ICANN’s .org decision was NOT unanimous, and it was made in secret

When ICANN announced its decision to deny Public Interest Registry’s request to be acquired by Ethos Capital at the end of April, I felt a little foolish.

I’d confidently predicted just days earlier that the decision by the board would not be unanimous, but ICANN, in announcing the decision, said “the entire Board stands by this decision”.

But it turns out I was right after all. Three directors voted against the consensus and one abstained.

The dissenting votes were cast by industry policy consultant Avri Doria, Serbian internet pioneer Danko Jevtović, and former Sudanese ccTLD operator Ihab Osman.

Doria and Jevtović voted against the first resolved clause, which rejected PIR’s request. All three voted against the second resolved clause, which would have allowed PIR to file a second request.

Sarah Deutsch, a private practice lawyer, abstained from both votes, presumably because she also sits on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the civil liberties group that can, via California’s attorney general, probably be credited most with getting the transaction killed.

All three dissenters and Deutsch are Nominating Committee appointees.

According to the preliminary report of the April 30 meeting, “Doria indicated that she would be voting against the resolution and explained her views about how the public interest would be better served by ICANN granting its consent to PIR’s request.”

What her reasons were are not reflected in the record.

It also seems likely that any substantive minuting of ICANN’s decision is likely to be limited, as it appears to have been made at a different, off-the-books session at an unspecified earlier date.

The preliminary report notes the “the Board discussed and considered alternative draft resolutions for potential Board action as part of an earlier briefing”.

No such earlier meeting is listed on ICANN’s web site. The board’s previous formal meeting, two weeks earlier, had PIR’s request removed from the agenda at the last minute.

So it appears that ICANN’s board decided to reject the deal basically in secret at some point between April 17 and April 29, during a meeting of which ICANN has no obligation to publicly release the minutes.

Nice transparency loophole!

There’s always the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, I suppose.

8 Comments Tagged: .org, acquisition, board, ethos, ICANN, isoc, pir, transparency

Donuts kicks down .place fences after attempt at innovation

Donuts has made its temporarily restricted gTLD .place unrestricted once again, two years after announcing it would be taking a stab at some technological innovation.

.place has been under lockdown for two years as Donuts planned to use it in “geofencing” applications developed by a startup it had invested in.

Geofencing is the practice of dividing the world up into three dimensional GPS-based chunks, placing those chunks into a registry, then selling them to businesses and others.

The idea was that each .place domain would be linked to a specific geofenced area. Mick could register mickscafe.place and assign the coordinates of his cafe to that domain.

In 2018, Donuts started telling registrars not to sell .place domains until its partner, Geo.Network, had launched its applications. It had invested an undisclosed sum in Geo.Network in 2016, when it was known as GeoFrenzy.

But these applications do not appear to have yet surfaced, and Donuts is now letting anyone register .place names for $10 a pop.

Since the 2018 freeze, the number of registered .place domains has tumbled from about 7,500 to about 3,800. Donuts says it has a 63% renewal rate and that 26% of its names are in active use.

2 Comments Tagged: .place, donuts, geo.network, geofencing, geofrenzy, geonetwork

.org sale officially dead

Public Interest Registry has formally announced that its proposed $1.13 billion acquisition by Ethos Capital is dead.

The company told ICANN yesterday that it is withdrawing its request for a change of control under its .org contract and that it “will not be pursuing an ICANN Request for Reconsideration or taking any other action to try to revive the Transaction”.

In a statement, CEO Jon Nevett said that PIR is no longer for sale to any other party. It will remain under the Internet Society’s control.

He also pointed out that it’s not within ICANN’s power to arbitrarily transfer .org to another registry, as some critics have called for.

“Such a transfer by ICANN is a contractual impossibility under our registry agreement,” he wrote.

ICANN rejected the change of control request after deciding it was not in the public interest for .org to pass into for-profit hands.

Following the decision, ISOC had indicated that PIR was no longer for sale.

3 Comments Tagged: .org, acquisition, ethos, ICANN, isoc, pir, public interest registry

Afilias promotes .vote domains amid US vote-by-mail controversy

Afilias-owned Monolith Registry, which runs .vote and .voto, has launched a site designed to help US citizens figure out how — or if — they’re able to vote by mail during the coronavirus outbreak.

The site, at mailyourballot.vote, comes as controversy rages in the US about whether voters should be forced to show up in person to ballot boxes in the midst of a deadly-virulent pandemic.

Reports suggest that Republicans are generally against mail-in votes, hiding behind bogus fears of voter fraud, because a lower turnout generally favors their candidates.

While I suppose one could argue that by attempting to make the information accessible it’s implicitly picking a side, Afilias doesn’t have a lot to say about the partisan debate. It said in a press release:

In the age of COVID-19, many voters are interested in voting by mail to avoid potential exposure to the virus. Unfortunately, learning HOW to vote by mail is difficult, as every state has different rules and puts this critical information in a different place. For example, 7 states (IN, LA, MI, SC, TX, YN and KY) restrict voting by mail to elderly voters only and 29 states (plus Washington, D.C.) only allow it in federal elections. Recently, governors of two states (NY and KY) ordered absentee ballot applications to be sent to all of their states’ voters.

The new site itself is little more than a directory: a clickable map of the US that bounces you to the official state government policy/instructions on voting by mail.

.vote isn’t an especially populous gTLD, having roughly 3,500 regs at the last count.

The US presidential election is this November.

1 Comment Tagged: .vote, .voto, afilias, monolith

After Zoom trolling, ICANN 68 will be password-protected

If you want to show up to ICANN 68, which will be held online next month, you’re going to need a password.

ICANN said this week that it’s updating its Zoom software and standard configuration to require passwords. In a blog post outlining a number of changes to its Zoom instance, ICANN said:

The most impactful change is the new requirement that all meetings be secured with a password. This is the first step recommended by security professionals to keep meetings secure, and one which we had largely adopted org-wide prior to making it a requirement for all. We will make another announcement in the coming weeks regarding how this may impact joining meetings during ICANN68, as we work towards the best overall solution.

Quite how this could work while maintaining the usual openness of ICANN’s public meetings — which have always been free to attend basically anonymously — remains to be seen.

At ICANN 67, Zoom sessions that were open to the public simply required you to enter a name. Any name. At in-person public meetings, I don’t think you even need to show ID to get a hall pass.

The changes come in the wake of a “Zoombombing” incident during a minor meeting in March, during which trolls showed up via a publicly-posted link and flooded the session with “inappropriate and offensive” audio and imagery.

5 Comments Tagged: icann 67, icann 68, security, zoom, zoombombing

Despite Brexit, .eu actually returned to growth in Q1

Brexit may have been pounding EURid’s domain base for the last few years, but .eu domains recovered a little in the first quarter due to promotional activity in Portugal.

The UK left the European Union on January 31, and Brits will lose their right to register and hold .eu domains when the so-called transition period ends at the end of the year.

Naturally enough, UK-based registrations of .eu domains continued to decline in Q1, down 24% year over year and 5% on the quarter to end March at 142,600 domains. It’s still the ninth-biggest eligible nation in terms of regs.

But a remarkable 64% spike in regs from Portugal, which EURid attributes to registrar-led promotions, seems to have helped .eu return to a growth state.

There were 80,000 .eu regs from Portugal at the end of the quarter, up by about 30,000 from the end of 2019, more than enough to counteract the 8,000-domain loss from the UK.

Overall, .eu grew from 3,579,689 domains to 3,623,050 domains during the quarter, an increase of about 43,000 or 0.5%.

The number of domains being claimed by EU citizens living outside the EU — possible under a newish policy — more than doubled to 759 domains.

Comment Tagged: .eu, brexit, eurid

ICANN whistleblower expects to be fired after alleging budget irregularities, bugged meetings

The chair of ICANN’s highly influential Nominating Committee expects to lose his seat after turning whistleblower to expose what he says are budgetary irregularities and process failures that could have altered the outcome of ICANN’s board-selection process.

In a remarkable March 25 letter, Jay Sudowski even accuses ICANN of secretly recording and transcribing NomCom’s confidential deliberations.

The NomCom is the secretive committee responsible for selecting people to fill major policy-making roles at ICANN, including eight members of its board of directors. It’s made up of people drawn from all areas of the community.

Because its role is essentially to conduct job interviews with board hopefuls, it’s one of the few areas of the ICANN community whose conversations are almost entirely held in private.

But Sudowski is attempting to shine a little light on what’s going on behind the scenes by filing a broad and deep request under the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, which is ICANN’s equivalent of a freedom of information law.

In it, he accuses ICANN Org of some fairly serious stuff.

First, he claims ICANN is fudging its budget by over-reporting how many full-time equivalent (FTE) staff members are involved in NomCom work, and by denying requests for “trivial” reimbursements of as little as $47 even as NomCom cuts costs by moving to a remote-only working model.

ICANN grants NomCom a FY20 budget of $900,000, of which $600,000 is allocated to “personnel costs” related to three FTEs.

“Nowhere near 3 FTEs are allocated to NomCom. Where is this money going?” Sudowski asks, demanding under the DIDP to see records of how much ICANN actually spent supporting NomCom’s work over the last five years.

He also claims that the NomCom process may have been compromised by allowing non-voting members to participate in decision-making meetings during the 2017 cycle, writing:

ICANN Org potentially allowed the NomCom to violate ICANN Bylaws by allowing nonvoting members of the NomCom to participate in outcome determinate components of the assessment and selection process that may have fundamentally alerted [I believe this is a typo for “altered”] the outcome of the 2017 NomCom process.

The non-voting members of the NomCom are the board-appointed chair and chair-elect, as well as appointees from the Root Server System Advisory Committee, Security and Stability Advisory Committee and Governmental Advisory Committee.

The board members appointed by NomCom in 2017 were Avri Doria and Sarah Deutsch. NomCom also picked members of the GNSO Council, ccNSO Council and At-Large Advisory Committee.

Sudowski, whose day job is running a data center company in Colorado, further claims that the ICANN board has been instructed by the Org to refuse to communicate with NomCom members.

“In recent years, ICANN Org has secretly recorded and transcribed confidential deliberations of the NomCom,” he adds.

He wants evidence of all of this to be released under the DIDP, under a nine-point list of documentation requests.

It’s unfortunate that I am forced to make this request in such a public manner, but when there is controversy over a $47 expense to support a NomCom member, I can only come to the conclusion that ICANN Org is unable and unwilling to provide necessary “administrative and operational support” for the NomCom.

He also expects retribution:

I also expect that the Board, which has been instructed to not communicate with me, will remove me from my role as Chair of the NomCom, given the nature of the concerns noted in this letter. Frankly, if this comes to pass, my removal is a clear and direct attack on the autonomy and authority of the entire NomCom.

So far, his request has not been answered.

Under the DIDP, ICANN has a maximum of 30 days to reply to such requests. In reality, this has always been treated as a minimum, with both request and response typically published on the same day, exactly 30 days after the original filing.

Its responses are typically links to information already in the public record and a list of excuses why no more info will be released.

But so far, neither request nor response has been published in the usual place, 42 days after Sudowski sent his letter. ICANN has missed its deadline by almost two weeks.

The only reason the DIDP (pdf) is in the public domain at all is that Sudowski copied it to the mailing list of the Empowered Community, ICANN’s community-based oversight body. Thanks to George Kirikos for posting the link to Twitter last week.

It is a pretty extensive request for information, that presumably would take some time to collate, so I’d be hesitant to cry “cover-up” just yet.

But the fact that the request exists at all serves to highlight the shocking lack of trust between ICANN and one of its most powerful committees.

UPDATE: Sudowski has said that his request was withdrawn. There’s no particular reason it could not be refiled by somebody else, however, as DIDP is open to all.

I actually withdrew the request. Org and the Board have been very helpful and responsive in meeting the needs of the NomCom since the original request was submitted. It’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned.

— Jay Sudowski (@HNJaySuds) May 1, 2020

6 Comments Tagged: budget, ICANN, nomcom, whistleblower

Portugal ccTLD says growth better than expected during pandemic

The Portuguese ccTLD operator has become the latest registry to say that it is still seeing growth despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Associação DNS.PT recently said (via Google Translate) that “the registration in .pt is increasing considerably, we would even say above the expected”.

For the period of January 1 to April 27, .pt added 32,671 new domains, DNS.PT said.

However, that appears to be a considerable drop in regs when compared to the first quarter of 2019 (almost a month shorter period), when it saw 36,930 new registrations. It added 121,359 in the whole of 2019.

The registry said that 359 of these domains — about 1% — appeared to be directly related to the pandemic. About half a dozen have been deleted for violating DNS.PT’s terms of service.

The whole .pt space comprised over 1.2 million domains as of February.

Coronavirus has had a relatively small impact on health in Portugal, compared to other European countries. So far, it’s recorded a little over 1,000 deaths from the disease, from a population of 10.8 million.

Comment Tagged: cctlds, coronavirus, covid-19, dns.pt

The .org deal may be dead and buried, but calls remain for PIR to lose its contract

The Internet Society has revealed that the .org registry operator PIR is no longer for sale.

The news came in a statement from ISOC chair Andrew Sullivan late Friday, less than 24 hours after ICANN withheld its consent for the proposed $1.13 billion acquisition by private equity firm Ethos Capital.

ICANN had held the door open for Ethos and ISOC to resubmit a change of control request, and Ethos had said Thursday that it was evaluating its options, but it appears the decision has been made to keep PIR under ISOC’s wing.

In his statement, Sullivan expressed his dismay that ICANN had acted as a “regulator” by evaluating the deal using a public interest test rather than simply rubber-stamping it as it has in all other cases of registry acquisitions. He wrote:

It should concern the Internet community that ICANN has shown itself to be much more susceptible to political pressure than its limited mandate would recommend.

…

Now that we know that ICANN believes its remit to be much larger than we believe it is, we can state this clearly: neither PIR nor any of its operations are for sale now, and the Internet Society will resist vigorously any suggestion that they ought to be.

But who would want to, or could afford to, buy it? While ICANN has made it clear that PE firms are welcome to acquire other TLDs, it wants .org to remain in non-profit hands.

During the last few months of controversy, one other embryonic effort to take over .org was announced, led by founding ICANN chair Esther Dyson.

Called the Cooperative Corporation of dot-org Registrants (CCOR), it had no intention of handing over a billion dollars for .org, it simply wanted ICANN to assign the contract to its control.

It still wants that, or something like that. In a statement Saturday, CCOR said it “calls upon ICANN to proceed with the established multi-stakeholder led open request for proposals for stewardship of the dot-org domain”.

Unless it can be shown that PIR has seriously broken the terms of its Registry Agreement, the chances of ICANN randomly opening up .org to tender is pretty much zero.

CCOR goes on to say that it is still worried about .org falling into private hands and that it will lobby for legally binding policies “including the preservation of privacy, diversity and human rights, and freedom from censorship”.

1 Comment Tagged: .org, acquisition, ccor, ethos, ICANN, isoc, pir

“Dangerous precedent” as ICANN rejects $1.13 billion .org buyout

In a decision that will shock many, ICANN won’t let Ethos Capital buy Public Interest Registry from the Internet Society.

Its board of directors yesterday voted to reject PIR’s request for a change of control of the .org contract, saying that “the public interest is better served in withholding consent”.

Ethos responded angrily almost immediately, saying the decision “sets a dangerous precedent with broad industry implications” and that it is “evaluating its options”.

The ICANN resolution, which was published overnight, is justified by setting out the case that .org is a unique case: a large legacy gTLD with a mandate to serve non-profit entities.

The Board was presented with a unique and complex situation – a request to approve a fundamental change of control over one of the longest-standing and largest registries, that also includes a change in corporate form from a viable not-for-profit entity to a for-profit entity with a US$360 million debt obligation, and with new and untested community engagement mechanisms relying largely upon ICANN contractual compliance enforcement to hold the new entity accountable to the .ORG community. ICANN is being asked to agree to contract with a wholly different form of entity; instead of contracting with the mission-based not-for-profit that has responsibly operated the .ORG registry for nearly 20 years, with the protections for its own community embedded in its mission and status as a not-for-profit entity. If ICANN were to consent, ICANN would have to trust that the new proposed for-profit entity that no longer has the embedded protections that come from not-for-profit status, which has fiduciary obligations to its new investors and is obligated to service and repay US$360 million in debt, would serve the same benefits to the .ORG community.

Essentially, ICANN is holding ISOC to the by-and-for non-profits commitment that it made when it inherited the registry from Verisign back in 2002. You may recall I went into some depth on the history of .org back in December.

While noting the broad criticism from various parties — which included domainers and non-profits — about the proposed acquisition, the resolution makes specific reference to the investigation by the office of the California attorney general, which had made vague threats of legal action against ICANN.

Some commentators, including Jonathan Zuck and Michele Neylon — are worried that the AG’s influence now means ICANN has a new boss, and that special interest groups in future need only lobby his office in order to override community-built consensus.

But ICANN did not single out one reason for its decision, saying withholding consent was “reasonable in light of the balancing of all of the circumstances”.

Ethos, while not calling out the AG directly, made the broader claim that ICANN has acted outside its mandate by succumbing to lobbying by outside parties.

Its statement, which I think contains hints at future legal action, reads in full:

Today’s decision by ICANN sets a dangerous precedent with broad industry implications. ICANN has overstepped its purview, which is limited to ensuring routine transfers of indirect control (such as the sale of PIR) do not impact the registry’s security, stability and reliability. Today’s action opens the door for ICANN to unilaterally reject future transfer requests based on agenda-driven pressure by outside parties. It allows ICANN to base its decisions on a subjective interpretation of what it deems to be relevant in these transactions, rather than following its own clear and specified legal directive.

This decision will suffocate innovation and deter future investment in the domain industry. ICANN has empowered itself to extend its authority into areas that fall well outside of its legal mandate in acting as a regulatory body. Today’s decision also creates an uncertain and unpredictable business environment, where the enforceability and value of the ICANN contract itself may be called into question now that the rules of transferring ownership are open to influence by outside interests. Ethos is evaluating its options at this time.

In the same statement, PIR called the decision “a failure to follow its bylaws, processes, and contracts” and ISOC said ICANN “has acted as a regulatory body it was never meant to be”.

While the decision could be chalked up as a win for domain investors and civil libertarians that had challenged the acquisition, it has implications that may not entirely please them.

Assuming the deal stays dead, PIR is no longer promising to only increase prices by 10% a year. It will be able to raise its registry fee arbitrarily, whenever it likes, subject to notice periods and the usual uniform pricing rules.

Domainers will have to hope there’s no sour grapes at ISOC, or they could be looking at big price hikes before long.

And for those interested in censorship, remember PIR is no longer committing to a Stewardship Council that would help protect free speech in .org domains.

The ICANN decision came in spite of a last-minute plea from former chair and ISOC co-founder Vint Cerf, who in a letter (pdf) described the deal as a “wedge issue” that could be leverage to force ICANN into an existential crisis, with outside interests such as the ITU pushing itself as a replacement.

ICANN also received eleventh-hour submissions from the German government (which was against the deal) and German trade group Eco (which was vague but appeared to be for the deal).

11 Comments Tagged: .org, acquistion, ethos, ICANN, isoc, pir