ICANN names its Supreme Court judges

ICANN has finally named the members of the quasi-judicial body that will oversee its highest accountability mechanism.

The names of the 12 members of the Independent Review Process Standing Panel were published by ICANN this afternoon and the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, which manages the IRP, published their resumes.

They’re mainly lawyers and law professors with extensive arbitration experience. There’s one African, and the rest are either North American or European; none are from Asia or Latin America.

The Standing Panel has been a long time coming. It’s been over a decade since ICANN first said it would create one. The jurists were picked by a community committee in January, but ICANN wanted to get them all contracted and up to speed before naming them.

The idea is to streamline IRP, which currently is barely distinguishable from the judicial system when it comes to duration of cases, by allowing ICANN and complainants to select their panel from a known pool of trained, experienced, vetted experts.

The IRP is the final formal appeals mechanism within the ICANN process before lawsuits start flying. There’s been over 20 filed in the last 16 years, and ICANN’s win-to-loss ratio is not great.

ICANN hires new Ombuds from WIPO

ICANN has named its new Ombuds, who will take over the role vacated by Herb Waye almost a year ago.

She’s Liz Field, a HR specialist who spent most of her career at Amnesty International but most recently has been working for WIPO as an independent outside consultant, according to her LinkedIn.

After almost two decades at Amnesty, Field worked for two years as an anti-harassment coordinator for the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Field, who says she also speaks French and Spanish, will take over from complaints officer Krista Papac, who has been filling in for Waye since his resignation.

ICANN said that 36 people applied for the job — 22 men and 14 women. The Ombuds Search Committee interviewed five of them and two candidates were interviewed by the full board of directors.

The genders of the applicants is relevant in this case. Some female ICANN community members have previously said they would be reluctant to make gender-related complaints, such as sexual harassment, to a male Ombuds.

ICANN chair Tripti Sinha earlier this week linked the hiring of the new Ombuds to a strengthened anti-harassment policy that the board hopes to shortly introduce. Field seems to have the CV to support such a goal.

The Ombuds role is to hear complaints about unfair treatment and unpleasant behavior in and from the Org and community.

The job occupies a unique position in ICANN’s structure, answering directly to the board rather than the Org’s management hierarchy. Only four people have occupied the role since it was created 20 year ago.

Big twist as ICANN bans new gTLD auctions

ICANN is to ban new gTLD applicants from paying each other off if they apply for the same strings, removing a business model that saw tens of millions of dollars change hands in the 2012 application round.

But, in a twist, applicants will be able to submit second-choice strings along with their main application, allowing them to switch if they find themselves in contention.

While ICANN’s board of directors has yet to pass a resolution on private resolution in forthcoming application rounds, chair Tripti Sinha said in a letter to the GNSO Council (pdf) and blog post that there’s agreement on three principles.

“Private resolution of contention sets will not be permitted during the Next Round,” Sinha told the Council. The idea of permitting joint-venture resolution was also ruled out as impractical and open to gaming.

This of course means that where contention sets do occur, they’ll be resolved with a “last resort” auction where ICANN gets all the cash from the winning bidder.

Funds raised this way in the last round, along with a decade’s worth of investment interest, have been used to replenish ICANN’s reserve fund, to fund the current Grant Program, and may be shortly used to subsidize the Applicant Support Program.

Second, applicants will be able to submit at least one alternate string with their applications, allowing them to avoid a contention set and last resort auction.

This potentially makes the cost of acquiring a gTLD cheaper for the applicant while increasing the number of gTLDs that go live. ICANN might also have to issue fewer refunds for withdrawn applications.

ICANN thinks this measure might make gTLDs more affordable for less well-resourced applicants from the Global South, where ICANN is keen to diversify the industry, although the applicants may not get their first-choice strings.

Applicants would only be able to switch to an alternate string, which they will have to have pre-selected, if doing so would not create a new contention set or make the applicant join a different existing contention set.

They’d also only be able avoid a contention set of exact-match strings, and not sets subsequently created by the String Similarity Review or String Confusion Objection results.

So, to take an example from 2012, any of the seven .hotels applicants would have been able to switch to a second-choice string immediately after Reveal Day, but not after the similarity review placed them in contention with .hoteis.

The third point of agreement from the board is that the last resort auctions should keep the ascending-clock second-price method used for the 2012 round, deciding against lotteries or the Vickrey auction method.

The ascending clock method sees bids filed in rounds until all bidders but one had dropped out. The last applicant standing then pays ICANN the last price offered by the runner-up.

A Vickrey auction would have seen applicants submit their maximum bids at the time of application, not knowing who they were bidding against. Lotteries are legally problematic under California gambling law.

Sinha said the board intends to pass a resolution embodying these three principles “in the coming weeks”.

This is going to create some extra work for the GNSO, as ruling out joint ventures as a means to private resolution goes against community policy recommendations (and the board’s adoption of those recommendations).

The GNSO Council is set to discuss Sinha’s letter at its regular monthly meeting this Thursday.

ICANN to “strengthen” harassment rules as it picks another homophobic meeting host

ICANN has revealed it is to “strengthen” its anti-harassment policy, but the announcement came the same day as it picked another public meeting host country where being gay can lead to jail time.

“The Board Anti-Harassment Working Group has recently worked to evaluate and strengthen the ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy,” chair Tripti Sinha posted over the weekend. “We do not accept any form of harassment, and we must continually seek opportunities to improve.”

The draft revisions shortly follow the revelations of a sexual harassment legal action by a veteran former staffer, at least the third such instance in the last five years I’m aware of.

The current Community Anti-Harassment Policy is already pretty broad, covering a wide range of protected characteristics (from race to marital status) and behaviors (from groping to dirty jokes).

The proposed revisions will be posted for public comment before ICANN’s Annual General Meeting in Istanbul this November, Sinha wrote.

It’s not illegal to be gay in Türkiye, but it is in Muscat, Oman, where ICANN announced just hours before the anti-harassment post it plans to hold its 2025 AGM.

Men and women can get three years imprisonment for gay sex or “cross-dressing” there, according to the Human Dignity Trust. It’s also technically illegal for unmarried straight couples to share a hotel room, according to the UK government.

While the law in Oman might not be rabidly enforced, it’s understandable that some LGBT members of the ICANN community could be made to feel nervous and adjust their travel plans accordingly — things like traveling with a same-sex partner, hooking up with someone, or having Grindr on your phone might carry additional risk.

Oman is just one of many countries with homophobic laws on the books that ICANN has invited its community members to attend over the years.

Looking back over just the last 10 years of meetings, ICANN has been to Malaysia (in 2022), the UAE, and Morocco (twice), where gay sex acts get you prison time. It’s also been to Singapore (twice) and India, which have since decriminalized homosexuality.

It’s baffling to me that ICANN can lecture its community about “microagressions” and yet also routinely invites its not-insignificant contingent of gay community members to return to the closet for a week, under pain of arrest.

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.