.jobs takes ICANN to arbitration

Employ Media, manager of the .jobs top-level domain, has become the first registry operator to take ICANN to arbitration to fight off a shut-down threat.
The company in the last hour said it has filed a Request for Arbitration with the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, after informal efforts to reach agreement with ICANN broke down.
Employ Media CEO Tom Embrescia said in a statement:

This filing was necessary to ward off ICANN’s unwarranted and unprecedented threat of contract termination. That action created immediate uncertainty about the .JOBS TLD on the Internet and caused significant duress on our business.

ICANN had threatened to terminate the .jobs registry agreement – which I believe is pretty much the only option available to it in the case of a perceived breach – in February.
The filing means .jobs can operate as normal until the situation is resolved.
The dispute is essentially about Universe.jobs, a jobs listing service operated by the DirectEmployers Association using tens of thousands of generic .jobs domain names granted to it by Employ Media.
The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, made up of independent jobs boards, complained to ICANN that Universe.jobs went against the spirit and letter of the original .jobs Charter.
Employ Media says that Universe.jobs was essentially authorized when ICANN approved its Phase Allocation process for handing out generic domains last year.
Employ Media is represented by lawyers from Crowell & Moring, some of the same individuals responsible for ICM Registry’s defeat of ICANN at its Independent Review Panel last year.
The request for arbitration can be read here in PDF format.

Cute infographic shows contents of the root

This ICANN infographic is a nice way to easily visualize all of the currently live and approved top-level domains on the internet.

(click to enlarge)
Accurate as of April 19, it breaks down the 307 extant TLDs into categories such as gTLDs, ccTLDs and IDNs, highlighting some metrics you may not be aware of.
Did you know for example that there are seven pre-approved ccTLDs that have not yet been delegated to a registry? Or that three ccTLDs belong to countries that officially no longer exist?
The graphic is culled from ICANN’s rather excellent fiscal 2012 Security, Stability & Resiliency Framework, which was published last night.
The report spells out in fairly accessible terms just what ICANN is responsible for in terms of security — and what it is not — and how the organization is structured.

War of words over .jobs “breach” claims

Employ Media and ICANN have come to blows again over ICANN’s threat to shut down the .jobs registry for allegedly selling domain names in breach of its Charter.
Both parties are currently talking through their outside counsel, and the possibility of litigation has raised its head in public for the first time.
In the latest set of correspondence published by ICANN, Employ Media sharply (and ironically) criticized ICANN’s decision to publish an earlier set of correspondence on its web site.
The earlier email exchange, which I blogged about here, revealed that ICANN had asked the company to amend its Charter.
Two days later, Employ Media’s lawyers wrote to ICANN’s lawyers to express disappointment with the decision to post these emails, questioning ICANN’s commitment to good faith negotiations.

In light of this apparent bad faith action on ICANN’s part, Employ Media is questioning whether any hope remains for a full and fair exchange of ideas regarding a resolution of its dispute with ICANN.
…
[ICANN has] substantially hindered Employ Media’s ability to engage in productive and honest negotiations: all future communications will necessarily be more guarded and less open, given the expectation that they will be published to a larger audience

ICANN and Employ Media are currently in a “cooperative engagement” process – a less formal way to resolve their dispute than heading to an arbitration forum or court.
ICANN claims the registry is breaking its Charter commitments to the human resources industry by allocating tens of thousands of .jobs domain names to the Universe.jobs project, which is run by a partner, the DirectEmployers Association.
Independent jobs boards, represented by the the .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, believe that Universe.jobs is unfair and not compliant with Employ Media’s own policies.
Employ Media’s latest letter (pdf), which it demanded ICANN publish, drops hints about some of the behind-the-scenes talks (with my emphasis):

Had we known that any part of our communication was to be published, we would have certainly memorialized, in writing, your statements to us that ICANN very much wants to avoid an arbitration over this dispute, and that ICANN was therefore willing to agree to a process for approving a Charter amendment in order to do so. We would also have memorialized our positions, including our position that a Charter amendment is neither necessary nor desirable, but that we were considering acceding to ICANN’s request solely in the hopes of avoiding arbitration

ICANN’s lawyers’ response (pdf), sent April 26, says ICANN was merely fulfilling its transparency obligations by informing the community about the extension of the talks deadline.
They also said that the Employ Media should stop pretending to be surprised that ICANN issued the breach notice and is now asking for a Charter amendment.
ICANN further accused the registry’s lawyers of legal “posturing” which was “seemingly geared solely towards use in future litigation”.
Employ Media was due to deliver a proposed amendment to its Charter by yesterday. ICANN has said it will not take any further actions based on its breach notice until May 6.

Rules for registry-registrar mergers proposed

ICANN has revealed how it intends to enable incumbent domain name registries to also become registrars, ending a decade of cross-ownership restrictions.
The industry shake-up could allow companies such as VeriSign, Neustar and Afilias to become accredited registrars in their own top-level domains later this year.
Hypothetically, before long you could be able to go directly to VeriSign for your .com domains, to Afilias and Public Interest Registry for .info and .org, or to Neustar for .biz.
The changes could potentially also kick off a wave of consolidation in the industry, with registry operators buying previously independent registrars.
ICANN’s proposed process is straightforward, requiring just a few amendments to the registries’ existing contracts, but it could also call for governmental competition reviews.
Registries will have to agree to abide by a Code of Conduct substantially the same as the one binding on wannabe registries applying later this year under the new gTLD program.
The Code is designed to stop registries giving their affiliated registrars unfair advantages, such as lower prices or preferential access to data, over other ICANN-accredited registrars.
Registries would also have the option to adopt the registry contract from the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook wholesale, although I expect in practice this is unlikely to happen.
ICANN would be able to refer vertical integration requests to national competition authorities if it determined that cross-ownership could cause “significant competition issues”.
VeriSign would be the most likely to be hit by such a review, but it’s also the only registry that does not appear to have been particularly hamstrung over the years by the forced separation rules.
The proposed process for registries to request the contract changes has been posted to the ICANN web site and is now open for public comment.

Over 1 million .mobi domains registered

The .mobi top-level domain now reportedly has more than a million registered domains.
HosterStats, which tracks the size of TLD zone files, reported today that .mobi currently has 1,002,232 domains.
This would make it only the sixth gTLD to break into seven figures, the third if you only include gTLDs created by ICANN.
The .mobi domain was approved in 2005 and launched by the registry, mTLD, in 2006. The company was acquired by Afilias in February 2010.
It would be far too pedantic to point out that Afilias still has over 5,000 .mobi domains reserved for auction, which would bring the total below a million, so I won’t.
In other news, .CO Internet has had to deny that the .co namespace has also broken through one million registrations, following reports to the contrary.
Barring a sudden spike in demand for .co domains, I’d guess that’s unlikely to happen until the second half of the year.

.CO to accredit 20 more registrars

.CO Internet is looking for more registrars to start selling .co domain names.
The company has just released a request for proposals, saying it plans to accredit up to 20 new registrars over the next 12 months.
.CO’s registrar channel was limited by its agreement with the Colombian government to 10 registrars in its first year of business – the government had originally wanted only three, to limit gaming – but that restriction no longer applies.
While there are only 10 .co registrars currently, a few of them operate reseller channels or gateways that have enabled unaccredited registrars to also sell the domains, albeit on non-optimal terms.
According to the RFP, .CO is particularly interested in registrars that are willing to promote the .co TLD by either bringing it to new markets or making it the subject of special marketing campaigns.
While .co operates outside of ICANN control, the company is sticking to its policy of only accepting ICANN-accredited registrars into its channel.
Also, only registrars that are already accredited to sell .biz domains (as well as .com and .net) will be able to offer .co, presumably due to the fact that Neustar is the registry provider for both.
This effectively excludes about 115 registrars, many of which are shell or legacy accreditations used for drop-catching.
There are certain unspecified “special considerations” that apply to corporate-focused registrars, according to the RFP, presumably because they tend to be rather low-volume and generally focused on defensive registrations.

Aussies to back city TLD bids

Australian authorities are planning to back bids for .melbourne and .sydney top-level domains, according to a report in The Australian.
The article quotes an official from the New South Wales Premier’s Office saying there’s a plan to release a tender for the right to operate .sydney, and somebody from the City of Melbourne saying they’re “actively considering” .melbourne.
The report does not spell out the expected uses of the TLDs. I expect some of the strategy will depend on what business plans the successful registry operator comes up with.
The current draft of ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook protects city names, demanding applicants show proof of support or non-objection from the relevant public authorities.
The only exception is when the applied-for string matches a non-capital city name, but is not intended to represent that city.
That’s designed to allow brand or generic TLDs that match smaller place names — think .phoenix or .buffalo.
With the latest revision of the Guidebook, it is noted that it is up for national governments to decide what the appropriate entity to support a city TLD bid is, which could complicate matters,
There’s already a Facebook group devoted to a .melbourne application.

Registries could become registrars by summer

The big incumbent top-level domain registry operators could apply to also become registrars as early as June this year, according to a just-passed ICANN resolution.
Last November, ICANN decided to dump its longstanding policy of generally not allowing TLD registries to also own and operate registrars.
While the rule was designed primarily for TLDs won under the new gTLD program, it will also retroactively apply to operators of existing gTLDs.
Neustar (.biz) has already publicly stated its intention to vertically integrate, and is keen for ICANN to lift its current 15% registrar ownership restriction before the new gTLD program kicks off.
According to a resolution passed by ICANN’s board of directors on Thursday, Neustar is not the only registry operator to make such a request.
The board last week…

RESOLVED (2011.04.21.13), the Board directs the CEO to develop a process for existing gTLD registry operators to transition to the new form of Registry Agreement or to request amendments to their registry agreements to remove the cross-ownership restrictions. This process would be available to existing operators upon Board approval of the new gTLD Program.

ICANN currently plans to approve the gTLD program June 20 at its meeting in Singapore.
That gives CEO Rod Beckstrom and his team just two months to come up with a process for allowing the likes of VeriSign, Neustar and Afilias to either amend their contracts or move to the standard contract outlined in the new TLD program’s Applicant Guidebook.
I see a potential source of tension here.
The registry agreement template in the Guidebook has been described by some as an “adhesion contract” due to its heavy balance in ICANN’s favor.
Existing registries will very likely prefer to simply delete the cross-ownership restrictions in their current contracts and incorporate the new proposed Code of Conduct rules.
On the other hand, some have suggested that registries should be obliged to adopt the new Guidebook agreement in full, rather than amend their existing deals, in the interests of equitable treatment.
Registrars still signed up to ICANN’s 2001 Registrar Accreditation Agreement only get the option to upgrade wholesale to the 2009 agreement, it has been noted.

Three more countries get IDNs

Citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Serbia will soon be able to use domain names in their local Arabic and Cyrillic-based languages, after ICANN approved internationalized domain names for the three nations.
The three new ccTLDs are الجزائر (meaning “Al Jazair” for Algeria), المغرب (“al-Maghrib”, for Morocco) and .срб (“srb” for Serbia).
ICANN’s board approved the requests at a meeting on Thursday. They could enter the domain name system’s root in as little as 10 days, though delegations usually take longer.
There are now 37 IDN ccTLDs in IANA’s database of top-level domains, covering 27 countries.
On Thursday, ICANN also approved the redelegation of North Korea’s ASCII ccTLD, .kp, to an entity called Star Joint Venture Company.

Registry avoids .jobs shut-down

Employ Media has come to a deal with ICANN to avoid having its .jobs registry contract revoked, at least for the next few weeks.
Following discussions with ICANN’s lawyers, the company plans to amend its Charter, and has agreed to stop allocating non-company-name .jobs domain names until May 6.
ICANN threatened to terminate the .jobs registry deal in February, after Employ Media started allocating thousands of premium vocational and geographic domains to a partner, the DirectEmployers Association, to act as entry points for Universe.jobs.
In a breach notice (pdf), ICANN said that this use of .jobs domains “is inconsistent with the purpose stated in the .JOBS Charter and represented to the ICANN community”.
The .JOBS Charter ostensibly restricts registrations to human resources professionals, but in practice there’s a great big loophole that allows anybody to cheaply qualify for a domain.
In February, ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey told Employ Media:

By not establishing any meaningful restrictions on who may register second level registrations in the .JOBS TLD, Employ Media put in operation a TLD where anyone can register names, thus defeating the purpose for which the sponsored TLD came into existence.

In its response, the registry noted that it had followed ICANN’s proper procedures for introducing new “registry services”, such as the Phase Allocation Plan that allowed it to seed Universe.jobs.
It accused ICANN of bending to the wishes of the .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, a group of independent jobs sites operators that had objected to Universe.jobs.
Employ Media’s chief executive Brian Johnson wrote:

This is a sad day for both the Internet community and the international human resource management community. ICANN should be promoting competition and working cooperatively with its contractual parties, but instead is choosing to ignore the plain meaning of its contract with Employ Media in order to appease some apparently well‐financed and well‐connected provocateurs.

Since that letter (pdf) was sent, ICANN and the registry have been engaged in private discussions aimed at resolving the conflict, as allowed by the registry agreement.
In the latest set of correspondence, exchanged over the last week, it has emerged that ICANN has agreed to give Employ Media time to remedy the situation by amending its Charter.
The letters do not reveal whether the amendments will allow Employ Media to continue to offer Universe.jobs or not. I suspect they will.
The amendments may require the company to consult with its nominal sponsor, the Society for Human Resource Management.
ICANN wants a proposed Charter amendment on its desk by May 2. It has agreed to take no further action related to the breach of contract allegations until May 6.