ICANN 54 – Sunday live-blog

Testing, testing… one, two, one, two…
This is a live blog covering developments from ICANN 54 in near real-time.
If you’re looking at this page, the post will refresh automatically whenever there’s new content to see. If you’re reading it elsewhere it will, presumably, not.
Today I’ll be mainly sticking with the Generic Names Supporting Organization session, where they’re shortly due to meet with ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade.

DI will be live-blogging ICANN 54

I’m going to be doing something a little different for ICANN’s latest public meeting.
For various tedious reasons I was unable to attend in person ICANN 54, which started in Dublin this morning, so I thought I’d try to make the best of the advantages of remote participation and a friendly time zone to try something new.
Namely, live-blogging.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, a live-blog is essentially a single blog post that is updated and amended in real-time as a quickly developing news story continues to roll.
You can think of it a little like a Twitter feed, but without the restrictions.
If you have your browser open to the live-blog post, the updates should be automatically pushed to you in near real-tie without the need to manually refresh the page.
I say “should” because I’ve never done this before and, despite a bit of testing, the back-end software may not function precisely as I expect.
The auto-refresh function only seems to work, by design, in single-post view. If you’re looking at the DI front page you probably won’t get the auto-updates unless you manually refresh.
It’s all very experimental and I may quickly abandon the idea if it doesn’t seem to be working. Feedback is welcome.
The intention in some cases is to live-blog individual sessions, when they’re important enough to warrant my undivided attention — such as the opening ceremony or the meeting between the ICANN board and the Governmental Advisory Committee.
In other cases, the blog may dip in and out of conflicting sessions depending on what seems most interesting at the time.
While ICANN 54 doesn’t officially start until Monday, long-time ICANN watchers know that the real discussions begin much earlier.
In fact, in Dublin, they’ve already started.
A three-hour session of the community working group tasked with improving ICANN’s accountability, known as the CCWG, showed strong indications this morning that it may be ready to be the first blink in its ongoing confrontation with the ICANN board.
You can expect a lot of coverage of the accountability discussions, which have multiple sessions devoted to them, over the coming seven days.

Andruff fuming after ICANN leadership snub

Long-time ICANN volunteer Ron Andruff has complained to the ICANN board of directors after he was passed over for a key leadership position.
Andruff this week filed a Request for Reconsideration after the board appointed Stephane van Gelder chair of the ICANN Nominating Committee for a second year, despite Andruff serving as “chair-elect” in the 2015 NomCom.
According to ICANN bylaws, it is “anticipated” that NomCom chairs-elect take over from their chairs each year, but the board has the “discretion” to pick somebody entirely different.
That’s discretion the board exercised last week when it picked Van Gelder, executive VP at new gTLD registry Starting Dot, to continue on as chair.
Andruff was replaced as chair-elect by Hans Petter Holen, who comes from the IP address side of the community.
NomCom is tasked with the selection of three ICANN board members each year. The chair and chair-elect positions are picked by the ICANN board, but are non-voting.
Now Andruff’s mad that “a subset of mean-spirited and targeted attacks on my reputation by a few individuals” have cost him the chair’s gig. He said the board:

is meddling in the affairs of the supposedly independent Nominating Committee. Interfering with successful and efficient processes within the body that selects 2-3 Board members each year is not only wholly unnecessary, it triggers suspicion about the very independence of the Nom Com. It is also likely to deter others from volunteering their time and energy within the NomCom and other ICANN bodies as they become aware of how review processes that are supposed to foster self-improvement can instead be used to unfairly tarnish reputations.

The ICANN board seems to have come to its decision based at least in part on the results of a “360-degree” evaluation of Andruff by his NomCom peers.
These reviews invite committee members to score each other based on criteria such as leadership skills, honesty and good judgment.
The anonymous comments attached to the scores can be both fawning and really rather scathing.
A perfect score would be 55. Andruff scored 42.3.
Van Gelder scored 50.1 this year and 49.7 when he was in Andruff’s position last year.
Andruff’s report card also seems to contain more negative, and more negative, written comments than Van Gelder’s.
A minority of respondents questioned his neutrality, leadership skills and tone. A sample:

Ron constantly provided negative, arbitrary comments which carried underlying messages that he is the hardest worker in the group – more so than anyone else. He appeared to be a bully toward other members on many occasions – very opinionated and controlling, particularly about process. Ron does not use his influence appropriately regarding candidates. There is concern about his ability next year to separate his constituencies’ interests from the supposed independent role of the NomCom Chair. His style of using influence is often neither appropriate nor effective.

Andruff takes issue with the fact that the board chose to use his 360 review at all. In his RfR, he writes:

the reviews were intended to be a tool for improvement, rather than a basis for disqualification. That is especially true in regard to a review such as my own, which was strong overall while revealing a few areas that could be a focus for further improvement.

He also says he was told by an ICANN director that he “lacks cultural sensitivity”, a claim that he says came without any evidence.
He wrote:

I have absolutely no doubt, based on my personal interactions as well as the result of the 360 review, that if my ascension to Chair was put to a vote of the Nom Com members with whom I have served over the past year I would win by a substantial margin.

Andruff is CEO of his own firm, ONR Consulting, which also goes by the name ICANN Sherpa, and he’s worried that the board’s snub will cost him business.
The ICANN Board Governance Committee, which made the original recommendation to reappoint Van Gelder and remove Andruff, intends to discuss Andruff’s complaint on Sunday.
Documentation on NomCom 2015, including the 360 reviews, can be found here.

ICANN win leaves door open for plural gTLD rethink

ICANN has fought off an appeal by .webs gTLD applicant Vistaprint, in a case that considered the coexistence of singular and plural gTLDs.
While ICANN definitively won the Independent Review Process case, the IRP panel nevertheless invited its board of directors to consider whether Vistaprint should be given a chance to appeal a decision that ruled .webs too similar to .web.
Vistaprint runs a web site building service called Webs.com. It filed two applications for .webs — one “community” flavored, one vanilla — but then found itself on the losing end of a String Confusion Objection filed by rival Web.com, one of the many .web applicants.
It was one of the few instances where a SCO panel decided that a plural string was too confusingly similar to its singular for the two to coexist.
In many other cases, such as .auto(s), .fan(s) and .gift(s), the two strings have been allowed to be delegated.
Not wanting to have to fight for .webs at auction against eight .web applicants — which would likely cost eight figures to win — Vistaprint filed a Request for Reconsideration (which failed), followed by an last-ditch IRP complaint.
But its three-person IRP panel ruled on Friday (pdf) that ICANN did not violate its bylaws by accepting the SCO decision and subsequently rejecting the RfR.
However, the panel handed Vistaprint a silver lining that may eventually give the company what it wants. Even though ICANN won, Vistaprint may not necessarily have lost.
The panel wrote:

the Panel recommends that ICANN’s Board exercise its judgment on the question of whether an additional review mechanism is appropriate to re-evaluate the Third Expert’s determination in the Vistaprint SCO, in view of ICANN’s Bylaws concerning core values and non-discriminatory treatment, and based on the particular circumstances and developments noted in this Declaration, including (i) the Vistaprint SCO determination involving Vistaprint’s .WEBS applications, (ii) the Board’s (and NGPC’s) resolutions on singular and plural gTLDs, and (iii) the Board’s decisions to delegate numerous other singular/plural versions of the same gTLD strings.

In other words, ICANN has been invited to consider whether Vistaprint should be able to appeal, using a similar mechanism perhaps to that which was offered to other applicants that suffered from inconsistent, adverse SCO decisions.
At time when ICANN’s accountability is under international scrutiny, it’s highly likely that the board will give this recommendation some thought.
The IRP declaration does not reflect well on ICANN’s current level of accountability.
As usual, ICANN tried to wriggle out of accountability by attempting to castrate the panel from the outset, arguing again that IRP panels must be “deferential” to the board — that is, assume that its actions were correct by default — and that its declarations are “advisory” rather than “binding”.
And, as usual, the panel disagreed, saying previous IRP cases show this is now “settled” law. It said that it would evaluate the case “objectively and independently”, not deferentially.
But while it said its declaration was binding “in the sense that ICANN’s Board cannot overrule the Panel’s declaration” it agreed with ICANN that it only had the power to “recommend”, rather than order, remedies.
Acknowledging Vistaprint raised important public interest questions, the panel ordered ICANN to pay 40% of IRP costs.
The Vistaprint IRP was one of the things holding up the .web contention set, so Friday’s declaration moves the fabled gTLD one step closer to reality.
If the company gets the ability to appeal its SCO loss, it would add months to the .web runway. If it does not, it will have to remain in the .web contention set, which would head to auction.

.gay flunks community review for second time

dotgay LLC has failed in its bid to eliminate its competitors for the new gTLD .gay for the second time.
After an unprecedented re-run of its Community Priority Evaluation, the applicant scored just 10 out of the 16 available points.
That’s exactly the same as it scored the first time around, exactly one year ago, still four points short of success.
For the second time, dotgay scored zero from a possible four points on the “Nexus” criteria — the link between the string “gay” and the community dotgay wants to serve.
The CPE panel decision reads:

The Panel has determined that more than a small part of the applicant’s defined community is not identified by the applied-for string, as described below, and that it therefore does not meet the requirements for Nexus.
…
The Panel has determined that the applied-for string does not sufficiently identify some members of the applicant’s defined community, in particular transgender, intersex, and ally individuals

As I explained a year ago, when the first CPE panel flunked the applicant for exactly the same reason, dotgay’s proposed community included lots of people who would not necessarily describe themselves as “gay”.
You, possibly, for example.
If you’re an “ally” of gay people, by for example supporting equal rights, then you would qualify as “gay” under dotgay’s definition.
If you’re transgender or intersex, you would similarly captured by this definition. The panel said:

Despite the applicant’s assertions to the contrary, its own evidence here shows that “gay” is most commonly used to refer to both men and women who identify as homosexual, and not necessarily to others. The applicant’s “umbrella term” argument does not accurately describe, for example, the many similar transgender stories in the mass media where “gay” is not used to identify the subject. In these cases, “transgender” is used because “gay” does not identify those individuals.

The panel concluded that .gay “does not identify or match” the target community, and scored it zero.
dotgay had a second roll of the dice because the first CPE panel was found to have committed a process error by not sufficiently verifying the company’s many dozens of letters of support from gay advocacy organizations.
However, this error did not relate to the Nexus criteria, so a victory was always going to be a long shot.
The .gay gTLD is now heading to auction, where Minds + Machines, Rightside and Top Level Design are the other bidders.
You can read the new decision in PDF format here.

Chehade outlines five ways ICANN could die

Aarrgh! We’re all going to die!!!!1
ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has outlined five ways in which the internet could fall to pieces if the IANA transition fails, and they all seem really horrible.
Chehade presented the list at a telephone meeting of leaders of ICANN supporting organizations and advisory committees yesterday.
I don’t know what was said yet, but I can guess the tone from one of Chehade’s accompanying slides:

5 Risks we face if the IANA Stewardship Transition is Delayed/Fails:
I. ICANN’s community may fracture or fray slowly, becoming divided, acrimonious, bitter — potentially risking ICANN’s stability, effectiveness — and impacting the participation of global stakeholders
II. The technical operating communities using IANA may go separate ways, with the IETF and the Numbering communities choosing to take their business elsewhere — ending the integrity of the Internet’s logical infrastructure
III. Governments (encouraged by G77) may lead an effort starting at this year during the WSIS review to shift Internet Governance responsibilities to a more stable and predictable inter-governmental platform
IV. Key economies that shifted positions since NTIA’s announcement in March 2014 may reverse their support for ‘one Internet’ logical infrastructure coordinated by ICANN
V. The resilience and effectiveness of the multistakholder model will be questioned by those seeking solutions to the emerging Internet Governance issues in the economic and societal layer (e.g. cyber security, trade, privacy, copyright protections, etc.)

Judging by the slides, ICANN reckons that the community needs to have its transition proposal delivered by December, if ICANN is to meet the current September 30, 2016 transition deadline.
There are a whole host of sessions devoted to the transition at the forthcoming public meeting in Dublin.
The transition process is currently in a very tricky spot because the ICANN board of directors does not agree with the community proposals to restructure ICANN.

.food applies for dot-brand status, but you can help stop it

Scripps Networks, the company that runs the Food Network television network, wants to make .food a dot-brand gTLD that only it can use.
The company has applied to ICANN to have Specification 13 exemptions incorporated into its Registry Agreement.
Spec 13 is an add-on to the RA that dot-brands use to exempt themselves from having to sell to the public via the registrar channel, offer sunrise periods, and so on.
Scripps subsidiary Lifestyle Domains won the .food contention set after an auction with Donuts and Dot Food LLC a couple months ago.
It’s one of the applications that was identified by the Governmental Advisory Committee as a “closed generic”. Such applications were subsequently banned by ICANN.
Scripps and dozens of other applicants were given the option to change their applications to remove the single-registrant policy, to withdraw, or to carry their applications over to the next round.
But Scripps is pressing ahead regardless, claiming that if anyone else is allowed to own .food domains, all kinds of horrible things will happen. It recently told ICANN:

Internet users will benefit more from Scripps operating .FOOD because it will provide more trusted experiences. Left open to the wild west of typosquatters and cybersquatters or fraudulent users, internet users will be harmed rather than helped. With a plethora of unregulated websites in a fully open registry, the public could be misled or confused as to the origin of the content and information and rely, to their detriment, on such content.

It more recently told ICANN that it has no intention of modifying its application to comply with the GAC advice. ICANN now considers the matter “resolved”.
What’s not resolved is whether .food qualifies for Spec 13 status.
To use Spec 13, the gTLD needs to match a trademark you own, but it cannot be also be a generic string, defined as:

a string consisting of a word or term that denominates or describes a general class of goods, services, groups, organizations or things, as opposed to distinguishing a specific brand of goods, services, groups, organizations or things from those of others.

ICANN lawyers will make the ultimate decision about whether .food qualifies for Spec 13, but the request is open for public comment until October 29.
ICANN told DI: “ICANN has not yet made a determination as to if the application qualifies for Specification 13 and welcomes any comments from the community.”
What do you think? Should something as clearly generic as “food” be a space where only one company can register names?

URS arrives in three legacy gTLDs

The legacy gTLDs .cat, .pro and .travel will all be subject to the Uniform Rapid Suspension policy from now on.
Earlier this week, ICANN approved the new Registry Agreements, which are based on the new gTLD RA and include URS, for all three.
URS is an anti-cybersquatting policy similar to UDRP. It’s faster and cheaper than UDRP but has a higher burden of proof and only allows domains to be suspended rather than transferred.
The inclusion of the policy in pre-2012 gTLDs caused a small scandal when it was revealed a few months ago.
Critics, particularly the Internet Commerce Association, said that URS (unlike UDRP) is not a Consensus Policy and therefore should not be forced on registries.
ICANN responded that adding URS to the new contracts came about in bilateral negotiations with the registries.
The board said in its new resolutions this week:

the Board’s approval of the Renewal Registry Agreement is not a move to make the URS mandatory for any legacy TLDs, and it would be inappropriate to do so. In the case of .CAT, inclusion of the URS was developed as part of the proposal in bilateral negotiations between the Registry Operator and ICANN.

The concern for ICA and others is that URS may one day be forced into the .com RA, putting domainer portfolios at increased risk.

ICANN going to Panama for 56th meeting

Panama has been selected as the venue for ICANN’s 56th public meeting.
The ICANN board of directors approved the location a few days ago.
The meeting will be held in June next year in Panama City.
ICANN 56 falls between the March meeting in Marrakech, Morocco and October’s meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The final meeting of 2015 happens in Dublin, Ireland in a couple of weeks.
The structure of ICANN meetings changes next year, so the Panama gathering will be the first example of a four-day schedule that eschews traditional sessions such as the opening ceremony and public forum.

Africa hands coffin nails to DotConnectAfrica evaluators

The African Union and a United Nations commission have formally told ICANN that they don’t support DotConnectAfrica’s bid for .africa.
When it comes to showing governmental support, a necessity under ICANN’s rules for a geographic gTLD applications, the UN Economic Commission for Africa was DCA’s only prayer.
Company CEO Sophia Bekele had managed to get somebody at UNECA to write a letter supporting .africa back in 2008, and DCA has continued to pretend that the letter was relevant even after the entire continent came out in support of rival applicant ZA Central Registry.
During its Independent Review Process appeal, DCA begged the IRP panel to declare that the 2008 letter showed it had the support of the 60% of African governments that it requires to be approved by ICANN.
The panel naturally declined to take this view.
Now UNECA has said in a letter to the African Union Commission (pdf) dated July 20, which has since been forwarded to ICANN:

ECA as United Nations entity is neither a government nor a public authority and therefore is not qualified to issue a letter of support for a prospective applicant in support of their application. In addition, ECA does not have a mandate represent the views or convey the support or otherwise of African governments in matters relating to application for delegation of the gTLD.
…
It is ECA’s position that the August 2008 letter to Ms Bekele cannot be properly considered as a “letter of support or endorsement” with the context of ICANN’s requirements and cannot be used as such.

The AUC itself has also now confirmed for the umpteenth time, in a September 29 letter (pdf), that it doesn’t support the DCA bid either. It said:

Any reliance by DCA in its application… proclaiming support or endorsement by the AUC, must be dismissed. The AUC does not support the DCA application and, if any such support was initially provided, it has subsequently been withdrawn with the full knowledge of DCA even prior to the commencement of ICANN’s new gTLD application process.

The AUC went on to say that if DCA is claiming support from any individual African government, such claims should be treated “with the utmost caution and sensitivity”.
That’s because a few years ago African Union member states all signed up to a declaration handing authority over .africa to the AUC.
The AUC ran an open process to find a registry operator. DCA consciously decided to not participate, proclaiming the process corrupt, and ZACR won.
The new letters are relevant because DCA is currently being evaluated for the second time by ICANN’s independent Geographic Names Panel, which has to decide whether DCA has the support of 60% of African governments.
ZACR passed its GNP review largely due to a letter of support from the AUC.
If DCA does not have the same level of support, its application will fail for the second time.
The 2008 UNECA letter was the only thing DCA had left showing any kind of support from any governmental authority.
Now that’s gone, does this mean the DCA application is dead?
No. DCA has a track record of operating irrationally and throwing good money after bad. There’s every chance that when it fails the Geographic Names Review it will simply file another Request for Reconsideration and then another IRP, delaying the delegation of .africa for another year or so.