DNA is hoping to tempt applicants that are reluctant to participate in existing private auction schemes because they don’t want their money going to competitors.
Instead, the winning bid in an auction managed by the DNA would go straight into the DNA’s marketing and operations budget, to the potential benefit of the whole new gTLD industry.
Participating applicants would get to choose how the money would be split been marketing and the general DNA kitty.
The organization hasn’t picked an auction provider yet, and no applicants are yet committed to the plan, Pritz said.

34 Comments Tagged: auctions, dna, domain name association, new gTLDs

Was panel wrong to put .africa on ice or does ICANN have an accountability problem?

Did an Independent Review Process panel get it wrong when it accused ICANN of failing to implement proper accountability mechanisms, or did it actually highlight a more serious problem?
As we reported yesterday, an IRP panel has ordered ICANN to not delegate ZA Central Registry’s .africa gTLD until it’s heard an appeal by failed rival bidder DotConnectAfrica.
IRP is ICANN’s last avenue of appeal for organizations that believe they’ve been wronged by ICANN decisions. Due to the duration of the process and the need for legal representation, it’s extremely expensive.
The IRP panel in the .africa case based its decision largely on the fact that ICANN has failed to create a “standing panel” of would-be IRP panelists, something the panel said would have sped up the process.
A “standing panel” is supposed to be six to nine panelists-in-waiting — all respected jurists — from which three-person IRP panels could be selected when needed in future.
DCA would not have needed to file for an emergency injunction against .africa’s delegation had this standing panel been created, the panel said.
According to the IRP panel, the creation of a standing panel has been “required” by the ICANN bylaws since April 2013, and ICANN has “failed” to follow its own rules by not creating one. It wrote:

the Panel is of the view that this Independent Review Process could have been heard and finally decided without the need for interim relief, but for ICANN’s failure to follow its own Bylaws… which require the creation of a standing panel

But ICANN disagrees, getting in touch with us today to point out that the panel only partially quoted the ICANN bylaws.
This is the bit of the bylaws the panel quoted:

There shall be an omnibus standing panel of between six and nine members with a variety of expertise, including jurisprudence, judicial experience, alternative dispute resolution and knowledge of ICANN’s mission and work from which each specific IRP Panel shall be selected.

There seems to me to be little ambiguity in that paragraph; ICANN “shall” create a standing panel.
But ICANN reminds us that the IRP panel ignored a second bit of this paragraph, which states:

In the event that an omnibus standing panel: (i) is not in place when an IRP Panel must be convened for a given proceeding, the IRP proceeding will be considered by a one- or three-member panel comprised in accordance with the rules of the IRP Provider; or (ii) is in place but does not have the requisite diversity of skill and experience needed for a particular proceeding, the IRP Provider shall identify one or more panelists, as required, from outside the omnibus standing panel to augment the panel members for that proceeding.

Basically, the bit of the bylaws stating that ICANN “shall” create a standing panel is almost immediately negated by a bit that explains what is supposed to happen if ICANN does not create a standing panel.
It’s confusing.
Is ICANN “required” (the panel’s word) to create this standing panel or not? ICANN seems to think not, but the panel thinks otherwise.
I have no opinion because, luckily, I’m not a lawyer.
But I did a bit of digging into the public record to figure out why the bylaws are so confusing on this issue and what I found is slightly worrying if you’re concerned about ICANN accountability.
The bylaws paragraph in question was added in April 2013, but it has its roots in the findings of the first Accountability and Transparency Review Team, which is the key way ICANN’s accountability is reviewed under the 2009 Affirmation of Commitments with the US government.
The ATRT said in 2010 (pdf) that ICANN should “seek input from a committee of independent experts on the restructuring of the three review mechanisms” including the IRP.
ICANN did this, convening a three-person Accountability Structures Expert Panel, made up of widely respected corporate/legal brains Mervyn King, Graham McDonald and Richard Moran
It was this ASEP that came up with the idea for a standing panel, which it said would speed up IRP decisions and reduce costs.
Members of the standing panel would be paid an annual retainer even when not working on an IRP, but it would be cheaper because IRP complainants and ICANN wouldn’t have to repeatedly explain to a new panel of doddery old ex-judges what ICANN is and does.
The ASEP, in its report (pdf) did not specify what should happen if ICANN decided not to implement its recommendation on the standing panel.
I can’t know for sure, but from the public record it seems that the confusing second part of the bylaws amendment was the creation of the ICANN board, possibly based on a single comment from gTLD registries.
The provision about a standing panel was formally added to the bylaws with an April 2013 resolution of ICANN’s board of directors, which followed a December 2012 resolution that approved the change in principle.
The second part of the amendment, the bit about what happens if ICANN does not institute a standing panel, was added at some point between those two resolutions.
The April resolution sheds a little light on the reason for the addition, saying (with my added emphasis):

Whereas, as contemplated within the [December 2012] Board resolution, and as reflected in public comment, further minor revisions are needed to the Bylaws to provide flexibility in the composition of a standing panel for the Independent Review process (IRP).
Resolved (2013.04.11.06), the Bylaws revisions to Article IV, Section 2 (Reconsideration) and Article IV, Section 3 (Independent Review) as approved by the Board and subject to a minor amendment to address public comments regarding the composition of a standing panel for the IRP, shall be effective on 11 April 2013.

The notes to the resolution further explain (again with my emphasis):

The Bylaws as further revised also address a potential area of concern raised by the community during the public comments on this issue, regarding the ability for ICANN to maintain a standing panel for the Independent Review proceedings. If a standing panel cannot be comprised, or cannot remain comprised, the Bylaws now allow for Independent Review proceedings to go forward with individually selected panelists.

The “minor amendment” referred to in the resolution seems to have enabled ICANN to basically ignore the ASEP recommendations, which (remember) stem from the ATRT review, for the last 12 months.
The April 2013 resolution was on the consent agenda for the meeting, so there was no minuted discussion by the board, but it seems pretty clear that “public comments” are responsible for the second part of the bylaws amendment.
But whose public comments?
When the ASEP report was open for comment, only two people responded — the Registries Stakeholder Group and former ICANN director Alejandro Pisanty, apparently commenting in a personal capacity.
On the subject of the proposed standing panel, the RySG said it wasn’t happy:

We also are concerned with the concept of standing panels for the IRP. A key component of the IRP is that the review is “independent.” To keep this independence, we believe that service on an IRP tribunal should be open to all eligible panelists, not just those with previous experience with or knowledge of ICANN. Determining whether an organization has complied with its bylaws or articles of incorporation should not require historic knowledge of the organization itself, and we believe that any jurist generally qualified by the IRP provider should be more than capable of acting as a panelist for an IRP.

It wasn’t the RySG’s main concern, and it wasn’t given much space in its comment.
Pisanty, commenting during the comment-reply period, seemed to disagree with the RySG, saying that the ongoing institutional knowledge of a standing panel could be a boon to the IRP.
When the ASEP report was discussed at a lightly attended early-morning session of the ICANN Toronto meeting in October 2012, the only person to comment on the standing panel was Neustar lawyer Becky Burr, and she liked the idea (transcript).
It’s not what you’d call a groundswell of opposition to the standing panel idea. There were few opinions, those opinions were split, and if anything the balance of commentary favors the notion.
In any event, when ICANN compiled its usual compilation report on the public comments (pdf) its legal staffer said:

After review of the comments, no changes to the ASEP recommendations are recommended, and the report will be forwarded to the Board for consideration and action, along with the proposed Bylaws amendments.

ICANN staff, it seems, didn’t think the RySG’s (lone?) opposition to the standing panel concept was worth messing with the ASEP’s recommendations.
And yet the ICANN board added the text about what happens in the event of a standing panel not existing anyway.
I could be wrong, but it does look a little bit like the ICANN board giving itself a carte blanch to ignore the recommendations of the ASEP, and therefore, indirectly, the ATRT.
ICANN may well have a point about the .africa IRP panel inappropriately ignoring some key sentences in the ICANN bylaws, but I can’t help but wonder how those sentences got there in the first place.

3 Comments Tagged: africa, asep, atrt, dcatrust, dotconnectafrica, ICANN, independent review process, irp, new gTLDs, zacr

KnujOn scores a win as BizCN gets first breach notice

The Chinese registrar BizCN has received its first breach notice from ICANN’s compliance department, following a sustained campaign by anti-abuse activist KnujOn.
The notice concerns Whois accuracy, specifically for the domain names rapetube.org and onlinepharmacy4.org, and a bunch of other peripheral breaches of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
The “porn” site rapetube.org was the subject of a Washington Post article last December, in which KnujOn’s Garth Bruen said he feared the site might contain footage of actual crimes.
Bruen has been chasing BizCN about Whois inaccuracy, and specifically the rapetube.org domain, since 2011.
He said in a September 2013 CircleID post that he’s filed Whois inaccuracy complaints about the domain with ICANN “multiple times”.
His campaign against ICANN Compliance led to an Ombudsman complaint (which was rejected) last year.
Now Compliance appears to be taking the case more seriously. ICANN, according to the breach notice, has been on BizCN’s case about rapetube.org’s Whois since March 24 this year.
At that time, the name was registered to a Vietnamese name with a French address and phone number and a contact email address at privacy-protect.cn.
According to Bruen’s interview with the Post, this email address bounced and nobody answered the phone number. The privacy-protect.cn domain does not appear to currently resolve.
ICANN evidently has some unspecified “information” that shows the email “does not appear to be a valid functioning email address”.
But BizCN told ICANN April 2 that it had verified the registrant’s contact information with the registrant, and provided ICANN with correspondence it said demonstrated that.
ICANN says the correspondence it provided actually predated KnujOn’s latest complaint by six months.
In addition, when BizCN forwarded a scanned copy of the registrant’s ID card, ICANN suspected it to be a fake. The notice says:

Registrar provided copies of correspondence between the reseller and registrant. The response included the same email address that was still invalid according to information available to ICANN, and included a copy of a government identification card to confirm the registrant’s address. According to information available to ICANN, the identification card did not conform to any current or previous form of government identification for that jurisdiction.

Despite repeated follow-up calls, ICANN said it still has not received an adequate response from BizCN, so its accreditation is now in jeopardy.
BizCN has something like 450,000 gTLD names under management and is in the top 50 registrars by volume.
As for rapetube.org, it’s still registered with BizCN, but its Whois changed to a Russian company “Privat Line LLP”, at privatlinellp.me, on or about April 17.
That change is not going to help BizCN, however, which is being asked to provide evidence that it took “reasonable steps to investigate and reasonable steps to correct the Whois inaccuracy claims”.
It has until May 29 to sort out the breaches or face termination. Read the breach notice here.

Comment Tagged: bizcn, compliance, ICANN, knujon, whois