Seven ICANN directors have new gTLD conflicts

Seven members of ICANN’s board of directors have self-identified conflicts of interest when it comes to the new generic top-level domains program, according to a report from its last meeting.
Chair Steve Crocker, CEO of the consulting firm Shinkuro, appears to be newly conflicted.
He was among the directors to excuse themselves before the board discussed a resolution on new gTLDs last week, but he did vote on a new gTLD resolution at its December meeting.
Crocker has previously revealed that new gTLD applicant and registry services provider Afilias has an investment in Shinkuro.
Vice-chair Bruce Tonkin is chief strategy officer at Melbourne IT, which is a registrar as well as a new gTLD consultancy, and he also excused himself.
Ram Mohan and Suzanne Woolf, both non-voting directors, excused themselves because they work for registry service providers (Afilias and Internet Systems Consortium respectively).
Non-voting liaison Thomas Narten also declared a conflict, which is a heavy hint that his employer, IBM, is poised to apply for a dot-brand gTLD.
The other conflicted directors were Sébastien Bachollet, CEO of BBS International Consulting, and Bertrand de La Chapelle of the International Diplomatic Academy.
Two directors appear to be newly unconflicted.
Kuo-Wei Wu and Thomas Roessler declared new gTLD program conflicts at the board’s December meeting but did not excuse themselves last week.
Erika Mann of Facebook missed the meeting (she also missed the December meeting) so it’s not clear whether there’s a “.facebook” conflict of interest yet.
The board of directors has 16 voting members. Nine need to be present for its meetings to be quorate.
ICANN introduced new conflict rules after former chair Peter Dengate Thrush took a job with new gTLD applicant/consultant Minds + Machines shortly after voting to approve the program last June.

ICANN won’t say who rejected Bulgarian IDN

ICANN has declined to name the people responsible for rejecting .бг, the proposed Cyrllic country-code domain for Bulgaria.
Security consultant George Todoroff filed a Documentary Information Disclosure Policy request with ICANN a month ago, asking for the names of the six people on the DNS Stability Panel.
That’s the panel, managed by Interisle Consulting Group, that decided .бг looks too much like Brazil’s .br to be safely introduced to the internet.
But Todoroff found out today that his DIDP request was declined. ICANN said that it does not have records of the panelists’ names and that even if it did, it would not release them.
The information could contain trade secrets or commercially sensitive information and could compromise decision-making, ICANN said. These are all reasons to reject DIDP requests.
It’s pretty clear the Bulgarians are not going to quit pressing for .бг any time soon, despite being advised to give up by ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom recently.
The application for .бг was made under ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast Track program, which has approved a couple dozen non-Latin ccTLDs, and rejected one other.
Todoroff wrote an article for CircleID in November 2010 explaining why he thinks .бг is not dangerous.

Twitter typosquatters fined £100,000

Two typosquatters have been fined £100,000 ($156,000) by the UK premium rate phone services regulator.
PhonepayPlus said today that the owners of the typos wikapedia.com and twtter.com, both Dutch companies, were issued the fines for violating its Code of Practice.
R&D Media Europe and Unavalley use the now depressingly commonplace practice of tricking visitors with the promise of iPad prizes into signing up for bogus SMS services at ridiculous fees.
They’ve both been ordered to refund disgruntled customers’ fees.
PhonepayPlus has no powers to take away domain names, of course, so both typos are still active, albeit not no longer mimicking the Wikipedia or Twitter look-and-feel.
The regulator did however issue clear guidance that typosquatting is against its rules, stating:

This guidance reminds PRS [premium rate service] providers that they are responsible for all their digital promotions and, if they use marketing firms that mislead consumers through typosquatting, they will be in breach of the Code of Practice.

A Facebook attorney said last year that typos of high-traffic sites, such as facebok.com, could expect to get 250 million visits a year.

ICANN has 100 new gTLD applicants

One hundred companies have registered to apply for generic top-level domains, according to ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz.
ICANN has decided not to provide a running commentary about how many applications have been received, but it did say that 25 companies registered in the first week the program was open.
“That number is now up to 100,” Pritz said today at the The Top Level conference in London.
He was referring to companies paying their $5,000 to sign up for ICANN’s TLD Application System, which is likely to be much smaller than the actual number of gTLD applications. Each TAS account can store up to 50 applications, Pritz said.
There are only 45 days left on the clock to register for a TAS account. After March 29, you’re in for a wait of at least three years (my estimate) before the opportunity comes around again.
Pritz’s revelation was one of the more interesting things to emerge during today’s half-day gathering at the offices of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which attracted about 40 attendees.
The other big surprise was that Scandinavian Airlines System Group, the dot-brand applicant that was due to give a presentation on its plans for .sas, was a no-show.
I gather that somebody more senior at SAS found out about the conference and decided that revealing all was not such a great business strategy after all.
Most dot-brand applicants are playing their hands close to their chest, even if they’re not heading into a contested gTLD scenario (which SAS may well be if the software firm SAS Institute also applies for .sas).
I also found it notable that there’s still substantial confusion about the program among some potential dot-brand applicants, several of which did show up as general attendees.
I talked to one poor soul who had read the latest revision of the 349-page Applicant Guidebook back-to-back after it was published January 11, trying to figure out what had changed.
He was apparently unaware that ICANN had simultaneously published a summary of the changes, which were very minimal anyway, in a separate document.
These are the types of applicant – people unfamiliar not only with ICANN’s processes but also even with its web site – that are being asked to hack the Guidebook to make the rules compatible with a dot-brand business model, remember.
One potential applicant used a Q&A session during the conference to bemoan the fact that ICANN seems intent to continue to move the goal-posts, even as it solicits applications (and fees).
Pritz and Olof Nordling, manager of ICANN’s Brussels office, reiterated briefly during their presentation today that the current public comment period on “defensive” applications could lead to changes to the program’s trademark protection mechanisms.
But this comment period ends March 20, just nine days before the TAS registration deadline. That’s simply not enough time for ICANN to do anything concrete to deter defensive applications.
If any big changes are coming down the pipe, ICANN is going to need to extend the application window. Material changes made after the applications are already in are going to cause a world of hurt.

First .xxx cybersquatting complaint filed by porn site

The new .xxx top-level domain has seen its first cybersquatting complaint filed by a porn site.
The registrant of the domain femjoy.xxx was hit by a UDRP complaint in with the World Intellectual Property Organization late last week.
FemJoy.com is a well-known “artistic nude” porn site, according to the adult industry trade press.
While there have already been 12 UDRP cases filed against .xxx registrants, the previous cases have all been filed by the owners, such as banks and retailers, of non-porn trademarks.
The femjoy.xxx case appears to be the first instance of a cybersquatting complaint filed by a porn site.
Complainant Georg Streit has owned a US trademark on “FemJoy” – covering “magazines and periodicals featuring photographs and images of landscapes and human bodies” – since 2007.
The registrant of femjoy.xxx is an Australian called Tu Nguyen, according to Whois records. The domain does not currently resolve. In fact, it doesn’t even have name servers.

ICANN promises a second new gTLD round

Seeking to reduce the perceived need for defensive new gTLD applications, ICANN has repeated its promise to accept a second round of applications after the first is over.
“ICANN is committed to opening a second application window for the New gTLD Program as expeditiously as possible,” its board of directors resolved earlier this week.
No date has been revealed, but the resolution calls on ICANN staff to draft a “work plan” describing the things that need to happen before the second round begins.
Those include two or three reviews of the impact of the first round that ICANN has promised to its Governmental Advisory Committee and the US Department of Commerce.
It also depends to great extent on how many applications are submitted in the first round – which ICANN won’t know until April 12 – and how long they take to process.
The lack of a second round date is one of the big uncertainties hanging over the program, blamed in part for an expected influx of “defensive” dot-brand gTLD applications from companies with no interest in running a domain name registry.
ICANN’s commitment to a second round has never been in question – running the new gTLD program in rounds has been part of the policy from the outset, as the Applicant Guidebook explains. The only question is when it happens.
This week’s board resolution does not change that position, nor has it yet added clarity to the timing question.
But with ICANN increasingly worried about defensive dot-brands – which I think are one of the biggest PR risks to the program – some kind of statement was needed.
ICANN chair Steve Crocker said in a press release:

The important thing here is that the Board has erased any doubt that there will be a second application window for new generic Top-Level Domains. It’s not yet possible to set a definitive date for the next application period, but that will be determined after the current window closes.

A dozen .xxx sites hit by rapid takedown

The National Arbitration Forum has ordered the secret takedown of 12 .xxx domains since the adults-only gTLD launched in December.
NAF yesterday published statistics about the .xxx Rapid Evaluation Service, which ICM Registry created and NAF exclusively administers.
Fifteen RES complaints have been filed since December 6, 12 of which have been resolved so far. All of the cases were won by the complainant — a trademark holder in 11 of the cases.
The RES was designed to handle clear-cut cases of cybersquatting and impersonation. It costs $1,300 to file a complaint and offers a super-fast alternative to the UDRP.
The domains are suspended forever if the complainant is successful.
According to NAF, it’s currently taking on average two business days between the complaint being filed and the domain being suspended.
Because registrants have 10 days to respond – and half of them did – the final decision took an average of 12 business days.
Unlike UDRP, RES decisions are not published, so there’s no way of knowing whether they were fair.

First ICANN CEO candidate revealed

Former ICANN director Njeri Rionge has emerged as a possible candidate for the soon-to-be-vacated CEO’s job.
Rionge is a Kenyan national, described last year by Forbes.com as “one of Kenya’s most successful and revered serial entrepreneurs”.
She founded Wananchi Online, a successful ISP in East Africa, and the business consultancy Ignite Consulting.
Her candidature was revealed in an open letter posted today by Sophia Bekele, CEO of DotConnectAfrica, a likely applicant for the .africa generic top-level domain.
DCA and Rionge have severed ties due to her new CEO aspirations, according to Bekele:

At the end of 2011, Ms. Njeri Rionge had expressed to DCA Executive Director, a direct interest in competing for the soon to be vacant ICANN CEO position, and for this reason, was kindly requested by DCA to submit her resignation from the DCA Strategic Advisory Board for ethical/conflict of interest reasons.
This was done after due internal consultations with concerned parties. Accordingly, Njeri Rionge is no longer involved in DCA and DCA Registry Ltd either as a Board Member or shareholder and will not represent neither would she be affiliated with DCA in any capacity, now or in the near future.

Rionge served on the ICANN board of directors as a Nominating Committee appointee for two terms between 2003 and 2008.
While there’s a ban on current directors applying for the CEO position, I don’t believe there’s any such prohibition on former directors.
ICANN is currently interviewing would-be replacements for Rod Beckstrom, who intends to leave the organization in July after a three-year term.
No other candidates have been revealed to date.
The only other name being circulated in the rumor mill is Lesley Cowley, CEO of .uk registry Nominet and current chair of ICANN’s ccNSO, but I’ve no idea if she’s even interested.

ICANN worried about defensive gTLDs

Why is ICANN so misunderstood?
That’s the question at the heart of a public comment period into concerns about “defensive” new generic top-level domain applications that the organization opened up last night.
ICANN wants to know why so many companies seem to think they’ll need to apply for a dot-brand gTLD even though they don’t want one.

there are reports that parties believe that they will need to submit defensive gTLD applications to protect their trademarks, regardless of whether they are interested in using or developing a gTLD.
ICANN seeks public comment on the sources of this perception and how it can be addressed.

The comment period serves three purposes — it’s designed to raise awareness about rights protection mechanisms as well as soliciting input about defensive applications.
It will also let ICANN show the US Congress, which is worried about this kind of thing, that it’s doing something to address the problem.
So why are so many people worried about the perceived need to defensively apply for dot-brands?
The main answer, I think, is pretty straightforward:
The Applicant Guidebook is 349 pages long.
Hardly anybody has read the damn thing, not even some of the “experts” that persist on appearing in the media to complain about numeric gTLDs or to confidently predict GE and LG will apply for dot-brands.
So what do people do? They get somebody else who has read it to explain what it means.
These somebody elses are either consultants and registry providers, which are financially incentivized to get companies to apply, or they’re organizations that want the whole program stopped, which are not above deliberately misrepresenting the rules in order to whip up outrage.
I’m not casting every consultant in the same light here, of course. Many will turn away business if it’s not a good fit, but let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been scaremongering.
And let’s remember that for most regular companies registering a domain name is not an opportunity, it’s a headache. It’s at best a minor irritation and at worst a costly shakedown.
That thinking has clearly translated into the new gTLD space.
Poorly informed people think they’re being asked to register a very expensive domain name, and in their experience registering a domain name is a defensive measure 99% of the time.
Because ICANN has spent the last six months painstakingly avoiding saying anything positive about new gTLDs, it’s been left to the consultants and registries to try to explain the opportunities.
They’re understandably looked on with suspicion, and not only because of the aforementioned distrust of the industry – this new gTLD thing is unproven and there’s a perception that previous gTLDs have “failed” because you don’t see a .biz every time you turn on the TV.
Anyway, speaking of shakedowns, DomainIncite PRO subscribers have access to an in-depth analysis of scenarios in which “defensive” applications may and may not be appropriate. Read it here.

ICANN board seat up for reelection

ICANN’s Address Supporting Organization has kicked off an election for one of its two official representatives on the ICANN board of directors.
Director Ray Plzak sees his three-year term come to an end in June. He’s standing for reelection, but has competition from three other candidates.
The ASO represents the oft-overlooked IP address side of the ICANN house. Its members belong to the five Regional Internet Registries that are responsible for doling out IP space.
In this election, all four candidates are from ARIN, the North American RIR community: Plzak, Eric Brunner-Williams, Martin Levy and William Manning.
The winner will be selected by the ASO’s ruling Address Council in May. Until April 19, the ASO wants public comments on the candidates.