Should ICANN get breastfeeding areas? Have your say!

ICANN has launched a survey of community members’ views on gender, apparently trying to figure out whether it has a sexism problem.

The short, anonymous quiz, published today, asks a bunch of reasonable questions about gender diversity at ICANN’s physical meetings and online interactions.

The organization wants to know if you think your gender has had any influence on your participation at ICANN, and whether you think it could in your future in the community.

It wants to know if you think ICANN is too male-dominated, whether gender is a barrier to progression, and whether you feel represented by current leadership.

The survey also throws up a few questions I found a little surprising.

Should ICANN be holding “educational” sessions on gender diversity? Should it have “mandatory” diversity “quotas”? Should its meetings have breastfeeding areas? Would people who don’t identify as either gender have difficulty ascending to leadership positions?

Founded in 1998, ICANN is the organization tasked with coordinating certain of the internet’s unique technical identifiers.

1 Comment Tagged: gender, ICANN

Domain President? Dicker fallout continues as Schwartz unleashes tweetstorm

“Domain King” domain investor Rick Schwartz has twunleashed a twirade of Twitter twabuse about deleted podcasts that would put Donald Trump to shame.

Starting late Sunday night and apparently still ongoing at time of publication, Schwartz has been haranguing Michael Cyger, publisher of the DomainSherpa and DNAcademy investor sites, about dozens of deleted DomainSherpa podcasts.

So far, he’s hit send on scores of tweets. A very small sample:

Mike, I think you should stop ignoring Mike Berkens @thedomains & myself before this gets out of control and spills over all over the place.

— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) June 11, 2017

Exactly right! So @DomainSherpa should stop being a COWARD and clean this MESS up that HE ALONE CREATED. NOW!!!! SELF-DESTRUCTION! #Domains

— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) June 11, 2017

No idea why @DomainSherpa jumped on the thread other day & opened up this GIANT CAN OF WORMS?? Then ignored everything. BAD MOVE! #Domains

— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) June 11, 2017

Cyger was the host of the DomainSherpa video podcast, which regularly featured Schwartz and TheDomains publisher Mike Berkens as guests.

Also a regular guest was industry pariah Adam Dicker, who many domainers believe has used shady business practices in his dealings with others in the community.

After stories began to emerge of Dicker’s alleged wrongdoings, Cyger decided to stop using him as a guest. He subsequently removed all previous shows featuring Dicker from the DomainSherpa web site.

Now, Schwartz and Berkens are pissed that the hundreds of hours they volunteered into appearing on the show were wasted, and that hundreds of social media links they used to promote the shows are useless.

The three parties chatted by phone back in March, all seem to agree, about how to resolve this issue.

Cyger says it was agreed that the deleted shows would be replaced by an explanation that the show had been removed.

But Berkens and Schwartz claim that Cyger has in fact been ignoring their requests to reinstate the shows — hence the tweetstorm over the last 24 hours. Cyger denies that claim, and says he believes he did the right thing by removing the shows.

I, for the record, have no opinion on the matter.

17 Comments Tagged: domain king, domainsherpa, thedomains

InternetNZ wants to fire two of its three (!) CEOs

InternetNZ, the .nz ccTLD operator, is proposing a radical simplification of the organization in order to stay relevant in the age of new gTLDs.

A proposal put forward late last week would see the non-profit organization fold its two subsidiaries back into the parent and consolidate management under a single CEO.

Currently, InternetNZ owns Domain Name Commission Limited (DNCL), the .nz policy oversight body, and NZRS Limited, which actually runs the registry. Each of the three entities has its own CEO.

The new proposal describes the situation like this:

Our governance and management structures are cumbersome and a lack of single point of accountability makes it difficult to progress work across the group. The size of governance groups and management resource is out of proportion to the size of the organisation and the size of the issues it is dealing with. There are 20 governors, three chief executives and around 10 senior executives for the 35 FTE [Full Time Employees] across the three organisations.

The New Zealand organization needs to streamline, according to the working group that came up with the paper, in order to more effectively compete with the influx of new TLDs, which has seen ccTLDs see slowing growth.

.nz is one of the few ccTLDs that has a direct new gTLD competitor — .kiwi.

It also wants to diversify its revenue streams outside of domain registration fees, according to the paper, with a target of NZD 1 million ($720,000) from alternate sources by 2020.

As a member-based organization, InternetNZ has put the proposal out for public comment until June 30. It will make a decision in August.

1 Comment Tagged: .kiwi, .nz, cctlds, internetnz, new gTLDs

CIRA and Nominum offering DNS firewall

Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA has started offering DNS-based security services to Canadian companies.

The company has partnered with DNS security services provider Nominum to develop D-Zone DNS Firewall, which it said lets customers “block access to malicious content before it can reach their network”.

It’s basically a recursive DNS service with a layer of filterware that blocks access to lists of domains, such as those used by command and control servers, known to be connected to malware and phishing.

It’s a timely offering, given the high-profile WannaCry ransomware which infected hundreds of thousands of unpatched Windows boxes worldwide last month (though I’m not sure this kind of service would have actually prevented its spread).

The CIRA service uses Nominum’s technology but operates at Canadian internet exchange points and appears to be marketed at Canadian customers.

It’s the latest effort by CIRA to expand outside of its core .ca registry business. Earlier this year, it became ICANN’s newest approved gTLD back-end provider after a deal with .kiwi.

Many ccTLD registries are looking outside of their traditional businesses as the increasingly cluttered TLD market puts a squeeze on registration growth.

Comment Tagged: .ca, cira, nominum, security, wannacry

DENIC gets approved for registry escrow

DENIC is now able to offer data escrow services to gTLD registries, in addition to registrars.

The non-profit company, which runs Germany’s .de, said it gained ICANN approval for the registry escrow function June 6.

Back in March, ICANN approved it for the registrar escrow services.

All ICANN-accredited registries and registrars are contractually obliged to deposit their registrant data with escrow agents in case they go out of business, go rogue, suffer catastrophic data loss, or otherwise screw up.

Nine companies have been approved by ICANN for registry data escrow so far.

Two of others are based in Europe, but DENIC claims to be the only one that offers full compliance with the more stringent German and European Union data protection regulations.

Comment Tagged: .de, denic, escrow, ICANN, new gTLDs