The new gTLD next, next and next round

“The goal is for the next application round to begin within one year of the close of the application submission period for the initial round.”

Believe it or not, that sentence appears in the new gTLD program’s Applicant Guidebook that ICANN published in June 2012, 12 years of seemingly interminable review and revision ago.

Ah, 2012…

Obama was reelected for his second term. The final of the Euros took place in Kyiv. Gangnam Style topped the charts. Harvey Weinstein won an Emmy. Microsoft released Windows 8. Jedward sang for Ireland in Eurovision. Everyone had an opinion on Joseph Kony and Grumpy Cat.

Naturally enough, a lot of people aren’t very happy about the massive delay between the close of the last application window and the opening of the next one, currently penciled in for the second quarter of 2026.

So the community has done something about it, placing language in the draft of the next AGB that commits ICANN to open subsequent, post-2026 rounds without all the mindless navel-gazing and fannying around.

The intent is pretty clear — make application rounds more frequent and more predictable — but there’s still plenty of wiggle-room for ICANN to exploit if it wants to delay things yet again.

Here’s what the proposed AGB language (pdf) says:

ICANN works towards future rounds of new gTLDs taking place at regular and predictable intervals without indeterminable periods of review and, absent extraordinary circumstances, application procedures will take place without pause. A new round may be initiated even if steps related to application processing and delegation from previous application rounds have not been fully completed.

The ICANN Board will determine the timing of the initiation of a subsequent application round of the New gTLD Program as soon as feasible, but preferably not later than the second Board meeting after all the following conditions have been met:

1. The list of applied-for strings for the ongoing round has been confirmed and the window for string change requests has closed. This will provide applicants in a subsequent round with an understanding of which strings can be applied for.

2. ICANN org has not encountered significant barriers to its ability to receive and process a new batch of applications.

Absent extraordinary circumstances, future reviews and/or policy development processes, including the next Competition, Consumer Choice & Consumer Trust (CCT) Review, should take place independent of subsequent application rounds. In other words, future reviews and/or policy development processes must not stop or delay subsequent new gTLD rounds.

If the outputs of any reviews and/or policy development processes has, or could reasonably have, a material impact on the manner in which application procedures are conducted, such changes will apply to the opening of the application round subsequent to the adoption of the relevant recommendations by the ICANN Board. Once adopted by the Board, the implementation of that policy or review recommendation(s) will then become a dependency for the timing of that subsequent round of applications.

The language is among several draft sections of the 2026 AGB that ICANN this week opened for public comment.

An intriguing question now arises: will this commitment on subsequent round timing have any impact on the number of applications submitted in 2026?

People in the know tell us that there’s a decade-long backlog of wannabe applicants, particularly in the dot-brand world, but will any of them decide to slow down their ambitions if they know they only have an extra year or two to wait for another round?

Or will they trust ICANN’s record of delay over the somewhat flexible promises of the AGB?

It’s not just an academic question. How much applicants will ultimately pay ICANN in application fees, after rebates, will depend on how may applications are filed.

Russia calls for ICANN to split from US

The Russian government has called on ICANN to further distance itself from US legal jurisdiction, complaining that the current war-related sanctions could prevent its companies from applying for new gTLDs.

In recent comments, Russia said that “no single state or group of states should have the right to interfere in the operation of critical Internet infrastructure and/or the activities of ICANN, including the mechanisms for legal regulation of ICANN’s operations”.

It added that it is “necessary… to prepare by the ICANN community and stakeholders proposals for measures or mechanisms that can make ICANN less dependent on one state”.

The call came in comments filed in ICANN’s public comment period on the terms and conditions of the new gTLD program’s Applicant Support Program and Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program.

The Ts&Cs contain a clause requiring applicants to abide by all US economic sanctions, such as those overseen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which has sanctioned Russian entities since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s comment was filed late and has not been published or analysed by ICANN in the usual way. Instead, it was appended to the summary report (pdf) prepared by ICANN staff.

It’s not the only war-related beef Russia has with ICANN right now. The government has also complained (pdf) that about 400 domains registered by Russian entities, including airports and airlines, in the .aero gTLD have been suspended.

The .aero registry, aerospace industry IT service provider SITA, is headquartered in Switzerland but the contracting entity is a US-based subsidiary.

According to OFAC, domain registration services are exempt from the US sanctions. That has not stopped several domain registries and registrars ceasing business with Russians on moral grounds.

ICANN told Russia to file a complaint about SITA with its Compliance department. SITA has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Calls for ICANN to distance itself from the US have been coming for over two decades, usually from America’s opponents, and did not stop when the Org severed its formal ties with the 2016 IANA transition.

ICANN to be director light for months

ICANN’s board of directors will be down one person for six months or more after last month’s unexpected resignation of Katrina Sataki.

The ccNSO, which selected Sataki and is charged with picking her successor, does not expect to be able to name a new director until well into next year, and the vacant seat will stay vacant until then.

The ccNSO Council said it will open nominations for three weeks beginning September 10, but does not expect to hold the election until February 2025, “following the completion of due diligence on the nominee(s) by a professional firm”.

If the election is hotly contested, a second ballot could take place in March.

After the result is confirmed, it will need to be approved by ICANN’s sovereign Empowered Community before the new director can take their seat. Sataki’s seat could be empty for six or seven months.

The Council said that nominations from the Latin America and Caribbean region will not be accepted because the ccNSO’s other appointed director, Patricio Poblete, a Chilean, is from that region.

Sataki resigned with immediate effect August 23 citing personal reasons. Technically, her successor is to carry out her remaining term, which ends in November, but practically that is of course not possible.

FBI seizes Russian fake news domains

The FBI has seized 32 domain names it says were being used by Russian-government-backed interests to peddle fake news to influence the war in Ukraine and the upcoming US presidential elections.

The agency named three sanctioned Russian companies as the owners of the domains, which it said “covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election”.

The FBI called the Russian campaign, which used cybersquatted domains such as fox-news.in and washingtonpost.pm as well as original creations such as waronfakes.com and vip-news.org, “Doppelganger”.

Eight domain registrars and registries have been told by a US court to redirect the domains in question to the FBI’s name servers, where they currently serve either a seizure notice, a placeholder, or counter-propaganda presented as news.

Identity Digital was told to grab the most domains — 11 in total, across .info, .media, .ltd, .agency and .io. Verisign was told to redirect six .com and .net names. Namecheap, as registrar, had to take action on six, in .org, .press and .us.

GoDaddy was told to seize three, in .co (as registrar) and .work (as registry). Domains at NameSilo and Tucows were also affected.

In one case, the FBI went after the Palau-based registry for forward.pw, and in another it went after Finland-based Sarek, the registrar for washingtonpost.pm.

Sataki quits ICANN board

Katrina Sataki has abruptly resigned from the ICANN board of directors.

In a letter last week to the ICANN brass and to the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, which elected her to the post three years ago, Sataki wrote:

I am writing to hand in my resignation as a member of the Board of Directors at ICANN, effective immediately for personal reasons. After careful consideration I regretfully see no other option and need to step down to allow another nominee from the ccNSO to fully commit to this work.

She apologized to the ccNSO for the suddenness of her departure.

Sataki, the CEO of Latvia’s .lv ccTLD registry, had served almost one full three-year term on the board, but had been reelected by the ccNSO for a second term due to begin this November.

The ccNSO is expected to open a call for nominations for her replacement this week.

The replacement would serve out Sataki’s remaining term, which has just over two months left on the clock, though it seems likely they would be appointed simultaneously also to serve a full term of their own.

For those keeping score on this kind of thing, the ICANN board now comprises five women and fourteen men (or 10 men if you only count the voting members), with CEO/director Sally Costerton also due to be replaced by a man in December.

Unstoppable reveals gTLD bid doomed to fail

It’s finally happened. Somebody has announced an application for a new gTLD that will almost certainly fall foul of ICANN’s rules and be rejected.

The would-be applicant is Farmsent, a United Arab Emirates startup that is building a blockchain-based marketplace for farmers and buyers of farm produce, and its domains partner is Unstoppable Domains.

Unstoppable said last week that the two companies are launching .farms domains on Unstoppable’s alternative naming system, and that an ICANN application for a proper gTLD is in the works.

The company said it “will be collaborating with Farmsent to plan and strategize for the next ICANN gTLD application, further solidifying .farms in the wider domain ecosystem”.

The problem is that .farms will likely be banned under the rules set out in ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook for the next round, unless the current draft recommendations are completely rewritten or rejected.

ICANN is to be told to reject applications for the plural and singular variants of existing gTLDs in the next round, and .farms is of course the plural of .farm, which is one of the few hundred names in Identity Digital’s stable.

The draft recommendations would merely require for ICANN to be informed that an applied-for string is a single or plural variant of an existing gTLD in the same language and check in a dictionary to confirm that is indeed the case.

In the case of .farm and .farms, I doubt the dictionary verification would realistically even be needed — though I’d bet checking that box would be at least one billable hour for somebody — as it’s a pretty clear-cut case of a bannable clash.

The ICANN staff/community working group drafting the recommendations has spent a huge amount of time arguing about the language of the plurals rule. It’s a surprisingly tricky problem, especially when ICANN is terrified of being seen as a content regulator.

“Frat boy culture” ICANN faces more sexual harassment claims

One of ICANN’s longest-serving employees has sued the Org and her old boss, claiming she suffered from years of sexual harassment and discrimination and was then laid off after she complained about her treatment.

The harassment claims relate to two male former ICANN employees and cover alleged behavior from off-color sexual jokes to groping, what the complaint calls “severe and outrageous sexual harassment and sexual assaults”.

But the suit also describes a broader “frat boy culture” at the Org that allegedly under-pays women and overlooks them for promotion while turning a blind eye to complaints about inappropriate behavior by male colleagues.

The suit seeks $77 million in damages and lists 14 causes of action under harassment and employment law, as well as a defamation claim against an outside lawyer ICANN hired to investigate the original complaints.

“Many of the allegations in the complaint are untrue and we will defend our organization and our policies vigorously,” ICANN said in a statement issued after the lawsuit was first reported by local Los Angeles press.

The complainant is Tanzanica King, former meeting strategy and design director, who worked at ICANN for 22 years — the second longest-serving employee — before being laid off a few months ago. She’s given her consent to be named in this article.

Her complaint says:

In exchange for her dedication, [King] has been subjected to the frat boy culture, having been repeatedly passed over for promotions, paid lower salaries than male colleagues, sexually harassed, and then wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle. For all its poetic waxing of gender equality, ICANN is a rotted apple veiled by a thin shiny veneer.

On the harassment claims, King’s suit covers alleged incidents from 2006 to 2023, mainly involving her direct supervisor on the meetings team, who left ICANN earlier this year. The complaint says he was fired due to the harassment.

The complaint says King’s boss “sexually harassed and sexually assaulted Plaintiff on the basis of her gender, including, without limitation, making unwanted sexual advances and engaging in unwanted verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature”.

The complaint says that ICANN’s top lawyers and HR department “turned a blind eye” to complaints from herself and other colleagues about this alleged behavior over the years.

It adds that interim CEO Sally Costerton this year “disregarded Ms. King’s privacy” and shared details of her complaints with the “entire executive team” after the alleged harasser was fired.

King herself took unpaid medical leave last December — she says due to the toll her experience at ICANN took on her — and lost her job during ICANN’s round of layoffs this May.

A female external lawyer hired by a female ICANN lawyer in May last year to investigate King’s complaints is accused of instead trying to victim-blame and cover up the allegations in order to “hide the facts from the Board of Directors”.

A large portion of the complaint seeks to paint the Org as a “good old boys” club, in which male employees with less time served were either promoted earlier or paid more than King.

The complaint also talks about alleged sexism in the broader ICANN community, referring to a 2018 survey of community members that found that some male ICANN meeting attendees have behaved inappropriately around female peers.

ICANN has spent years trying to portray itself as a female-friendly organization in the traditionally male-heavy tech sector, not too many years ago introducing an anti-harassment policy to sit alongside its long-standing Expected Standards of Behavior.

It has recently trumpeted the fact that its CEO and chair are both currently female, and chair Tripti Sinha has talked about her desire for “gender parity” on the board of directors, something that has yet to be achieved.

Here’s ICANN’s statement in response to the lawsuit in full:

ICANN has been sued by a longtime former colleague. The ICANN Board conducted a thorough independent investigation into the matters the plaintiff previously reported to ICANN. Many of the allegations in the complaint are untrue and we will defend our organization and our policies vigorously. Our arguments will be made in the proper venue.

ICANN strives to create a positive, safe, and inclusive work and community environment, and is committed to the highest possible standards of ethical, moral, and legal business conduct. ICANN enforces this through a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

This is at least the third time ICANN has been subject to legal proceedings related to alleged sexual harassment of female employees by more-senior male employees in the last five years.

Here’s King’s complaint (pdf) in full.

ICANN U-turns on appeals loophole after community revolt

ICANN has backtracked and substantially pared down a proposal that could have weakened its accountability mechanisms after most of the community said they didn’t like it.

The Org has published for public comment a proposed amendment to its bylaws that will exclude its new Grant Program from the Request for Reconsideration and Independent Review Process mechanisms.

The amendment would specifically exclude claims “relating to decisions to approve or not approve an application to the ICANN Grant Program” from both procedures.

An earlier proposal would have created a new procedure to enable ICANN to also exclude other programs from accountability in future, if certain conditions were met.

But the community largely reacted with revulsion to that proposal, saying they could not support something so overly broad, forcing ICANN to narrow it down to the Grant Program only. ICANN needs the support of its sovereign Empowered Community if it wants to amend its fundamental bylaws.

The $220 million Grant Program is seeking to distribute ICANN’s new gTLD auction funds to worthy causes, but there was a fear the cash could be siphoned off by lawyers if unsuccessful grant applicants were allowed to trigger the accountability mechanisms.

The revised language is likely to be much more palatable to the community, based on previous comments.

The public comment period is open until September 16.

Two out, two in as NomCom picks new ICANN directors

Two ICANN directors will lose their seats on the board and be replaced by newcomers at the Org’s annual general meeting later this year.

Vice chair Danko Jevtović and Edmon Chung, who have served two and one of the maximum three three-year terms respectively, will depart, according to the announcement of this year’s Nominating Committee picks.

They will be replaced by Amitabh Singhal, from the Asia-Pacific region, who I believe is an Indian internet policy expert who founded .in registry NIXI and also sits on the board of .org manager Public Interest Registry.

Also named, Miriam Sapiro, who I can only assume is Ambassador Miriam Sapiro, a US Trade Representative under the Obama administration who also held a senior policy role at Verisign for a couple of years two decades ago before leaving on acrimonious terms.

Chair Tripti Sinha of North America has also been reappointed for a final term.

The noobs, who both seem incredibly well-qualified for their new roles, will take their seats for the first time at the end of ICANN 81 in Istanbul in October.

It’s official, .internal is blocked forever

ICANN has formally confirmed that the gTLD .internal will never be delegated.

Its board of directors resolved earlier this week that it “reserves .INTERNAL from delegation in the DNS root zone permanently to provide for its use in private-use applications.”

It went on to recommend “that efforts be undertaken to raise awareness of its reservation for this purpose through the organization’s technical outreach.”

The idea is to give organizations a gTLD that they can use behind their firewalls that they can be sure will never become a public-DNS gTLD in future, which would carry the risk of name collisions and data leakage.

The string “internal” was picked in January over .private and put out for public comment to murmurs of approval.

The move means nobody will be able to apply for .internal in future new gTLD application rounds.