ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman

ICANN is looking for a new “Ombuds”, having quietly dropped the “man” from Ombudsman following the resignation of Herb Waye.

The Org said it has hired a recruitment consultant and put out a call for expressions of interest in the role last night.

The Ombuds’ job is to handle complaints independently of ICANN Org and board and be an “objective advocate for fairness”. It’s one of ICANN’s bylaws-mandated accountability mechanisms.

The Org seems to have officially made the switch from “Ombudsman” to “Ombuds” at the start of October when Krista Papac took on the job on an interim basis. The old URL icann.org/ombudsman now forwards to icann.org/ombuds.

Like many middle-aged men, I often roll my eyes at this kind of terminology change, despite my impeccable woke credentials.

I have always assumed that “Ombudsman” was etymologically a gender-neutral term, given its Scandinavian roots, but I’ve read around the topic today and it seems that that assumption is open to debate.

I’ve concluded that it doesn’t matter either way — nobody’s getting hurt by the change, so fuck it, “Ombuds” it is.

Have your say on police domain takedown powers

The UK Parliament wants your input on a new proposed law that would give the police powers to take down domain names and IP addresses.

The broad-ranging Criminal Justice Bill 2023 (pdf) would give police the ability to obtain court orders requiring registries and registrars to suspend domains believed to be used in criminal activity.

Accompanying explanatory notes say that these court orders could be applied internationally against domain companies in other countries via various means.

The clock is ticking for submissions — the Public Bill Committee of Parliament is due to sit to consider evidence from December 12 and issue its report with suggested amendments by January 30.

The committee advises submitting evidence as soon as possible to maximize the time spent considering it.

Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system

Most of the largest domain registrars are not currently participating in ICANN’s new Registration Data Request Service, according to my research.

I used the RDRS tool to check domains managed by every accredited registrar that has over a million domains under management and discovered that at least 25 out of these 40 registrars do not currently support the service.

The number may be 26, but RDRS did not recognize any domains managed by Chinese registrar Ali Baba as valid, giving instead a “domain does not exist” error message, even for alibaba.com itself.

In total, the 25 registrars coming up blank look after over 63 million gTLD domains, about 28% of the total.

Some very recognizable brands are not in the system.

Squarespace Domains II, the new name for the old Google Domains, the fourth-largest registrar, is the largest company not participating. Together with its original accreditation, Squarespace Domains, they have over 10 million domains under management.

TurnCommerce, GMO, IONOS, NameSilo, PDR, Gname, Dynadot, Wix, OVH, Register.com, FastDomain, Name.com, Domain.com, Hostinger, Sav.com, Xin Net, West.cn, Cronon, Domain Robot, Automattic, DNSPod, and Cloudflare are also not in the system.

Oh, and neither is Markmonitor.

While I only checked 40 registrars, not the full 2,702 that were active in the July registry transaction reports, I would expect the level of support to decline the lower down the list you get, particularly as hundreds of accreditations have a trivial number of domains or are merely aliases for companies already known to not support RDRS.

It’s quite possible some of the registrars I’ve named here are planning to sign up and have just been slow to do so, but they’ve had plenty of time — ICANN has been onboarding registrars since September 20.

The level of support from the registrar industry will be critical to judging whether the RDRS project is deemed a success.

In a recent letter to the GNSO Council discussing “success criteria” for the program, ICANN chair Tripti Sinha wrote (pdf):

The Board agrees that the participation of a sufficient number of registrars with a sufficient number of domain name registrations under management will be important with respect to gathering data.

On the bright side, GoDaddy, Tucows and Namecheap are on board, and that represents about 90 million domains. GoDaddy alone accounts for 65 million, slightly more than the combined total of the 25 large registrars that are not participating.

RDRS is a system designed to simplify the process of requesting non-public Whois data by passing all such requests to the relevant registrars through a central hub.

Of course, it’s only useful if the registrars are actually in the system.

ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting

The ICANN community will head to Türkiye for the Org’s 2024 Annual General Meeting, it has been confirmed.

The board of directors picked Istanbul for ICANN 81, which will kick off November 9 next year, according to a just-published resolution.

While the precise venue has not been revealed, you’d have to assume the Istanbul Congress Center is a prime candidate.

While it’s conveniently on the doorstep of Europe, Türkiye counts as Asia-Pacific under ICANN’s rules mandating meetings rotate through the world’s five geographic regions.

ICANN maintains an office in Istanbul, so it can presumably save a bit of money not having to pay for travel and lodgings for local staff who would usually travel.

Next year’s meetings also see the community travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico in March and Kigali, Rwanda in June. The first meeting of 2025 will be held in Seattle, Washington.

ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund

ICANN has acted outside of its powers by ignoring community policy recommendations and leaving its $271 million gTLD auction windfall open to being frittered away on lawyers, according to community members.

The Intellectual Property Constituency of the GNSO has filed a formal Request for Reconsideration over a board resolution passed at ICANN 78 last month in Hamburg, and other constituencies may add their names to it shortly.

The row concerns the huge cash pile ICANN was left sitting on following the auction of 17 new gTLD contracts between 2014 and 2016, which raised $240 million (as of July, around $271 million after investment returns and ICANN helping itself to a portion to fund its operations reserve).

It was decided that the money should be used to fund a grant program for worthy causes, with organizations able to apply for up to $500,000 during discrete rounds, the first of which is due to open next year with a $10 million pot. Around $220 million is believed to be earmarked for the grant program over its lifetime.

But the Cross Community Working Group for Auction Proceeds (CCWG-AP) that came up with the rules of the program was concerned that unsuccessful applicants, or others chagrined by ICANN’s grant allocations, might challenge decisions using ICANN’s accountability mechanisms.

This would cause money earmarked for worthy causes to be spaffed away on lawyers, which the CCWG-AP wanted to avoid, so it recommended that ICANN modify its fundamental bylaws to exclude the grant program from mechanisms such as the Independent Review Process, which usually incurs high six-figure or seven-figure legal fees.

ICANN seemed to accept this recommendation — formally approving it in June last year — until ICANN 78, when the board approved a surprise U-turn on this so-called Recommendation 7.

The board said it was changing its mind because it had found “alternative ways” to achieve the same objective, “including ways that do not require modification to ICANN’s core Bylaws on accountability”. The resolution stated:

As a result, the Board is updating its action on Recommendation 7 to reflect that ICANN org should implement this Recommendation 7 directly through the use of applicant terms and conditions rather than through a change to ICANN’s Fundamental Bylaws.

This left some community members — and at least one ICANN director — scratching their heads. Sure, you might be able to ban grant applicants from using the IRP in the program’s terms and conditions, but that wouldn’t stop third parties such as an applicant’s competitors from filing an IRP and causing legal spaffery.

The board was well aware of these concerns when it passed the resolution last month. Directors pointed out in Hamburg that ICANN is still pursuing the bylaws amendment route, but has removed it as a dependency for the first grant round going ahead.

This left some community members nonplussed — it wasn’t clear whether ICANN planned to go ahead with the program ignoring community recommendations, or not. The reassuring words of directors didn’t seem to tally with the language of the resolution.

So the IPC took the initiative and unironically invoked an accountability mechanism — the RfR — to get ICANN to change its mind again. I gather the request was filed as a precaution within the 30-day filing window due to the lack of clarity on ICANN’s direction.

The RfR states:

the impetus behind the Bylaws change was to prevent anyone from challenging grant decisions, including challenges from parties not in contractual privity with ICANN. The Board’s hasty solution would only prevent contracting grant applicants from challenging decisions; it would not in any way affect challenges by anyone else – including anyone who wished to challenge the award of a grant. The grant program could be tied in knots by disgruntled parties, competitive organizations or anyone else who wished to delay or prevent ICANN from carrying out any decision to grant funds. This is exactly what the CCWG-AP sought to prevent

The IPC says that by bypassing the bylaws amendment process, which involves community consent, the ICANN board is basically giving itself the unilateral right to turn off its bylaws-mandated accountability mechanisms when it sees fit. A power grab.

It wants the Hamburg resolution reversed.

Discussing the RfR a few days before it was filed, other members of the GNSO Council suggested that their constituencies might sign on as fellow complainants if and when it is amended.

RfRs are handled by ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee, which does not currently have a publicly scheduled upcoming meeting.

Call for ICANN to dump anti-Semitic partner

A senior Jewish member of the ICANN community is calling on the Org to end its partnership with a company run by a Palestine-born Jordanian businessman who recently broadcast some outrageously anti-Semitic remarks.

Jeff Neuman of JJN Solutions and Dot Hip Hop, who has spent the last quarter-century involved in countless ICANN community roles, made the plea in an open letter he posted on his blog today following remarks by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh on Jordanian TV on October 12.

The letter follows an exchange at the ICANN Annual General Meeting in Hamburg last week in which Neuman raised concerns about some on-site graffiti that he considered anti-Semitic.

Abu-Ghazaleh’s comments, rather than being just some coded anti-Semitic dog-whistles, appear to directly attempt to justify the Holocaust, according to a translation by Middle-East media monitoring organization MEMRI.

Along with some less-extreme anti-Semitic tropes, he said, during an interview discussing the war in Gaza:

The Jews do not have any ideology. All they care about is money and interests. I had a friend who was a German cabinet member. I once asked him: ‘When Hitler, may God forgive him, carried out the Holocaust, why didn’t he finish the job and kill all the Jews?’ He said to me: ‘It’s the other way around, but don’t tell anyone I said this. He left a group of them on purpose, so that people would know why we carried out the Holocaust. When you would be tormented by them, you would know the reason.’

It turns out the Talal Abu-Ghazzaleh Organization (TAG-Org) that he runs hosts an instance of ICANN’s L-root server in Jordan — one of scores of redundant nodes at data centers around the world — and Neuman wants this relationship terminated.

Revealing that family members were killed in the Holocaust, he says in his letter to ICANN leadership:

I believe ICANN must take immediate action to remove this instance from TAG-Org and find a new home for this instance. In addition, ICANN should make an unequivocal statement ASAP that it does not condone such hate speech and that it will not have any partnerships whose founders or leaders espouse such views.

TAG-Org’s relationship with ICANN does not stop at the L-root instance, however. Abu-Ghazaleh is a noted champion of intellectual property rights in the Middle-East region and his companies are naturally involved in the domain industry and ICANN community.

TAG-Domains, part of Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP), is an ICANN-accredited registrar specializing in brand protection services. It has only about 1,200 gTLD domains under management.

And the group seems to be intimately involved with the Arab Center for Dispute Resolution, the only ICANN-approved UDRP service provider in the region. It was approved in 2013 with an application managed by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Legal and there appears to be an ongoing relationship.

Neuman, who makes it clear he is not currently holding ICANN at fault for its partnerships, does not appear to be calling for ICANN to end these other relationships with the Abu-Ghazaleh group and I don’t think the Registrar Accreditation Agreement has a morality clause anyway.

Since Abu-Ghazaleh’s comments have come to light, two IP news publications — Managing IP and IAM — have publicly distanced themselves from him.

Managing IP said it was reviewing all awards it had given to AGIP and removing the company’s profile from its site, while IAM said it was removing Abu-Ghazaleh from its IP Hall of Fame.

While to my knowledge Neuman is the only person to date to ask ICANN for a similar censure, his voice does carry weight. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone else in the community who’s put in as many hours and knows as much about ICANN policy-making.

I think it’s quite likely ICANN will say something condemning racism in response; I’m less certain that it will pull the plug on the Amman L-root or do anything concrete to distance itself from the Abu-Ghazaleh companies.

ICANN chair Tripti Sinha has already expressed dismay at graffiti that Neuman considered anti-Semitic that appeared for 24 hours on a mural at ICANN 78 in Hamburg last week.

This does NOT belong at an ICANN meeting! It’ is wholly inappropriate at ICANN. #icann78 pic.twitter.com/2KN6Eiel5D

— Jeff Neuman (@jintlaw) October 26, 2023

Saying on Twitter that the graffiti implied endorsement of the murder of Jews and that he felt unsafe at an ICANN meeting for the first time, Neuman used the Public Forum last Thursday to ask ICANN’s board of directors to condemn such behavior.

“This is not the place to make statements like that,” Sinha said, referring to the graffiti. “This is meant to be a safe place for discourse and interchange of ideas. so please do not engage in any kind of political dialogue and hurtful dialogue.”

Group to seek .io TLD takeover after OECD human rights ruling

A group composed of displaced Chagossians will ask ICANN to redelegate the increasingly popular .io top-level domain, according to the group’s lawyer.

The move, still in its very early stages, follows a recent ruling under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, which mildly chastised the current registry, Identity Digital.

“The next move is domain reassignment,” lawyer Jonathan Levy, who brought the OECD complaint on behalf of the Chagos Refugees Group UK, told us. The proposed beneficiary would be “a group composed of Chagossians” he said.

.io is the ccTLD for the archipelago currently known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. It’s one of those Postel-era “Just Some Guy” developing-world delegations that pre-date ICANN.

But BIOT is a controversial territory. Originally the Chagos Archipelago, the few thousand original inhabitants were forced out by the UK government in the 1970s so the US military could build a base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

Most of the surviving Chagossians and their descendants live in Mauritius, but have been fighting for their right to return for decades. In 2019, the UN ruled the UK’s current administration of BIOT is unlawful.

In recent years, since .io became popular, the ccTLD has become part of the fight.

The original and technically still-current registry for .io is a UK company called Internet Computer Bureau. ICB was acquired by Afilias in 2017 for $70 million. Afilias was subsequently acquired by Donuts, which is now called Identity Digital.

Corporate accounts filed by ICB name its ultimate owner as Beignet DTLD Holdings of Delaware, which appears to be a part of $2.21 billion private equity firm Ethos Capital, Identity Digital’s owner, which is co-managed by former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé.

None of these companies have a connection to BIOT beyond paying a local company called Sure (Diego Garcia) Limited for a mail-forwarding service. The only people believed to reside in the territory at all are US and UK military and contractors.

Levy, on behalf of the Chagossian refugees and a group of victims of cryptocurrency scams operated from .io domains, filed a complaint with the Ireland National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct — basically a mediation service operated by the Irish government — seeking a share of the money from .io sales and/or redelegation.

According to its most-recent public accounts, ICB had turnover of £16.4 million ($19.8 million) in 2021, up from £12.8 million ($15.5 million) in 2020, but also had absolutely horrible gross margins for a registry with only one employee.

The company had cost of sales of £15.8 million and a gross margin of 3.58%. It pays no ICANN fees and the UK government receives no cut beyond the regular corporate tax ICB pays (about £26,000 in 2021).

The OECD’s Guidelines are voluntary guidelines that countries sign up to that are meant to guide how multinational companies behave with regards human rights and so on. Enforcement seems to be relatively toothless, with national NCPs only having the power to “recommend” actions.

In fact, Afilias declined to participate in mediation and appears to have received only a mild finger-wagging in the Irish NCP’s decision (pdf), which was published in September. One of its recommendations reads:

The NCP recommends that in cases in which a product, including a digital asset, is associated with long-running disputes regarding human rights, multinational enterprises should be able to demonstrate that they have carried out human rights due diligence

Levy thinks the NCP’s decision is a big deal, saying it means the OECD has validated the Chagossians’ concerns. Coupled with the UN sanction on the UK related to BIOT, he reckons it could play in their favor in a future redelegation request.

.io domain owners shouldn’t be too worried right now, however. Redelegation takes a very long time even when the losing party agrees, and it doesn’t tend to happen without the consent of the incumbent.

Meta given 30 days to stop using Threads trademark

A small UK software firm has given Facebook owner Meta, well known in the domain industry for pursuing cybersquatters, 30 days to stop using the brand name “Threads” or face legal action.

Meta launched a Twitter clone called Threads back in July and quickly gathered over 100 million users (since declining to eight million daily active users), but Threads Software of London says its UK trademark dates back to 2012.

“Threads Software Limited and its lawyers have today (30 October) written to Meta’s Instagram giving it 30 days to stop using the name Threads for their service in the UK. If it does not, Threads Software Limited will seek an injunction from the English Courts,” the company said in a press release (pdf).

The company further claimed that Meta’s lawyers have tried to buy the domain threads.app from it four times this year but were turned down each time. Meta is using threads.net, Threads Software uses threads.cloud.

Threads Software says it operates a service that “captures, transcribes, and organises all of a company’s digital messages (emails and phone calls) into one easily searchable database”.

Managing director John Yardley said in the press release: “We recognise that this is a classic ‘David and Goliath’ battle with Meta. And whilst they may think they can use whatever name they want, that does not give them the right to use the Threads brand name.”

“We want them to stop using the Threads name with immediate effect. If they do not, we will seek an injunction from the UK courts,” he added.

The irony here is of course that Meta owns some of the most-cybersquatted brands out there and is one of the most litigious enforcers of its intellectual property.

Modest pay rises for ICANN top brass

ICANN’s six top executives have been given pay raises up to 3.5%, according to resolutions passed at ICANN 78 last week.

The increases are a little ahead of US inflation but a little below the market rate if these officers were to work elsewhere, according to the resolutions.

Interestingly, interim CEO Sally Costerton is named in a pay-rise resolution for the first time, perhaps indicating she’s no longer being paid through the UK-based consulting company she owns, which has allowed ICANN to hide her compensation in its annual tax filings.

The resolution raises her “salary” by up to 3.5% for her role as senior advisor to president and SVP, Global Stakeholder Engagement, but does not mention the fact that she’s also acting CEO.

After Verisign’s sluggish year, ICANN misses funding goal by $2 million

ICANN’s fiscal 2023 revenue came in $2 million light when compared to its budget, the annual report published today shows.

The Org blamed lower-than-expected transaction fees for the shortfall, suggesting the domain industry wasn’t quite as buoyant as its accountants had hoped.

Funding for the year came in at $150 million against a budgeted target of $152 million.

The period covered is July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023, a period in which Verisign — ICANN’s biggest contributor by some margin — repeatedly lowered its revenue estimates from .com and .net sales.

This is not a coincidence. The two outfits’ fates are intertwined. Verisign funded ICANN to the tune of $49.7 million from its legacy gTLD business in FY23, up only slightly from $49.5 million in FY22.

Overall, ICANN said that its revenue from registry transactions was $60 million versus its budget estimate of $62 million, and that registrar transactions revenue was $39 million versus its $41 million estimate.

Other registrar fees and registry fixed fees seem to have come in a bit ahead of budget, and rounding accounts for the fact that the numbers don’t make prima facie sense.

ICANN said its expenses for the year came in $10 million lower than expected, at $142 million, due to lower professional services and personnel costs. Its travel expenses were $2 million more than expected, it seems due to the Washington DC meeting being more expensive than planned.