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.

“Frat boy culture” ICANN faces more sexual harassment claims

One of ICANN’s longest-serving employees has sued the Org and her old boss, claiming she suffered from years of sexual harassment and discrimination and was then laid off after she complained about her treatment.

The harassment claims relate to two male former ICANN employees and cover alleged behavior from off-color sexual jokes to groping, what the complaint calls “severe and outrageous sexual harassment and sexual assaults”.

But the suit also describes a broader “frat boy culture” at the Org that allegedly under-pays women and overlooks them for promotion while turning a blind eye to complaints about inappropriate behavior by male colleagues.

The suit seeks $77 million in damages and lists 14 causes of action under harassment and employment law, as well as a defamation claim against an outside lawyer ICANN hired to investigate the original complaints.

“Many of the allegations in the complaint are untrue and we will defend our organization and our policies vigorously,” ICANN said in a statement issued after the lawsuit was first reported by local Los Angeles press.

The complainant is Tanzanica King, former meeting strategy and design director, who worked at ICANN for 22 years — the second longest-serving employee — before being laid off a few months ago. She’s given her consent to be named in this article.

Her complaint says:

In exchange for her dedication, [King] has been subjected to the frat boy culture, having been repeatedly passed over for promotions, paid lower salaries than male colleagues, sexually harassed, and then wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle. For all its poetic waxing of gender equality, ICANN is a rotted apple veiled by a thin shiny veneer.

On the harassment claims, King’s suit covers alleged incidents from 2006 to 2023, mainly involving her direct supervisor on the meetings team, who left ICANN earlier this year. The complaint says he was fired due to the harassment.

The complaint says King’s boss “sexually harassed and sexually assaulted Plaintiff on the basis of her gender, including, without limitation, making unwanted sexual advances and engaging in unwanted verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature”.

The complaint says that ICANN’s top lawyers and HR department “turned a blind eye” to complaints from herself and other colleagues about this alleged behavior over the years.

It adds that interim CEO Sally Costerton this year “disregarded Ms. King’s privacy” and shared details of her complaints with the “entire executive team” after the alleged harasser was fired.

King herself took unpaid medical leave last December — she says due to the toll her experience at ICANN took on her — and lost her job during ICANN’s round of layoffs this May.

A female external lawyer hired by a female ICANN lawyer in May last year to investigate King’s complaints is accused of instead trying to victim-blame and cover up the allegations in order to “hide the facts from the Board of Directors”.

A large portion of the complaint seeks to paint the Org as a “good old boys” club, in which male employees with less time served were either promoted earlier or paid more than King.

The complaint also talks about alleged sexism in the broader ICANN community, referring to a 2018 survey of community members that found that some male ICANN meeting attendees have behaved inappropriately around female peers.

ICANN has spent years trying to portray itself as a female-friendly organization in the traditionally male-heavy tech sector, not too many years ago introducing an anti-harassment policy to sit alongside its long-standing Expected Standards of Behavior.

It has recently trumpeted the fact that its CEO and chair are both currently female, and chair Tripti Sinha has talked about her desire for “gender parity” on the board of directors, something that has yet to be achieved.

Here’s ICANN’s statement in response to the lawsuit in full:

ICANN has been sued by a longtime former colleague. The ICANN Board conducted a thorough independent investigation into the matters the plaintiff previously reported to ICANN. Many of the allegations in the complaint are untrue and we will defend our organization and our policies vigorously. Our arguments will be made in the proper venue.

ICANN strives to create a positive, safe, and inclusive work and community environment, and is committed to the highest possible standards of ethical, moral, and legal business conduct. ICANN enforces this through a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

This is at least the third time ICANN has been subject to legal proceedings related to alleged sexual harassment of female employees by more-senior male employees in the last five years.

Here’s King’s complaint (pdf) in full.

ICANN U-turns on appeals loophole after community revolt

ICANN has backtracked and substantially pared down a proposal that could have weakened its accountability mechanisms after most of the community said they didn’t like it.

The Org has published for public comment a proposed amendment to its bylaws that will exclude its new Grant Program from the Request for Reconsideration and Independent Review Process mechanisms.

The amendment would specifically exclude claims “relating to decisions to approve or not approve an application to the ICANN Grant Program” from both procedures.

An earlier proposal would have created a new procedure to enable ICANN to also exclude other programs from accountability in future, if certain conditions were met.

But the community largely reacted with revulsion to that proposal, saying they could not support something so overly broad, forcing ICANN to narrow it down to the Grant Program only. ICANN needs the support of its sovereign Empowered Community if it wants to amend its fundamental bylaws.

The $220 million Grant Program is seeking to distribute ICANN’s new gTLD auction funds to worthy causes, but there was a fear the cash could be siphoned off by lawyers if unsuccessful grant applicants were allowed to trigger the accountability mechanisms.

The revised language is likely to be much more palatable to the community, based on previous comments.

The public comment period is open until September 16.

Two out, two in as NomCom picks new ICANN directors

Two ICANN directors will lose their seats on the board and be replaced by newcomers at the Org’s annual general meeting later this year.

Vice chair Danko Jevtović and Edmon Chung, who have served two and one of the maximum three three-year terms respectively, will depart, according to the announcement of this year’s Nominating Committee picks.

They will be replaced by Amitabh Singhal, from the Asia-Pacific region, who I believe is an Indian internet policy expert who founded .in registry NIXI and also sits on the board of .org manager Public Interest Registry.

Also named, Miriam Sapiro, who I can only assume is Ambassador Miriam Sapiro, a US Trade Representative under the Obama administration who also held a senior policy role at Verisign for a couple of years two decades ago before leaving on acrimonious terms.

Chair Tripti Sinha of North America has also been reappointed for a final term.

The noobs, who both seem incredibly well-qualified for their new roles, will take their seats for the first time at the end of ICANN 81 in Istanbul in October.

It’s official, .internal is blocked forever

ICANN has formally confirmed that the gTLD .internal will never be delegated.

Its board of directors resolved earlier this week that it “reserves .INTERNAL from delegation in the DNS root zone permanently to provide for its use in private-use applications.”

It went on to recommend “that efforts be undertaken to raise awareness of its reservation for this purpose through the organization’s technical outreach.”

The idea is to give organizations a gTLD that they can use behind their firewalls that they can be sure will never become a public-DNS gTLD in future, which would carry the risk of name collisions and data leakage.

The string “internal” was picked in January over .private and put out for public comment to murmurs of approval.

The move means nobody will be able to apply for .internal in future new gTLD application rounds.

ICANN swaps out Asia VP

Jia-Rong Low, VP of stakeholder engagement and managing director for the Asia Pacific region, has quit ICANN and will leave next month.

An 11-year veteran of the Org, Low was the second hire in the Singapore office where he was based, ICANN interim CEO Sally Costerton said in a statement.

He will be replaced by an internal appointment, Samiran Gupta, who is currently VP for the South Asia region. Gupta has been employed off-and-on by ICANN since 2014.

July 30 update: Low is to join APNIC as its new director general in October.

Smaller, more intense ICANN meetings with no free cocktails?

ICANN has floated the idea of hosting smaller, more focused meetings that eschew tedious PowerPoint presentations and do away with the free cocktail receptions.

Seeking to eliminate $10 million from its annual budget, management recently reached out to community leaders to see if they can put their heads together to make ICANN’s public meetings less expensive.

Ideas include scrapping one of the thrice-yearly in-person meetings entirely and replacing it with a virtual-only event, along the lines of the seven that were held over Zoom during the recent coronavirus pandemic.

The suggestions appear in a “How We Meet” discussion paper (pdf), presented as a jumping-off point for community discussions rather than a top-down edict.

Straight to the important stuff: ICANN is proposing to “reduce or eliminate ICANN-hosted or ICANN-sponsored social and outreach events” such as receptions, group dinners and other social networking events.

ICANN could seek third-party sponsors for these kind of events or, horror of horrors, operate a “cash bar”, the document states.

No more free booze!

If cost-conscious alcoholics have a reason to be concerned, it’s arguably worse news for community time vampires who enjoy nothing more than sucking up 45 minutes of their hour plodding through a PowerPoint explaining what their group has been up to since the last meeting.

The document suggests focusing meetings on “timely topics”, such as those with upcoming deadlines, that require “interactive dialogue in a hybrid format”, and cutting some of the extraneous nonsense.

Therefore, “extensive slide presentations, updates, and meetings (including between ICANN staff and community groups) that do not clearly require in-person or hybrid interactions will not be scheduled”, the document suggests.

Speaking as a remote participant in recent years, I’ve often chose to wait for session recordings to become available, rather than listening live, precisely so I can fast-forward through that kind of thing. That’s obviously not an option for an in-person attendee, many of whom are there on ICANN’s dime.

The document also suggests getting rid of “informational and training” events, such as the “How It Works” sessions, which it says “incur significant costs” but have “limited participation”.

ICANN is also floating the idea of reducing the number of sessions overall, and grouping constituency-specific sessions into a tighter schedule over fewer days (presumably in order to slash the hotel bill).

But the biggest shake-up of them all is arguably the idea of reducing the number of full in-person community meetings from three to two, with the cut meeting replaced with a virtual one.

Given the shared experiences from seven, consecutive Virtual Public Meetings during the pandemic and the costs of a hybrid ICANN Public Meeting, it may be timely to discuss whether there is, in fact, a current need to have three in-person/hybrid ICANN Public Meetings each year, or whether the community can work just as effectively if at least one of these meetings is conducted virtually.

It does not say which meeting could be cut, but points out that reducing the number of public meetings may increase the need for smaller, intersessional events that focus on individual constituencies or topics.

The discussion document will inform a series of calls interim CEO Sally Costerton will hold with community leaders over the next month or so. Any consensus reached could be acted up as early as September.