Lindqvist shuffles the exec deck

I’ve never really understood the logic of ICANN having contractual compliance and government relations under the same roof, but it’s an organizational strategy it’s doubled down on in its latest rejigger.

CEO Kurt Lindqvist said that he’s given Jamie Hedlund a new title and new department. He’s now senior VP of global government engagement and contractual compliance, which expands on his previous US-only remit.

The Org has hired long-time community participant Janis Karklins as head of government engagement, replacing interim head Veni Markovski. He will report to Hedlund.

Karklins’ biggest contribution in recent years was arguably chairing the group that advanced post-GDRP Whois policy, but he has also acted in multiple ambassadorial roles for Latvia.

Separately, Andre Abed has been promoted to CIO, a role he held on an interim basis since Ashwin Rangan quit almost two years ago. He will report to CTO John Crain.

Bogus harassment complaints could get you an ICANN ban

ICANN has made it a lot easier for its community members to file spurious harassment complaints against each other, but has also made it clear it will not put up with such complaints.

A new version of the Community Anti-Harassment Policy has been approved and is now in effect, with some new text arguably creating a chilling social minefield where a simple cultural faux pas could lead to formal disciplinary action.

But it also warns against “submitting vexatious and/or spurious complaints”, saying such complainants could wind up with the same penalties as those found to have actually engaged in harassment.

Punishments include everything from a demand for a verbal apology to a lifetime ban from the ICANN community.

The core definition of harassment has been updated to add the word “discriminatory”. It is now: “Harassment is unwelcome, non-consensual, hostile, discriminatory, and/or intimidating conduct.”

The policy continues to state, unchanged: “Conduct does not have to intend to harm, be directed at a specific target, or involve repeated incidents in order for it to be deemed harassment.”

The list of examples of prohibited conduct has been clarified and updated, with some surprising changes.

The new policy (pdf), an update to the original 2017 policy (pdf) prohibits “physical assault, or threats” for — bafflingly — the first time. It gives the Ombuds the ability help the recipient of any criminal action coordinate with local police if necessary.

It also now bans “offensive comments”, with “offensive” defined as “any language, actions, or imagery that cause hurt, discomfort, or distress to an individual or group, particularly when demeaning, disrespectful, or discriminatory”.

The new policy also makes it clear that its jurisdiction extends outside the windowless walls of ICANN meeting venues, in particular to “dinners or social gatherings in connection with an ICANN Public Meeting”.

It now also bans “micro-aggressive or passive-aggressive remarks that reinforce stereotypes”. This could be worrying, given that ICANN, in typically humorless Californian fashion, considers things like weak handshakes or smiles “microaggressions”.

But the new policy does have a safeguard against overzealous culture warriors filing nonsense complaints for nefarious reasons. It says:

this Policy is not itself to be used for the purposes of retaliation. Persons who abuse this Policy by submitting vexatious and/or spurious complaints or reports shall be dealt with in an appropriate fashion…

A vexatious complaint is one made maliciously, knowingly false, or with the intent to harass, intimidate, or retaliate against another individual.

In all cases, complaints under the policy are handled by the Ombuds, who will attempt to resolve the situation informally between the parties concerned before escalating to any formal punitive actions.

Confidentiality is expected at all stages, but the policy says ICANN Org will be informed if ICANN staff are involved.

ICANN slaps open-mic ban on conflicted lawyers

Lawyers who refuse to disclose the identities of their clients should no longer be able to take the mic at ICANN’s regular Public Forum sessions, under a new ban.

The Org’s board has approved a new code of conduct covering people who get involved in policy-making processes or contribute to public discussions, which essentially tells them to reveal their paymasters or go away.

The new code says that “withholding relevant information about the interests involved” could “impair the legitimacy of ICANN’s processes” and that when “disclosure cannot be made, the participant must not participate in ICANN processes or make interventions at ICANN sessions on that issue.”

The new rules mean that if a lawyer working on new gTLD policy is secretly on the payroll of a potential new gTLD applicant, or if a client is working on a patent that could be affected by policy, they should either disclose that relationship or recuse themselves.

The policy has been under development for about a year and a half, following advice from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee. It was open for public discussion and comment and some suggested changes have been adopted.

Opponents said that sometimes lawyers in private practice are ethically prohibited from revealing their clients’ names, but this was pooh-poohed by others who pointed out that jurisdictions such as the US require similar disclosures from lobbyists.

ICANN already had a code of conduct for volunteers, but it included a carve-out for people claiming professional ethical immunity.

Anyone found to have violated the new code of conduct could find themselves banned from participating in ICANN policy-making processes.

Final GTFO warning for 19 failed new gTLD bids

ICANN is to give eviction notices to the applicants behind 19 failed new gTLD applications from the 2012 round, including Google, Amazon and Identity Digital. The affected strings include .hotel, .shop and .islam.

Fifteen companies are to be told to withdraw their applications within 90 days or forfeit their right to a partial refund of their application fees, under a Termination Procedure approved by ICANN earlier this month.

The affected applications include those for strings that have since been delegated to other applicants, strings that were rejected due to objections from governments, and those that failed because of clashes with ICANN rules.

They also include .corp, .mail and .home, applied for by Google, Amazon, and GMO Registry, which have been banned due to the high risk of name collisions with commonly used behind-the-firewall namespaces.

Eight further applications — for .webs, .web and .gcc — are deemed to have failed but will not immediately get their 90-day warning because they are still involved in legal proceedings.

The absolute minimum amount of refunds at stake here is $703,000 — 20% of the original fees — which would remain in ICANN’s coffers if it remains unclaimed after the deadline.

Number of subsidized gTLD bidders far lower than thought

A huge number of organizations that started applying to ICANN for subsidized new gTLD applications have apparently pulled out of the program, judging by newly released stats.

As of September 19, 42 would-be applicants had joined the Applicant Support Program, with ICANN stats published yesterday revealing that 30 have been removed compared to last month’s stats because they are “deemed inactive, with 90 or more days of inactivity.”

Last month, there were over 70 reported applicants.

To date, only three have received provisional approval and of those only one has fully progressed through the system. Only one has formally withdrawn from the process.

ASP promises applicants — only non-profits and/or charities so far, though small businesses from the developing world can apply too — 75% to 85% off the expected $227,000 application fee when the next application opens in Q2 next year.

ICANN has faced some criticisms from governments at the lack of applicants so far from under-serviced regions such as South America.

Sixteen new gTLD bids could face the firing squad

ICANN’s board of directors has an unusually bumper crop of non-trivial resolutions on its agenda for next week, including the fate of the .ly TLD, new anti-harassment rules, and killing off as many as 16 applications from the 2012 new gTLD application round.

Of the nine items on the agenda, published overnight, four stand out as noteworthy:

Termination Procedure for Remaining 2012 Round Applications that were not Successful

With ICANN spooling up to start accepting new gTLD applications in the second quarter next year, it appears to be ready to clear the decks of the last application round by killing off lingering applications.

While details of the proposed procedure are not yet available, it could apply to as many as 15 applications that are currently marked as “Will Not Proceed” or other failure states in ICANN’s application database.

Perhaps the most obviously affected application is Nameshop’s bid for .idn, which was rejected because the string matches a protected country-code for Indonesia. ICANN has been begging Nameshop to withdraw its application for many years, but the requests have fallen on deaf ears.

If ICANN’s search engine is to be believed, major companies such as Tata (.tata, blocked on geographic grounds) and L’Oréal (.salon, lost at last-resort auction to Identity Digital) still have failed, unwithdrawn applications.

Applications for contested, legally challenged, as-yet-undelegated gTLDs, including .web and .hotel, are also apparently still live in the system.

Transfer of the .LY (Libya) top-level domain to the General Authority of Communications and Informatics

Libya’s .ly ccTLD is notable because it’s somewhat popular as a domain hack for words that end in “ly”. It’s been delegated to Libyan state-owned General Post and Telecommunication Company for 20 years.

While the transition from GPTC to GACI, the government regulator, may just be a formality, there’s an added wrinkle that Libya, tormented by civil unrest since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, currently has two governments and GACI is reportedly aligned with just one of them.

Community Anti-Harassment Policy and Retirement of Board Working Group on Anti-Harassment

ICANN has been sitting on this one for longer than expected. The Org proposed revisions to its Community Anti-Harassment Policy a year ago and quickly putting them to public comment, but there’s been scant movement on the issue since January.

The proposed changes would further regulate personal and professional interactions between ICANN community members.

Some commenters complained that the changes do not go far enough, suggesting that situations where no offence was intended and none was taken should also be disciplinary infractions.

Others said that the changes would have a chilling effect and fail to sufficiently take into account cultural differences among ICANN’s global community.

The proposals came shortly after the latest in a series of sexual harassment lawsuits against the Org was revealed. That suit was settled after ICANN failed to get it thrown out of court.

Some relevant developments over the last eight months include the appointment of a new Ombuds and CEO, allegations (denied by ICANN) that it retaliated against friends of the latest harassment plaintiff by firing them, and ICANN’s capitulation to the Trump administration by easing itself away from public commitments to diversity, inclusion and equity.

Sixteen more orgs vie for cheap gTLDs, but…

Africa and Latin America are still under-represented in applications for ICANN’s new gTLD Applicant Support Program, according to the latest stats.

The program now has a whopping 76 organizations at some stage of the application process, which is 31 more than ICANN originally budgeted for. That’s up from 60 a month ago.

The program offers successful applicants a discount of 75% to 85% off the expected $227,000 application fee, among other perks such as access to pro bono service providers.

But the geographic breakdown shows that, as of the August 19 compilation date, only one more applicant hails from Africa and there’s only one more from Latin America and the Caribbean, compared to a month earlier.

Two influential ICANN advisory committees, including the governments, told ICANN earlier this month that they are “deeply concerned” that the ASP doesn’t seem to be reaching potential applicants in these two regions.

Hardly any applications have actually been submitted to be formally evaluated yet. There are 37 open applications that have yet to even submit the names of their organizations. Another 36 have done so, but not yet completed the application form.

I wonder if the top-line count may include a certain number of tire-kickers. The barriers to starting an application are pretty low, requiring just an account on the ICANN web site and a one-time password app on your phone.

Only three applications so far have been conditionally approved — one from Europe and two from Asia-Pacific — and three others from Asia-Pac have submitted their applications for review.

Of the 37 that have opened an application, the geographic region of 19 is still not known, so it’s possible the regional mix could change a lot as applications are actually submitted.

The program is open to charities and other non-profits, with participation from commercial entities limited to small businesses based in poorer regions.

Governments say new gTLD program “credibility” at stake

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee is “deeply concerned” about the credibility of the new gTLD program’s Next Round, after a scheme to broaden the geographic spread of applicants has started to look like a failure.

The GAC and ALAC are calling for ICANN to address urgently what is seen as flaws in its Applicant Support Program, which offers deep discounts on application fees to small businesses in non-developed countries and to non-profit applicants.

GAC chair Nicolas Caballero and ALAC chair Jonathan Zuck said governments are “deeply concerned about the program’s current trajectory, particularly given the limited time remaining in the application window and the disproportionately low representation from underserved regions”.

ICANN said last week that it has approved the first three ASP applicants. One applicant is from Europe and two are from the Asia-Pacific region.

The latest monthly stats, dated July 23, show that only five applications were classified as “Submitted & in Review”, while 25 were “Initiated” and 26 were “In Draft”. By geography, 10 potential applications come from Africa, 16 from Asia-Pacific, four from Europe, 19 from North America and just two from Latin America.

Caballero and Zuck wrote (pdf):

we also identified a geographic imbalance from ICANN’s data… despite seven months of outreach, potential applications from North America (33%) vastly outnumber those from the LAC region (3%), raising questions about the inclusivity of the program.

…

we really think that the ASP is not merely a procedural requirement but a cornerstone of the Next Round’s credibility. At minimum, failure to address its structural challenges risks perpetuating the dominance of well-resourced entities, undermining ICANN’s multistakeholder principles. We kindly request the Board to treat this matter with the urgency it demands

They want ICANN to conduct a fast review of why the geographic balance is tilted towards North America at the expense of Latin America, Asia and Africa.

As I’ve previously noted, the North America region by ICANN’s definition is small. It doesn’t even include Mexico. Small businesses from the USA and Canada don’t qualify for the ASP and the only other places in the region are US island territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam.

The GAC and ALAC want to know whether the low uptake elsewhere is due to ICANN’s lack of local outreach, complexities in the application process, or costs. Why are draft applications not being submitted?

With the clock ticking down to the November 19 closure of the application window, The August 15 letter calls for ICANN to figure out what’s going wrong and let it know by August 22 — this coming Friday.

Even if it wasn’t August, and we weren’t talking about ICANN, that’s a pretty tight deadline.

AI experts replace Chapman on ICANN board

ICANN’s Nominating Committee has announced its annual picks for the Org’s board of directors, with two new fresh faces, both of whom have notable AI policy experience, joining.

Constance Bommelaer de Leusse and Raúl Echeberría, respectively French and Uruguayan internet policy experts, are the newcomers. Australian former regulator Chris Chapman is leaving after just one three-year term.

Echeberría is perhaps the more-familiar name, having been involved with ICANN since its early days. He’s a founder and former long-time CEO of LACNIC, and has held roles in ISOC, WSIS, and the IGF. He’s also former chair of ICANN’s Number Resource Organization.

De Leusse is a French academic, raised in the US, currently employed by the Sciences Po and Ecole normale supérieure (ENS-PLS) universities in Paris. She is a former ISOC VP.

Both have AI policy experience. Echeberría earlier this year sat on the steering committee of the AI Action Summit, hosted in Paris by President Macron, while de Leusse works for the AI & Society Institute at ENS-PLS.

On social media, de Leusse describes herself as a winemaker, which may or may not prove interesting.

NomCom also reappointed Sajid Rahman for a second three-year term. One of the two new appointees replaces former board chair Maarten Botterman, who is term-limited after nine years’ service. The other replaces Chapman.

In terms of geographic balance, it means a director from the Asia-Pacific region has been replaced by one from Latin America. I don’t believe this causes any significant issues in terms of limiting other groups’ election options.

NomCom, which also selected seven other people for non-board roles, said 37% of its candidates were from Africa, with 25% from Asia-Pac, 16% from Latin America, and 8% from Europe.

Only 2% were from North America, perhaps due to the fact that NomCom was unable to pick anyone from that region for a directorship due to its geographic diversity quotas.

NomCom said that 27% of its candidates were female, 73% male, which is broadly in line with previous years and historical stats for general ICANN participation.

The new appointees take their seats at the conclusion of ICANN’s AGM in October.

Golding challenges McCarthy for Nominet board seat

Nominet has revealed the names of just two candidates who are standing in its non-executive director election this year.

Rob Golding of Astutium is on the ballot again, this time challenging incumbent Kieren McCarthy, who is standing for re-election for a second three-year term.

Golding stood last year and came a very close third place when there were two seats available. McCarthy won his seat in 2022 with a more comfortable margin, but only after a second round of voting.

Voting this year opens September 26 and the winner would take his seat in October at Nominet’s AGM.