After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs

Almost 14 years after the first non-Latin domain names were added to the DNS root, ICANN has finally declared itself IDN-compatible.

“ICANN staff can now send emails to and receive emails from internationalized email addresses,” the Org said in a blog post today.

“ICANN also supports short and long ASCII top-level domains in all systems, as well as ASCII-based Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in Punycode (A-label) in public-facing systems,” Org added. “In addition, IDNs in Unicode (U-label) work in ICANN’s public-facing systems.”

It’s the weakest brag imaginable.

ICANN is the organization that is tasked with ensuring the internet’s naming and addressing systems are interoperable globally. It’s the one organization on the planet that absolutely, by definition, has to deal with the owners of IDNs.

And yet it’s taken almost 14 years for this milestone to be reached. The first IDN TLDs — the Arabic translations of the ccTLDs of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — were delegated to the DNS root May 5, 2010.

As my post from that time reflects, IDN support then, even in browsers, was awful.

There have been 159 IDN TLDs in the root since the first batch (about half a dozen or so were dot-brands that have since been retired) and a great many Latin-script TLDs support IDNs at the second level.

To be fair, ICANN cannot shoulder all the blame for this tardiness. Presumably, Org uses the same off-the-shelf email systems as the rest of us, so it would have been reliant on its vendors to add the necessary support.

Today’s blog post notes that ICANN had to work with its technology partners to impress upon them the importance of IDN support and Universal Acceptance in general.

ICANN has made greater IDN adoption one of its main goals of the forthcoming next application round of the new gTLD program, part of an effort to get more registries founded in currently under-served regions.

But there are some who believe this focus on IDNs has come at the cost of ignoring Universal Acceptance issues affecting Latin-script TLDs.

Popular social networking apps — surely the most common vector for link-sharing nowadays — have been found lacking in their support for the most recently created TLDs, and some say ICANN has failed its duty to reach out to developers to school them on UA.

Last year, the CEO of .tube discovered that popular software was relying on a hard-coded list of TLDs in the Android operating system that had not been updated since November 2015, meaning the 468 TLDs that have been delegated since then would not be recognized as domains and not “linkified” when shared on apps such as WhatsApp.

It also seems that Twitter as of this week is still relying on a hard-coded TLD list that has not been updated since 2020, meaning domains in the three TLDs that have been delegated since then — .spa, .kids and .music — are not linkified.

Given how simple updating a TLD list should be, and given that somebody at ICANN presumably has the ear of somebody at Twitter or Meta or Google or wherever — Android updated its list pretty quickly when alerted to to the problem by .tube — it’s baffling to me that these problems persist in the light of ICANN’s stated focus on UA.

2 Comments Tagged: .ua, ICANN, idns

Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows

There were fewer than six requests for private Whois data per day in December, and most of those were denied, according to newly published ICANN data.

The disappointing numbers, which also show that only about 2.5% of accredited registrars are participating, show that ICANN’s new Registration Data Request Service is certainly off to a slow start.

RDRS launched in November. It’s a ticketing system that enables people to request unredacted private Whois data, with no guarantee the requests will be granted, from registrars via an ICANN portal.

As it’s a two-year trial, ICANN promised to publish usage data every month. The first such report was published today (pdf).

The report shows that 1,481 requester accounts have been created so far, but that just 174 requests were made in December — about 5.6 per day on average.

Almost a third of requesters were intellectual property interests, with domain investors at 4.5% and law enforcement at 8%. Security researchers accounted for 15% of requests.

The data shows that most requests — 80.47% — were marked as “Denied” by registrars, largely because the registrar needed more information from the requester before it could process their request. ICANN said RDRS has no visibility into whether data was ultimately handed over outside of the system.

The supply-side data isn’t particularly encouraging either. Only 72 registrars were participating in RDRS at the end of the year.

That’s 2.5% of the 2,814 registrar entities ICANN contracts with, but if we exclude the 2,000+ drop-catching shell registrars owned by the likes of TurnCommerce, Newfold Digital and Gname, participation might be more fairly said to be closer to 10%.

ICANN said that the 72 registrars, which include many of the largest, account for 53% of all registered gTLD domain names, so you might think requesters have a better-than-even chance of being able to use the system for any given domain.

That’s not the case. RDRS data requesters are finding that the domain they are querying belongs to a non-participating registrar far more often than not — 80% of queries through the system were for domains not in the system, the report shows.

And when the registrar is participating, chances are that the data request will be denied — 80% were denied versus just 11.72% approved and 1.56% partially approved.

It takes on average two days for a request to be denied and four days for a request to be approved, the report shows.

While the results to date are arguably disappointing, given the years of effort the ICANN community and staff put in to build this thing, it’s still early days.

I also think it quite likely some of the numbers have been skewed by both the Christmas and New Year holiday period and early-adopter requesters kicking the tires with spurious requests.

9 Comments Tagged: ICANN, privacy, rdrs, whois

.ing doing way better than .meme

Google Registry launched two new gTLDs in December, and just over a month later one is doing way better than the other.

As of the latest zone files, .ing has over 16,000 domains, while .meme has just 2,700. Both went to general availability on December 5.

This might seem surprising, given that .ing is intended purely for domain hacks, but memes are of course ephemeral things where registering a matching domain might not be a sound long-term investment strategy.

Both Google launches pale in comparison to the registry’s most successful gTLD, .app, which sold over 250,000 names in its first month, May 2018.

Comment Tagged: .ing, .meme, google

DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?

A networking group set up to support women in the domain name industry, especially in the developing world, may be banned from applying for ICANN funding under rules published earlier this week.

Concerns have been raised that DNS Women may be excluded from the $10 million in non-profit Grant Program funding ICANN is making available this year because its CEO participated in the program’s community rule-making process.

ICANN’s rules, written by Org staff based on the recommendations of the Cross-Community Working Group on New gTLD Auction Proceeds (CCWG-AP), ban anyone from applying for grants — set at between $50,000 and $500,000 — if they have potential conflicts of interest.

Participation in the CCWG-AP is listed as one such conflict:

No person that participated as a member (including temporary member appointments) of the Cross-Community Working Group on New gTLD Auction Proceeds (CCWG-AP) is eligible to apply for or be included within funded proposal activities as principals, advisors, or in other roles. Grants may not be awarded to businesses and organizations owned in whole or in part by the CCWG-AP members or their family members. Grant funding may not be used to pay compensation to CCWG-AP members or their family members.

DNS Women is currently led by Vanda Scartezini, who was a member of CCWG-AP representing the At-Large Advisory Committee. She’s written to ICANN to express surprise to find herself suddenly unable to apply for funding. ICANN has responded with a pointer to the CCWG-AP’s recommendations, where the language closely mirrors that found in the new application rules as implemented.

But if Scartezini has shot herself in the foot, she may not be alone. According to the CCWG-AP’s final report, there may have been almost enough foot-shooting to create a Paralympic football team.

Of the 22 people who participated as full members of the group — and would be therefore barred from financially benefiting from grants — 10 people answered “yes” or “maybe” when asked to disclose whether they or their employer expected to apply for funding (almost all, including Scartezini, were “maybes”).

The $10 million tranche available this year comes from a $217 million fund ICANN raised auctioning off contested gTLDs following the 2012 application round.

Comment Tagged: auctions, ccwg-ap, dns women, grant program, ICANN, new gTLDs

Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform

A Ukrainian developer has released a free, open-source domain registry management platform that he says is compliant with ICANN standards and should be suitable for organizations that want to self-host ccTLDs or new gTLDs they apply for in the next round.

Named Namingo, lead dev Taras Kondratyuk says the software incorporates EPP, Whois and RDAP and can interface with the popular DNS servers and database management systems.

The software has been released under a standard MIT open-source license, which basically means you can do whatever you want with it with very few limitations. Kondratyuk describes the current release as a beta but said he hopes a stable version will emerge before the end of the month.

“So far, no registry or registrar has used Namingo. However, there’s interest from one ccTLD and two regional second-level domains, which plan to conduct tests soon,” he said in an email interview.

“ccTLDs can currently run Namingo without any issue, with all components being complete,” he said. “We’re just ironing out a few details for the first stable release, like making parts of panel more ‘beautiful’ or easier to work with.”

It sounds like a labor of love. Kondratyuk said he has no background in the domain industry, no plans to commercialize the software or offer paid support services. The software was scratch-built in PHP with the help of ChatGPT.

“Having worked with small hosting providers, I noticed a gap in free and open tools for managing registries or ICANN accredited registrars,” he said. “Existing solutions were either complex, infrastructure-specific, not fully supportive of gTLDs, or not genuinely free. Namingo aims to address these gaps.”

“It was developed as a community contribution,” he said. “If a company wishes to adopt it for registry services, they’re welcome to, thanks to the permissive MIT license. My role is more in line with offering guidance rather than fully engaging in a commercial venture.”

“While I’m open to providing installation support, my capacity for hosting or round-the-clock support is limited. I just hope that a company might show interest in the future and offer this service,” he said.

After the registry platform is finished, Namingo will finish off its platform for ICANN-accredited registrars too, he said.

6 Comments Tagged: namingo

INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital

Internet Naming Co has sold one of its gTLDs to Identity Digital, barely a year after taking it from UNR.

The Registry Agreement for .juegos — Spanish for “games” — was assigned to ID subsidiary Dog Beach in early December, according to ICANN records.

ID already runs the English-language .games, while XYZ runs the singular .game. There is no singular gTLD in the Spanish.

.juegos in volume terms has been a disappointment. Originally with UNR predecessor Uniregistry, it peaked at 2,353 domains under management in 2016, when names were priced at around $20 a year.

But the gTLD was affected by Uniregistry’s decision to massively increase prices to compensate for weak volume in 2017, which caused some of the leading registrars to drop the TLDs from their storefront.

To this day, GoDaddy still does not carry .juegos, but Tucows seems to have started selling it again, at an eye-watering $500 a year. Wholesale pricing is believed to be $300 a year. Namecheap sells it for $368 a year.

.juegos had 649 domains under management at the last count. The largest registrar in Entorno, which unsurprisingly based in Spain.

INCO took over .juegos, along with a bunch of other former Uniregistry gTLDs, in late 2022.

It will be interesting to see if ID reduces prices to match .games, which is believed to wholesale at $20 a year.

Comment Tagged: .juegos, acquisition, assignements, ICANN, identity digital, internet naming co, uniregistry, unr

Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop

A junk drop is an anxiety-inducing prospect for any domain registry, but what if the registry is a national government and domain revenues are suddenly a huge portion of the money it has to spend on public services?

That’s the situation the Caribbean island of Anguilla finds itself in today, having benefited from a huge windfall last year with the sale of .ai domains but not a guarantee that its hundreds of thousands of new registrants will stick around.

Speaking to the local legislature in mid-December, Premier Ellis Webster said that .ai sales brought in a projected 77.18 million East Caribbean Dollars ($28.5 million) in 2023, compared to its start-of-year budget estimate of EC$24 million ($8.9 million).

That’s a huge chunk — about 20% — of the government’s overall 2023 revenue of EC$399.13 million ($148 million).

Just two years earlier, before the popularization of AI with the rise of tools such as ChatGPT, domains were bringing in just shy of EC$20 million ($7.4 million) against an overall government revenue of EC$220 million ($81.4 million).

But it seems Webster has been well-advised on the speculative nature of the domain name industry. He told lawmakers .ai’s performance was “a moment of pride and potential” but added that it “also calls for a moment of introspection and caution”.

The main beneficiary of the new domain money will be the development of Anguilla’s small single airport and growing the island’s important tourism sector, Webster indicated, something governments have been promising for years. Roads and schools will also see investment.

Anguilla is a British overseas territory with an estimated population of about 16,000.

According to a transcript of his remarks (pdf), Webster said:

We must acknowledge that these revenue streams, while robust, are not under the direct control of our government. The digital landscape is ever-changing, and what seems like a perennial source today can rapidly evolve tomorrow…

Our approach must be balanced — leveraging this opportunity to enhance our infrastructure and services while maintaining a diversified and sustainable revenue base. This will ensure that we do not find ourselves in a precarious position should the dynamics of the digital domain market shift

While .ai may be somewhat resistant to over-speculation due to its high prices (up to 10x .com, depending where you buy), those high prices may also inspire speculators to let their names drop if the .ai aftermarket fails to live up to expectations.

It seems certain that AI is going to become an all-pervasive force in human civilization in the coming years, but there’s always the risk that the same might not be true of .ai.

1 Comment Tagged: ai, anguilla, junk drop

Five more gTLDs get launch dates

Internet Naming Co has revealed the launch dates for the five dormant gTLDs it acquired late last year.

The company plans to go to Sunrise with .diy, .food, .lifestyle, .living, and .vana on January 24, according to ICANN records.

Before general availability on March 6, there’ll be a week-long Early Access Period, with prices starting at $25,000 wholesale and decreasing daily to settle at GA prices.

Unusually, and I think uniquely, there’s also going to be a 24-hour “Customer Loyalty Period” on February 28/29, which has the same prices as day one of EAP.

INCO CEO Shayan Rostam told me this period “gives us the opportunity to provision domains to certain existing customers or partners after sunrise but before GA.” He described it as a “1-day pioneer program phase for the registry.”

The five gTLDs were bought from Lifestyle Domain Holdings last year, as the would-be registry carried on dumping or selling off its portfolio of long-unused gTLDs.

.vana was a brand, but INCO plans to use it to do something as-yet-unrevealed related to blockchain naming systems. .diy refers to “Do It Yourself”, the practice of carrying out home improvements or repairs without hiring professional experts.

All of the five will be unrestricted. They’ve all been moved to the Tucows back-end registry service provider.

Comment Tagged: .diy, .food, .living, .vana, eap, ICANN, internet naming co, lifestyle, lifestyle domain holdings, new gTLDs, sunrise

$10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs

ICANN has officially launched its Grant Program, making $10 million available to not-for-profit projects this year.

The Org expects to start accepting applications for between $50,000 and $500,000 between March 25 and May 24 and start handing out the cash early next year.

It’s the first phase of a program that currently sees ICANN sitting on a distributable cash pile of $217 million that it raised by auctioning off contested new gTLD registry contracts under the 2012 gTLD application round.

The money is only available to registered charities that in some way support ICANN’s mission in terms of developing internet interoperability or capacity building.

Organizations worldwide will be able to apply, but it seems unlikely anyone from a country currently subject to US government sanctions will be successful. Conflicted organizations — such as those led by somebody involved with the program — are also barred.

Applications for grants will be assessed by ICANN staff, a yet-to-be-named Independent Application Assessment Panel comprising “a diverse collective of subject matter experts”, and ultimately the ICANN board of directors.

More information and the application form can be found here.

Comment Tagged: auctions, grant program, ICANN, last resort, new gTLDs

Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter

The Government of Anguilla continued to benefit from the rising popularity of artificial intelligence in the fourth quarter of 2023, with almost 50,000 more .ai domains being registered.

As of December 20, there were 353,928 .ai domains, compared to 306,861 on September 26, an increase of 47,067, according to the registry’s web site. That’s an increase of 105,319 compared to the number reported June 14.

Over 100,000 names in half a year is pretty impressive for a tiny island territory — comparable to growth in ccTLDs for far more populous nations such as Germany (.de) and Brazil (.br) — and it comes despite the relatively hefty price tag .ai commands.

At the major registrars today, you’re likely to pay $60 to $80 a year for an initial registration, with a two-year minimum. Renewals are about ten bucks more.

There’s certainly a certain degree of speculation going on here, but it’s far lower than you typically see in heavily discounted gTLDs.

The increased popularity seems to have come with increased abuse risk. The registry’s operator has hastily updated the terms of service a few times over the last year, making more types of conduct unacceptable.

Comment Tagged: ai