dotShabaka Diary — Day 17, Collisions plan is a dog’s breakfast

The seventeenth installment of dotShabaka Registry’s journal, charting its progress towards becoming one of the first new gTLDs to go live, written by general manager Yasmin Omer.

Thursday 10 October 2013
As regular readers of this journal will know, we have been frustrated by the lack of certainty surrounding the new gTLD program.
Other industries would have picketed the building of the regulator with suitably angry placards being waved and a catchy song. Unfortunately in the domain name industry, angry blogs serve as a replacement to chaining ourselves to Fadi’s swivel chair.
So as a compromise, I ask readers to hum their favourite protest tune while reading our latest tale of woe.
Flippant commentary aside, the document ICANN released on name collisions yesterday (New gTLD Collision Occurrence Management) is a perfect example of what many applicants find challenging about ICANN staff’s use of the public comment process.
Despite the many detailed studies undertaken by a number of applicants and reported through the public comment process, it would appear that many of the recommendations or proposed solutions have been ignored by ICANN staff and the NGPC in favour of something that resembles a ‘dog’s breakfast’.
You’ll recall that ICANN made some suggestions to mitigate the risk of name collisions. There were three categories: High (dead men walking), Uncategorised (deer in headlights) and Low (phew ).
There was going to be a study about something at sometime that would decide stuff and the aforementioned deer would roam free. There was going to be a TLD tasting period during which time registries got to play spammer to unsuspecting ISPs (I wonder if I can get a refund like domain tasters used to, if I don’t get enough traffic?).
A comment period was had and people duly commented. Neither the original suggestions nor the comments seem to have any connection with what appeared in the document we read yesterday. The actions and processes discussed in the document are completely new. Oh, and the Board approved them.
A thought for those in the industry: are we so inured to this kind of procedural disdain that one more example simply doesn’t make us angry anymore?
So what of the document? Is it good for us and the industry? Well there is no low or uncategorised risk grouping anymore. Everyone is in the same bucket of riskiness. Depending on who you are, that might be good for you.
The TLD tasting period, where a TLD was delegated and emails were sent to every poor soul who made the mistake of looking up a non-existing TLD, is gone. That is definitely good. An outreach program with network operators and ISPs seems like an eminently sensible idea. A spam campaign chasing random DNS queries seems like a mad idea.
Now to the grim news – there will be another study (isn’t there always) and another process (if it’s implementation can we just… oh never mind).
The study will tell us which strings from the DITL data set (and other unnamed sets) are risky and why and what we should do with them. Such risk will be contextual to the TLD in question. There’s no detail on how many strings we are talking about. There’s no criteria for the string’s presence in the list (number of queries, type of queries, known risks etc). That sounds like a large chunk of work. No matter how it is automated.
The process to be determined is how the strings and suggested mitigations are delivered to and managed by registries. There’s potentially a lot of future system development and labour costs on the horizon for TLD operators.
Many TLDs will not need to wait for this completed work to delegate. However they must accept from ICANN a list of names they can’t delegate until the process/study and their personalised list of names is completed.
Firstly ICANN has to decide if you can take this option up. How will they do that you ask? I would point you to the very clear decision tree located within the document, only it appears to have been left out. Coming soon.
Second, ICANN has to create and send you the standby extra cautious list. Now we are getting nervous. Just how many names will be on this list? Will there be any filtering or common sense applied? Is the extra cautious list subject to comment? Does it exist already?
There’s also a new process that allows someone who suffers harm from the delegation of a second level domain to have it blocked for a period of up to 2 years. When one thinks through such a process it seems most likely that this harm is only determined after the delegation, not prior. Therefore Registries may be in a position where they need to un-delegate a domain already in use by a registrant.
That could be a rude shock to some innocent registrants. The principle of doing this bothers us. The practical and legal implication of doing this bothers us. And the lack of any detail around how this process is managed, most definitely bothers us.
Whenever I hear process and study I also hear delay. In fact the modus operandi of those opposing the gTLD program has not been to fight it, but to suggest one more study and another process, knowing the effect such activities will have.
So here we are, certain in our uncertainty that one day – soon or not so soon – we will be delegated.
We can’t be the only ones who have internal jokes about the randomness of ICANN policy development. They help us make light of the otherwise business crippling proclamations we receive with no warning.
Don’t you wish, just for once, those jokes weren’t so true?

Read previous and future diary entries here.

ICANN director quits, no reason given

Judith Vazquez has resigned from ICANN’s board of directors, a year before her term was due to expire, but ICANN has provided no explanation.
Vazquez joined the board in 2011, when she was appointed by the Nominating Committee. She had served two years of her three-year ICANN term and had one year left.
This week ICANN said, in a notice from general counsel John Jeffrey:

Judith Duavit Vasquez has formally notified me, as Secretary, that she has resigned from the ICANN Board. She has indicated that the effective date of her resignation will be Monday, 7 October 2013.

ICANN didn’t say why Vazquez, who was recruited by the Nominating Committee in 2011, had resigned.
Vazquez is a Filipino businesswomen with, according to her ICANN resume, experience developing the internet in her native country.
Vasquez was on the New gTLD Program Committee, which makes decisions for the board about new gTLDs.
Her company had originally applied for a new gTLD, which excluded her from the committee on conflict of interest grounds, but the the application was withdrawn before Reveal Day.
It will be up to this year’s Nominating Committee to find a replacement to fill in for the remainder of her term.

Jones distances herself from racy Go Daddy ads

Former Go Daddy general counsel Christine Jones has said she “didn’t particularly like” the company’s wildly successful, if sexually provocative, TV advertising.
Jones is one of several candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the company’s home state of Arizona.
She began her campaign officially this week, having come out on Twitter in August, and spoke to The Republic.
Asked about the “racy” TV spots, which were often focused on a large-chested woman with the Go Daddy logo emblazoned on her skimpy attire, Jones told the paper:

A lot of people have asked me about the Go Daddy ads, and to be candid, I didn’t particularly like those ads, either. If I had been running marketing, the ads would’ve been very different. But in the grand scheme of things, the ads ended up being pretty harmless. The ads really made that company successful, and that success allowed me to focus my personal time on developing policy, which made the Internet a better and safer place for users, especially children. Once people get to know me and they differentiate the marketing spin, which is this kind of edgy, Go Daddy-esque style, from my role there — which was running a place that had a lot of serious people doing a lot of serious work — they’ll understand there is a difference.

Some locals seem to be assuming that Go Daddy will support Jones’ campaign, with the paper reporting that “Jones’ entry into the race has political insiders — and opponents — intrigued and even unsettled by her resume and potentially hefty financial backing.”
There’s not a great deal of information about Jones’ positions in the interview, however.

Still no closure on GAC new gTLD advice

ICANN board members met again to discuss the Governmental Advisory Committee’s advice on new gTLDs at the weekend and, again, made baby steps towards addressing it.
The main update in a just-published New gTLD Program Committee resolution is that dozens of previously frozen applications for “closed generic” gTLDs have been thawed.
These applicants will be able to proceed to contracting with ICANN, as long as they agree to sign a version of the Registry Agreement that prohibits use of the string as a closed generic.
Closed generics haven’t been killed off, but anyone still planning to operate one is still in GAC limbo.
The NGPC said in its latest scorecard (pdf):

ICANN has received communications from many of the applicants for strings mentioned in this advice, stating that they are prepared enter the Registry Agreement as approved by the NGPC, which prohibits exclusive registry access for generic strings. Since moving forward with these applicants is consistent with the GAC advice, the NGPC directs staff to move forward with the contracting process for applicants for strings identified in the Category 2 Safeguard Advice that are prepared to enter into the Registry Agreement as approved.

The hundreds of “Category 1” strings — those, such as .law, .health and .games, that the GAC believes need extra regulation before being approved — are still on hold.
The NGPC said: “The NGPC is working on an implementation plan for the advice and will inform the GAC of the details upon approval by the NGPC.”
Does that mean ICANN will be accepting the advice? Right now, that’s not clear.
There was no movement on Amazon’s application for .amazon and transliterations, which were put on hold following the GAC’s advice at the Durban meeting in July.
Amazon submitted a lengthy argument challenging the legal basis of the GAC’s advice, which the NGPC is still mulling over.

New gTLD delegations probably not delayed by US government shutdown

If the US government shuts down tonight, would that delay the delegation of new gTLDs?
Probably not, from what I gather.
For reasons beyond the ken of most sane people*, the US legislature is currently deadlocked on a bill that would provide the funds to keep the executive wing of the government running.
It’s looking increasingly likely that the government is to shut down.
That’s a big deal for a whole range of important reasons, obviously, but it also has implications for new gTLD applicants.
The DNS root zone belongs to the US government, remember.
It’s managed by Verisign and ICANN’s IANA department suggests appropriate changes, but without USG the tripartite relationship that enables new TLDs to be delegated falls apart.
Without the NTIA in the mix, ICANN can make all the root zone change requests it wants and Verisign lacks the authority to execute them.
So there’s a reason to be worried if you’re a new gTLD applicant. If the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is out of the office for an indeterminate period, you may be looking at more delays.
However, it looks like the NTIA may have got that covered.
According to the Department of Commerce’s “Plan for Orderly Shutdown Due to Lapse of Congressional Appropriations”, (pdf) a “Telecomm. Policy Specialist”, tasked with “Emergency protection of internet management (ICANN)” is on the list of “Excepted Positions”.
I gather that this means that there’s going to be an NTIA person working during any possible shutdown to manage root zone changes, including gTLD delegations.
* It’s been several years since I lived in the States, and my grasp of the nuance of American political life has waned accordingly, but I gather the shutdown is somehow related to protecting insurance companies’ profit margins. Or defending the constitutional right to get better healthcare than people poorer than yourself. Something like that.

Name Collisions: Unanticipated Effects [Guest Post]

I attended the TLD Security Forum sponsored by Artemis in San Francisco five weeks ago. By happenstance, I became involved in a small group formed after the meeting that dedicated themselves to replicating the Interisle study (“Name Collisions in the DNS”) and carrying on with the next step in the analysis.
The work among competitors that occurred over the next four weeks was collaborative, intensive, and competent: an excellent example of how the multi-stakeholder model can accomplish significant work and publish it to the broad internet community in an effort to resolve an issue. It brought the right people together to accomplish more, faster than any other governance model would achieve.
Their work is easily identifiable among the many comments submitted on the name collision issue. Without offering an opinion on conclusions here, I note that the competence of work shines through and should be carefully considered.
The Interisle study sounded an alarm because it reported a potentially high number of domain name “collisions” that might result from the delegation of new gTLDs. The term “collision” is somewhat of a misnomer and the key issue, I think, is the use of search-list processing by companies in configuring their networks.
The Interisle report published the volumes of NX Domain responses by TLD and described possible harms but did not link harms to specific types of queries nor delve into the data in order to draw firm conclusions or propose mitigations.
There is nothing wrong with this –- the report was competently executed given the time available.
This is where several interested parties, mostly applicants, jumped in. In an impromptu meeting after the conference a half-dozen companies coordinated: the purchase of servers to analyze previously collected root-zone data (the “Day In The Life” or DITL data); acquisition of memberships in OARC, to whom the servers were donated; and the analysis of vast amounts of data.
Considerable time was spent redesigning queries in order to replicate the Interisle results from the DITL data so that the next step in the analysis would be seamless as the work transitioned from Interisle to this collaborative group.
Hypotheses were developed, queries written, data summarized and statistically tested. Every difference between the Interisle data and the newly analyzed data was discussed until the team was satisfied it would withstand public scrutiny.
The team met twice weekly in conference calls and traded numerous emails to flesh out technical details. Data scientists learned about the DNS, DNS experts learned about z-tests and the effects of non-standard distributions.
The team agreed to publish the data, which it has, so that anyone could perform analysis similar to that done by this team.
For me, these technical discussions brought to mind the reaffirmation of the effectiveness of the ICANN model that occurred as a result of this issue. Work continues and will be discussed at the next TLD Security Conference on October 1st in Washington, DC.
This is a guest post written by Kurt Pritz, ICANN’s former chief strategy officer. He is currently an independent consultant working with new gTLD applicants and others.

ICANN looking into string confusion confusion

ICANN is looking at “consistency issues” in new gTLD String Confusion Objections, program manager Christine Willett said in an ICANN interview published last night.
The nature of the probe is not clear, but ICANN does appear to be working with the dispute resolution provider, the International Centre For Dispute Resolution, on the issue.
In the interview, Willett said:

Staff is working diligently with dispute resolution service providers to ensure that all procedures have been followed and to look at the expert determinations — we’re looking at these consistency issues.

The SCO has come in for tonnes of criticism due to the conflicting and downright ludicrous decisions made by panelists.
I would hope that ICANN is looking beyond just whether “all procedures have been followed”, given that the root cause of the consistency problems appears to be the lack of guidance for panelists in the policy itself.
Also in the interview, Willett said that she expects the first new gTLDs to be “in production” before the end of the year, and guessed that the second round of applications “is a couple of years down the road”.
Watch it here:

Nominet under fire for lack of transparency

Nominet has raised the ire of critics of its Direct.uk proposal for refusing to engage with them, including forcibly ejecting one of their number from a .uk policy meeting.
Opponents of Direct.uk, which would open .uk’s second-level for the first time, have cataloged a number of instances of Nominet apparently failing to act in a transparent manner over the last few weeks.
Most notably, domainer Stephen Wilde of Really Useful Domains, author of a paper critical of Direct.uk, was “escorted” by hotel security staff from a recent policy discussion co-hosted by Nominet.
Domain lawyer Paul Keating was also refused entry and left without an escort.
The event was jointly hosted with the British Computer Society and the Digital Policy Alliance and was restricted to BCS members.
Wilde said that he had joined BCS specifically in order to attend the meeting and had then spent four hours on a train to get there. He said that there were plenty of empty seats in the venue.
Nominet spokesperson Elaine Quinn told DI that Nominet’s goal is to get as diverse a range of views as possible.
Wilde had already attended multiple previous meetings on the same topic and had been quite vocal at those, it seems. Nominet was worried that he might prevent other voices from being heard at the BCS event.
Quinn posted a statement to Nominet’s members-only forums, which was provided to DI, which read in part:

Two individuals who had been informed that they would not be able to attend in advance nonetheless turned up. Both initial requests to join were polite and were met in turn with a polite response. When the decision to deny entry was repeated, one person continued to remonstrate with our staff. He was then asked to leave the private area (not the hotel) by the hotel security. Upon refusal, the hotel security guard escorted the individual out of the area.
Colleagues at the event felt that the behaviour exhibited was unacceptable and that steps to protect our staff and to allow the event to proceed as planned were, unfortunately, necessary.

The BCS meeting was the latest in a series of controversies that have been raised by Direct.uk’s opponents and cataloged on the pseduonymous blog NominetWatch.com, which claims Nominet is trying to “silence dissenting voices”.
Another of its posts relates to the UK Network Operators Forum, an event on Friday in London.
A Nominet executive had been scheduled to speak at the event and others were due to attend, but all withdrew after the company discovered that Emily Taylor, its former head of policy and now one of its fiercest critics, was also speaking.
Taylor’s presentation (pdf) criticized Nominet’s lack of transparency, comparing it to ICANN’s relatively open culture.
Quinn confirmed that Nominet’s would-be attendees withdrew from the event, but said that this was because they were technical staff not qualified to speak to Taylor’s governance-focused criticisms.
NominetWatch also recently blogged about the fact that Nominet recently closed the comments on a blog post about Direct.uk, suggesting it was intended to stifle debate.
Quinn confirmed that comments were closed, but said it was a temporary measure while Nominet, which had staff on vacation, sifted through some of the many defamatory comments that had been submitted.
Comments have since been reopened and a backlog, many of which are critical of Nominet, have been published.

Europe continues to object to .wine gTLD

The European Union is continuing to fight the proposed .wine and .vin gTLDs, even after ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee formally withdrew its advice on the applications.
Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, wrote to ICANN on Thursday to say that its “firm position” is:

under no circumstance can we agree having .wine and .vin and on the internet, without sufficient safeguards which efficiently protect the rights and interest of both GI [Geographic Indicator] right holders and consumers and wine and wine products

The EC believes that .wine and .vin should have special second-level protections for wine GIs — geographic indicators such as Champagne, named after the region in which it is produced.
It’s a view that has been put forward by many associations of wine producers in the EU and US for over a year. ICANN is also in receipt of letters disagreeing with the GAC from other wine producers.
The law internationally, and even in the EU, appears to be patchy on whether and how GIs are protected. They don’t generally enjoy the same uniformity of protection as trademarks.
The GAC considered the two strings in April at the Beijing meeting but failed to come to a consensus.
It wound up asking ICANN for more time and, after failing to reach agreement again in Durban this July, finally concluded last week that it was unable to find a consensus on advice.
That potentially laid the path clear for the four applications for the two strings to continue to contention resolution, contracting and eventual delegation.
However, the GAC’s all-clear arrived too late for the ICANN New gTLD Program Committee to formally consider it at its meeting last week.
According to the Kroes letter, the European Commission’s view is:

there has not been any consensus decision overruling the advice given in Beijing. We are therefore of the firm opinion that the advice provided at the GAC April meeting stands as long as there is no new consensus on the matter.

The Beijing advice, which was explicitly intended to give the GAC more time to deliberate, said that ICANN should not proceed beyond Initial Evaluation with .wine or .vin.
Kroes’ logic may or may not be consistent with the letter of the Beijing communique, but certainly not its spirit. That’s becoming an increasingly common problem with GAC advice.
It seems unlikely, however, that ICANN would put the views of one single government ahead of what the GAC as a whole has submitted as formal advice.
Her letter does not seem to have been published by ICANN yet, but you can read it in PDF format here.

Hundreds of new gTLD applicants still in GAC limbo

A little over five months after the Governmental Advisory Committee issued its controversial Beijing communique, demanding strict controls over hundreds of new gTLDs, ICANN has still not taken any action.
ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee “accepted” a bunch of the GAC’s advice on new gTLDs during its meeting last week, but yet again punted the most crucial issue — how to handle the so-called “Category 1” strings.
In a resolution last Tuesday, published on Friday, the NGPC addressed 21 pieces of GAC advice from the July Durban meeting but took no action on the April Beijing advice.
One application was killed off as a result — Better Living Management’s bid for .thai — on geographic grounds.
Applications for .spa, .yun, .广州 (.guangzhou), and .深圳 (.shenzhen), which are all geographic strings, have been put on hold “until the agreements between the relevant parties are reached”.
Amazon’s applications for its brand in Latin and other scripts are also on hold again pending ICANN’s review of its lengthy response to the GAC’s decision to object to them in Durban.
Two applications — .date and .persiangulf — which had raised geographic concerns in Beijing have been given leave to proceed after the GAC decided not to object in Durban.
Applications for .wine, .vin, .ram and .indians appear to be safe, but it’s not 100% clear based on the NGPC’s resolution.
Category 1 strings
“Category 1” strings were those strings that the GAC deemed applicable to “Consumer Protection, Sensitive Strings, and Regulated Markets”.
The GAC wants these gTLDs, if approved, to be subject to oversight by regulatory or self-regulatory bodies and to implement strict security controls.
The Category 1 advice has been criticized by many, including members of the NGPC, for being too vague to implement and for unfairly moving the goalposts on applicants at the last minute.
In Durban, the NGPC had indicated that it was very unhappy with the Category 1 advice.
Last week, it chose to essentially ignore the Beijing communique in which the Category 1 advice was delivered, and instead “accept” the Category 1 advice from Durban, which simply stated:

The GAC will continue the dialogue with the NGPC on this issue.

The NGPC in response stated in an annex to its resolution:

The NGPC accepts this advice. The NGPC looks forward to continuing the dialogue with the GAC on this issue.

So the 500-odd applications captured by Category 1 are still in limbo, unable to sign registry contracts with ICANN, pending the outcome of these GAC-NGPC negotiations.
On the upside, it looks like ICANN is keen to get the issue resolved before ICANN’s next public meeting, which takes place in Buenos Aires in November. ICANN said:

The NGPC and staff are working with the GAC to identify a time and place for further dialogue on these items.

Community support
The NGPC also addressed the GAC’s demands relating to community support for applications. In doing so, it again deployed its tactic of “accepting” the letter of the GAC’s advice whilst plainly rejecting it in spirit.
The GAC had said in Durban:

the GAC advises the ICANN Board to consider to take better account of community views, and improve outcomes for communities, within the existing framework, independent of whether those communities have utilized ICANN’s formal community processes to date.

The GAC was basically worried about the new gTLD program not giving sufficient weight to informal objections from organizations that could be affected by applied-for strings.
The NGPC responded:

The NGPC accepts this advice. The NGPC will consider taking better account of community views and improving outcomes for communities, within the existing framework, independent of whether those communities have utilized ICANN’s formal community processes to date. The NGPC notes that in general it may not be possible to improve any outcomes for communities beyond what may result from the utilization of the AGB’s community processes while at the same time remaining within the existing framework.

In other words, due to the inclusion of the phrase “within the existing framework”, ICANN can do absolutely nothing else to address the GAC’s concerns and can still say it “accepted” the advice.
The NGPC had previously used the same tactic to avoid dealing with the GAC’s Beijing advice on giving “communities” the ability to kill off applications without going through the proper channels.