Conflicted? STFU under new ICANN rules

ICANN community members who refuse to disclose their conflicts of interest should keep their mouths shut during public meetings, according to a proposed new code of conduct now open for comment.

An updated Community Participant Code of Conduct Concerning SOIs was published this week, following an initial public comment period late last year, which saw some community members ask for more clarity on what the rules mean in practice.

A key change states that people who won’t disclose their potential conflicts shouldn’t even get up to the mic to express an opinion in public, even when they’re not directly participating in policy-making.

“When disclosure cannot be made, the participant must not participate in ICANN processes or make interventions at ICANN sessions on that issue,” the new draft states (changes in bold).

The change might lead to some community members staying in their seats or keeping their microphones muted during discussions at public ICANN meetings.

The policy is intended to improve the perceived legitimacy of ICANN’s processes and policies by forcing community volunteers to publish a statement of interest (SOI) naming who’s paying their wages.

The proposal has largely been championed by registries, registrars and governments, and opposed by lawyers in private practice, some of whom think they shouldn’t, or ethically can’t, name their clients.

The argument goes that if somebody is being paid by a company that wants to torpedo or delay the new gTLD program, or is working on a patent covering RDAP, you’d want to know if they were working on policies covering new gTLDs or RDAP.

The counter-argument goes that if an attorney is working on new gTLD policy on behalf of Coca-Cola, putting that information in an SOI would tip off Pepsi that a .coke gTLD application is in the works.

The updated policy draft clarifies what SOIs must disclose — it doesn’t just cover employers or clients — and provides lengthy guidance on specific scenarios where disclosures must be made.

The types of interests that should be disclosed are broad, and cover a variety of influences and relationships, both monetary and nonmonetary. These could include: familial relationships; employment relationships; agreements to represent a specific person, entity or group of entities; vendor or contracting relationships; stock/equity ownership (other than de minimis ownership); and all similar types of influences and relationships that impact the discloser’s participation within ICANN. Interests can be general or they can be issue-specific.

Working group chairs would get the right (though not, it seems, the obligation) to temporarily kick anyone found to be in violation of the rules. Complaints could also be escalated to the Ombuds, but she’s not getting any extra enforcement powers.

Lawyers have had their objections to the policy roundly rejected. The guidelines now state:

When an attorney is engaged to participate in ICANN on behalf of a client, while that attorney holds specific duties to their client, those duties do not override the need for others participating within ICANN to understand what other interests are advocating and participating within ICANN processes… when that attorney starts participating within processes, such as participating in mailing lists, making public comments, joining working groups, etc., on behalf of that client, the client’s and attorney’s obligations to the broader ICANN community emerge

The updated policy clarifies that governments enjoy some immunity — they don’t have to disclose who lobbied them on a particular issue they’re engaged with — with ICANN assuming their nations’ own transparency laws will cover that type of thing.

For the domain industry, volunteers will have to disclose all the roles their employer has. Nominet, for example, would have to disclose that it’s a ccTLD registry, a contracted gTLD registry, and a back-end registry services provider.

The policy now also provides guidance for trade groups, academics and IP owners.

The draft is now open for public comment until June 30. It’s possibly the last chance you’ll get to file a comment without disclosing your interests.

ICANN cuts off money to UASG

ICANN is the stop funding and supporting the Universal Acceptance Working Group, an independent outside group tasked with making sure domain names work everywhere on the internet regardless of TLD or language.

With no money or staff support, Org has likely signed the death warrant for the UASG, but ICANN insists it’s not turning its back on UA as a general principle.

“With the focus changing to implementation work, ICANN will no longer provide funding or staff support to the UASG after June 2025,” ICANN CEO Kurt Lindqvist wrote in a blog post today.

I don’t believe ICANN has ever revealed publicly how much money it was giving the group, but it was clearly significant enough to warrant review at a time when ICANN is tightening its belt in the face of budget pressures.

Budgets published in previous years have put UASG’s spending at anywhere from $500,000 to $1.4 million a year.

The move probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. A close reading of a board resolution from ICANN 82 in March strongly suggests ICANN was gently breaking the news that it planned to wind down the group.

Lindqvist’s post and the resolution both point out that UASG’s founding charter, written in 2015, called for it to be a 10-year awareness-raising project, and that 10 years is now up.

Lindqvist said ICANN will create a UA Expert Working Group of “invited members and nominated representatives” from across the community to “provide guidance for ICANN’s work on UA adoption”.

While the UASG has been mainly focused on internationalized domain names and awareness-raising in parts of the world that might not track ICANN very closely, much of the hands-on work has been done by ICANN itself.

Last year, Twitter and Meta-owned platforms like Whatsapp updated their linkification code base to more effectively support UA, but that seems to have happened largely due to ICANN engineers battering on their doors.

ICANN has also taken to directly engaging with smaller open source projects, many of which develop libraries used in much larger platforms, to make sure they support the freshest TLDs, regardless of script.

Lindqvist said ICANN will to continue to support UA Day, a series of educational gatherings held around the world each year.

Verisign gave Trump $100,000

Remember January 20, 2025, about a thousand years ago, when Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States?

Remember how the dais at the Capitol rotunda was stacked with tech bros including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, each of whom had authorized million-dollar donations to the Trump inauguration fund?

You will not have seen Verisign CEO Jim Bidzos among the crowd of VIP supporters, but it turns out that’s probably only because his company didn’t cough up enough cash.

The .com registry operator donated $100,000 to the Trump Vance Inauguration Committee, records published Sunday by the Federal Election Commission show.

I’ve searched the disclosure (pdf) for other deep-pocketed domain industry companies and CEOs but couldn’t find any.

The Verisign donation is only a tenth of the size of donations made by Meta, Google and Cook, and is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall size of the fund, which reports put at an eye-watering $245.3 million.

The aforementioned tech bros were accused at the time of making the donations in order to curry favor with the new administration. Some, such as Meta, have since changed their policies to pander to Trump’s sensibilities.

Verisign’s most critical engagement with the US government comes via its Cooperative Agreement with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce.

The Cooperative Agreement is the document that cements Verisign’s monopoly over .com and gives it its price-raising powers, currently set at 7% in four out of the six years of the contract’s duration.

The deal was renewed last year and is not due to be renewed under the current Trump administration (unless…). Prices had been frozen for six years under Obama, but Trump reinstated the 7% powers in 2018 during his first term.

But Verisign has also been engaged in talks with the NTIA about downstream pricing — at registrars and domain investors — that have a lot of people worried.

Renewing the agreement last November, the NTIA said that “prices at both the wholesale level and downstream, including prices charged by resellers and substantial markups by warehousers, need to be addressed”.

These talks appear to have stalled due to lack of leadership at NTIA, which is headed by a political appointee. Even 91 days after Trump was inaugurated, the agency does not yet have a confirmed chief.

Adam Cassady, formerly with the Federal Communications Commission, is currently acting assistant secretary, but Trump’s pick as his permanent replacement is Arielle Roth, policy director on the Senate’s commerce committee.

Roth came in for a grilling over suggestions she would use her powers over broadband policy to benefit Elon Musk’s Starlink, but seems to be a shoo-in for confirmation

In Verisign’s most recent earnings call, Bidzos noted that “unregulated retail price increases exceed our wholesale price increases”, adding “we look forward to engaging with our new regulators”.

So what does a hundred grand buy you nowadays? I guess we’ll find out soon.

The Soviet Union might be safe after all

The ccTLD from the defunct Soviet Union may be safe from deletion, judging by the ccNSO’s latest pronouncement on the issue.

It seems like, following a bit of a kerfuffle at ICANN 82 in Seattle last month, IANA has been sniffing around behind the scenes trying to figure out whether its own policy on ccTLD retirements applies to .su.

Responding to an unpublished email from IANA chief Kim Davies, the ccNSO seems to have clarified that .su, which has over 100,000 registrations despite its associated territory ceasing to exist 30-odd years ago, is not covered by the policy.

IANA can put a ccTLD into the root if the International Organization for Standardization adds it to its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list of two-letter country codes.

SU is not on the main list of codes under 3166 but, along with UK, AC (Ascension Islands) and EU, it is on an “exceptionally reserved” sub-list.

ICANN’s policy on deleting ccTLDs was until quite recently not fully codified, but ICANN in 2022 approved a formal Retirement Policy (PDF, from page 13).

That policy allows ICANN to to set the wheels in motion for a deletion whenever a “triggering event” occurs, and:

For 2 letter ccTLDs which corresponded to an ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 Code Element – The Trigger is the deletion of that corresponding Alpha-2 Code Element from the ISO 3166-1 Standard by the ISO 3166-1 Maintenance Agency (“ISO 3166/MA”)

IANA seems to have wanted clarification on whether “Alpha-2 Code Element” also means “exceptionally reserved” codes. If it does, then .su probably enjoys the same protected status as .uk.

The policy specifically says that .uk, .ac and .eu are eligible as ccTLDs, but ignores .su entirely for reasons unknown.

The ccNSO told Davies in its April 10 letter (pdf):

it is our view that the Policy is relevant only in circumstances where, as a result of action taken by the ISO, a delegated 2-letter code is no longer on the list of country names or an exceptionally reserved code element.

My read of this is that the ccNSO is saying that, unless ISO removes SU from its “exceptionally reserved” list, there’s no “triggering event” that would compel IANA to delete .su from the DNS root zone.

SU has been removed from the 3166 list once before, back in the 1990s, but it might be a stretch to retroactively accept that as a triggering event, given that it’s been “exceptionally reserved”, apparently at the .su registry’s request, since 2008.

So… is .su safe? It’s certainly looking safer now than it did a few weeks ago, in my view.

This could be seen as good news for ICANN, which might now be able to avoid a damaging confrontation with Russia while also dodging accusations that it’s ignoring its own policies in an embarrassing capitulation to Moscow.

Facebook thinks ICANN is a bit rubbish

Facebook owner Meta came away from the recent ICANN 82 public meeting unimpressed and wondering why the community doesn’t actually seem to be doing much, according to the company’s representative.

Writing to ICANN’s CEO and chair last week, head of IP and DNS Mia Brickhouse praised ICANN’s organizational skills but said she was “concerned regarding the lack of tangible outcomes relative to the significant community investment of nearly one week in Seattle.”

“While there were pockets of progress, it was challenging to identify concrete policy-oriented outcomes that I would use to mark participation in the Seattle meeting as a productive success,” she said.

“Many participants I spoke with felt the experience was more focused on policy status updates and remaining entrenched in legacy positions, rather than making measurable progress,” she said.

Welcome to ICANN, Mia!

She goes on to criticize the amount of navel-gazing at the meeting and said the current review into ICANN’s meetings strategy should not only focus on cutting ICANN’s costs but also on making meetings produce results.

Meta’s pet issues are Whois and DNS abuse. Its social media sites get a tonne of phishing attacks using maliciously registered domains and the company is not above taking registrars to court if they fail to play along with its enforcement efforts.

The company is fairly influential in policy-making circles, and arguably may become increasingly so over the next few years, depending on how deeply Donald Trump can reach into Mark Zuckerberg’s trousers.

But the Brickhouse letter is just the latest critique of what I and other time-haggard ICANN observers have been banging on about for years — the “Do Nothing” ICANN. I first pointed out in January 2022 that ICANN hadn’t actually done anything in about five years, something ICANN acknowledged a few months later.

To be fair, the Org has actually started producing tangible output since then. The Registration Data Request System is, whatever its flaws, a thing that the ICANN community came up with and the ICANN Org delivered.

But RDRS, ICANN’s response to the General Data Protection Regulation, took longer to create and deploy than the GDRP itself. ICANN’s multistakeholder model was slower than the notoriously lumbering EU legislative process.

The next round of the new gTLD program is another deliverable that also seems to be hitting its deadlines ahead of a Q2 2026 launch. But it has still taken longer than NASA’s Apollo Program to get off the ground.

One of the most on-point things I’ve read this year came from GoDaddy policy veep James Bladel, who wrote in his board election candidacy statement that “ICANN must stop telling the world why its role is important and start showing clear examples of multistakeholder successes.”

While Bladel did not get elected, Brickhouse’s letter points to an exchange in Seattle between one current and one former ICANN director, in which both parties agreed that “the current process is not working”.

Michael Palage, a freelance consultant who served a term on the board two decades ago, took to the Public Forum mic to complain that ICANN and its contracted parties are increasingly turning to bilateral contract amendments to address issues of concern, rather that having the whole community come up with formal consensus policies.

Becky Burr, approaching the end of her nine-year directorship, concurred that the “policy development process is not efficient and it’s not working as it should”, but disagreed that bilateral deals were not appropriate for addressing pressing issues.

You’re got two people, both who’ve served on the ICANN board and have over half a century of ICANN experience between them, agreeing that the current multistakeholder policy-making model isn’t working.

I’m certain there are other recent examples of long-serving community members criticising the process that are not readily springing to mind.

Sadly, ICANN’s usual response to broad community concerns is to launch a consultation or working group or comment period or somesuch, which often adds to the bloat and drains already jaded volunteers’ available work hours.

I can’t see anything changing any time soon, but there is a public comment period on the meetings strategy still open here.

ICANN spending $365,000 a year on coffee and booze

Scrapping coffee breaks and cocktail receptions is among a raft of proposals ICANN has floated in an effort to cut the cost of its public meetings and get its budget under control.

The Org is also thinking about making some meetings shorter or going online-only in order to cut costs, which were estimated to come in at around $14 million in ICANN’s current fiscal year.

But ICANN has shelved the idea of starting to charge community members to attend, after many pointed out that it could disenfranchise less well-funded would-be attendees.

The proposals, which were developed from seeds put forward by Org and refined with a small group of community volunteers and public sessions at recent meetings, have now been put out for formal public comment

One eyebrow-raising stat, new to me, was that the “current estimated cost of networking receptions and coffee breaks is approximately $365,000 annually”. Meetings typically have two coffee breaks per day and two scheduled evening receptions per meeting.

While $365,000 may seem like a lot, consider that it’s spread over three meetings and about 2,000 attendees per meeting. If each attendee on average has a couple of coffees and a couple of glasses of wine at each event, one could easily argue it’s not really that expensive per head.

But the proposals out for comment suggest that any networking event that does not have an external sponsor could be scrapped.

ICANN’s also talking about shortening its Community Forum — the first of the year’s three meetings, typically held in March — by one day by shifting the Public Forum from Thursday to Monday, so the venue’s main ballroom only has to be rented for one day.

Org reckons it could save $460,000 a year by dropping the last day altogether, also eliminating one hotel night for each funded traveller. It turns out the Thursday sessions are lightly attended anyway, with room utilization rates at 20% to 30%, compared to the 60% to 80% earlier in the meeting.

ICANN reckons it could also save money — 10% to 20% per meeting, which works out to many hundreds of thousands of dollars — by switching to an online-only or hybrid model for one meeting a year. Such meetings were the standard during the recent pandemic.

It is also considering whether to reduce the variety of cities it holds its meetings in. It reckons it could cut costs by picking more economical locations and signing multi-year bulk deals with venues.

The proposals come almost a year after ICANN announced it was looking to slash its budget in response to stagnating revenue.

The proposals are now open for comment until May 19.

Regulator going after suicide site that even Epik banned

UK communications regulator Ofcom has opened its first public investigation under the new Online Safety Act, targeting a notorious forum that has been linked to dozens of suicides globally.

The probe demands that the site in question provide evidence that it protects its UK users from illegal or harmful content — in this case “encouraging or assisting suicide”.

Failure to do so could lead to Ofcom fining the site’s owners millions, or seeking court orders to have other companies, such as advertisers or internet service providers, disrupt its business, Ofcom said.

The law is often talked about in the context of large social media companies such as Facebook and TikTok, which are often accused of algorithmically instilling suicide ideation in children, but it applies to any service that allows user-to-user content.

This apparently extends to web forums. Some non-controversial sites have already closed down rather than bear the expense of complying.

The Act doesn’t specifically mention domain registrars and registries as being covered by its provisions, but GoDaddy, for example, certainly seems to think it does. It even reckons its domain search feature might be covered.

Ofcom isn’t naming the suicide site, so I won’t either, but it’s not hard to identify by connecting a few dots.

It uses a domain in Verisign’s .net, currently registered with Cloudflare’s registrar. Both registry and registrar are US companies.

The site in question lost its original .com name in 2021 when Epik — yes, even the controversial, free-speech-loving old Epik under Rob Monster — reportedly thought it was too hot to handle.

The site’s administrators have today called the probe “blatant overreach” and accused Ofcom of a “censorship agenda”. They’re currently begging users for cryptocurrency donations.

Media investigations have linked the site to more than 50 suicide deaths. In some cases, the site’s users reportedly goaded their victims, including some children, to take their own lives.

The admins, knowing the site is a target, have previously said they have back-up domains that they could switch to within minutes if they get shut down.

UK’s Nigel Hickson has died

Long-serving ICANN community member and UK government representative Nigel Hickson has died, according to friends and colleagues.

He’s said to have died at the weekend following a battle with cancer.

While the loss will be felt most keenly by his family, Hickson’s absence will also be felt by the ICANN community and wider domain name industry.

Hickson was most recently head of internet governance policy at the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, but he might be better known to the domains community as the country’s representative on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee.

He was until a few weeks ago one of the GAC’s vice-chairs and as such often a prominent and vocal presence during governmental discussions of ICANN’s policies at public meetings.

But he also engaged with the domain investor community, showing up to deliver the UK government’s perspectives at conferences such as the London Domains Summit.

Prior to joining the government, Hickson spent eight years working for ICANN as a vice president with a government engagement portfolio.

I only met Nigel on a handful of occasions, but he always came across as a thoroughly pleasant chap with a surprising sense of humor.

Hickson is said to be survived by his wife and daughter, who have our condolences.

Latest ICANN salary porn ruins my terrible pun

I’d always planned, if it turned out ICANN’s former interim CEO Sally Costerton was getting paid an absolutely, ridiculously, eye-popping pay packet, that it might be amusing to try to pin the nickname “Cost-a-tonne” on her.

Thanks. I’m here all week. Try the turbot.

But she wasn’t even ICANN’s highest-compensated employee last year, according to the Org’s latest tax return, which it published yesterday. That privilege went to general counsel John Jeffrey.

While her immediate predecessor Goran Marby made over a million bucks in his final years, Costerton made a more modest $835,585, compared to Jeffrey’s $837,137, the return states.

It’s the first time Costerton’s compensation has been disclosed. Previously, she was paid through her consulting company.

The form 990 (pdf) lists the 20 employees who get paid the most, with total compensation starting at $217,073. The top 10 employees received over half a million dollars in total compensation.

Some former ICANN staffers have recently said publicly that the figures in the 990 might give a misleading impression of how well rank-and-file employees are compensated.

On the corporate side, it was a relatively poor year for Jones Day, ICANN’s incumbent law firm and highest-paid contractor, which billed $3,617,243 compared to the $4,606,859 in the previous year. It was getting closer to $9 million a year not too long ago.

The top five contractors saw a new entrant at five, with HR firm ADO Professional Solutions getting $980,970 for recruitment services.

I get a wrongful kicking as .su registry denies turn-off plan

The registry for the former Soviet Union’s .su ccTLD has denied that ICANN plans to kick it off the internet, giving three reasons why its over 100,000 domains are safe.

RosNIIROS pointed to Russian law, ICANN ccTLD policy, and the lack of any formal retirement notice as reasons why the ccTLD isn’t going anywhere. The registry said in a post on its web site:

In connection with the media reports about the possible closure of the .SU domain zone, we inform you that this information periodically appears in the public domain, but does not correspond to reality. The registry (RosNIIROS) does not plan to liquidate the .SU domain and no formal actions have been taken by ICANN

The registry said that .su has been formally recognised under Russian law, via a ruling of the telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor, alongside .ru and .рф, as part of the “Russian national domain zone”.

It added that ICANN policy does not permit the Org to retire .su:

According to the procedure approved in 2022 by ICANN, a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) can be removed from the DNS root zone only if the corresponding two-letter code is excluded from the ISO 3166 standard. Currently, the code “SU” is included in the ISO 3166 list with the status of “exclusively reserved”

The machine translation may be a bit wonky there, as the term used in English is “exceptionally reserved”. That’s the ISO 3166 status also enjoyed by the UK (.uk), Ascension Islands (.ac) and European Union (.eu).

But the ICANN policy on retiring ccTLDs specifically calls out .uk, .ac and .eu as being “grandfathered” in. It doesn’t mention .su at all, and it’s not at all clear from my reading whether being “exceptionally reserved” offers .su blanket protection.

ICANN’s former chair didn’t seem to think so in 2022 when he said, “the Soviet Union is no longer assigned in the ISO 3166-1 standard and therefore is no longer considered eligible for a ccTLD.”

RosNIIROS also referred its customers to the recent comments of ICANN director Becky Burr, who on March 12 had denied that ICANN had kicked off formal retirement proceedings.

I hadn’t listened to this session live, but I caught up with the recording today and have to say it’s a bit of an eye-opener. Burr said:

Let me just take the elephant in the room. We all saw the Domain Incite report on .su. I just want to say to everybody, there has been no formal letter kicking off any process on there, that’s clear. We are looking at the ccNSO policy, and I don’t want to say anything more about that other than to say whatever was in the Domain Incite article, there has been no formal initiation of a retirement process

I’m not sure whether to be irritated or flattered.

On the one hand, I seem to have received a public dressing down with the clear implication that there was some inaccuracy in my reporting, which is never nice. On the other hand, I didn’t write the damned article she’s referring to.

Burr seems to have read Domain Name Wire’s wonderful scoop on “plans to retire the [.su] domain” and just assumed it was my work. I’ll have to take it as a compliment, I guess. Cheers Becky!

The DNW article reported from the outset that a planned notice of retirement had not yet been sent, but that informal outreach had occurred, so I don’t even think there’s a clear allegation of inaccuracy here. For what it’s worth, I trust the reporting.

The day after Burr’s comment, ICANN CEO Kurt Lindqvist also said publicly that there had not yet been a “formal” notice of retirement.