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- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
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- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
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- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
ICANN refuses to say why it allowed Donuts to buy Afilias
ICANN appears determined to make its decision-making process when it comes to industry consolidation as opaque as possible.
The Org has denied a request from two rival registries for information about how it approved the acquisition of Afilias by Donuts last December, apparently exploiting a loophole in its bylaws.
The transaction got the nod from ICANN after its December 17 board of directors meeting, at which the board discussed the deal and gave CEO Göran Marby the nod to go ahead and process the request.
What it didn’t do was pass a formal resolution approving the deal, which seems to have given it the room to wriggle out of its transparency requirements, such as publishing its rationale and briefing materials.
It’s a trick it also used last year when it decided to bar Ethos Capital from acquiring Public Interest Registry.
In response to a Documentary Information Disclosure Process request (pdf) last month, filed by Dot Hotel and Domain Venture Partners, ICANN said:
ICANN org makes available, as a matter of due course, on the ICANN website the resolutions taken, preliminary report, minutes, and the Board briefing materials for each Board meeting… ICANN org has already published all materials for the 17 December 2020 Board meeting.
No new information was published.
The DIDP was filed by two applicants for the new gTLD .hotel, which are competing with applications originally filed by both Donuts and Afilias.
They’d also asked for ICANN’s rationale for allowing Donuts to own two .hotel applications post-acquisition, but ICANN said it had no documents reflecting that rationale.
The .hotel contest is also the subject of an Independent Review Process case and a lawsuit, in which DVP is a plaintiff.
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