Namecheap scores win in .org price-cap lawsuit

Namecheap’s lawsuit over ICANN’s decision to lift price caps in .org and .info will be allowed to proceed, a California judge has ruled.

The Superior Court in Los Angeles recently threw out ICANN’s attempt to get the case dismissed, according to court documents released by ICANN. There will now be a hearing in January.

Namecheap’s lawsuit concerns ICANN’s decision in 2019 to lift price caps in Public Interest Registry’s .org contract and the .info contract then with Afilias (now Identity Digital).

Both registries had previously been limited to a 10% price increase every year.

The registrar filed an Independent Review Process case against ICANN, which is mostly won. In 2022, the IRP panel slammed ICANN for its secrecy and lack of adherence to its bylaws and issued seven recommended actions the Org could take to rectify its transgressions.

In the current lawsuit, filed this January, Namecheap claims that ICANN “largely ignored” most of these recommendations. It wants the court to force the Org to abide by the IRP ruling, which among other things calls for ICANN to look into reinstituting price caps.

But ICANN objected, saying Namecheap “is asking this Court to convert recommendations into requirements”, adding that it “does not have an obligation to act in accordance with the ‘recommendations’ of an IRP Panel”.

It demurred, asking the court to throw out Namecheap’s complaint, but the court declined to do so on legal grounds, meaning the claims will be heard on the merits.

In the five years since the .org and .info price caps were lifted, non-profit PIR has not raised .org prices once.

For-profit Identity Digital has raised .info prices every year, by between 9.38% and 11.03%, raising the cost from $10.84 in 2019 to $17.50 today. The price will go up again by 8.57% to $19.00 in January.

Comment Tagged: .info, .org, afilias, ICANN, identity digital, irp, lawsuit, namecheap, pir, price caps

Some Guy wants to take over .com and .net

Some Guy has noticed that domain name prices keep going up and has offered to take over the .com and .net registries from Verisign.

The Some Guy recently filed a formal Request for Reconsideration with ICANN, asking it to overturn its recent decision to renew Verisign’s .com contract and award it to him instead. The RfR reads:

I seek to become a registry operator committed to making .COM domains more affordable and accessible to students, startups, and developers. The decision to renew Verisign’s contract hinders competition, limiting opportunities for more innovative registry operators like Asxit LLC to contribute to the digital ecosystem.

The request is accompanied by a 25-page, ChatGPT-odored analysis of why Asxit LLC would be a better .com registry than Verisign, which concludes:

The introduction of Asxit LLC as a .COM registry operator would bring significant improvements in pricing, innovation, support, and accessibility compared to Verisign’s current management. By focusing on affordable and flexible solutions, Asxit LLC aims to create a more inclusive and competitive environment for all users. This change would enhance the value of the .COM domain and support the growth of a diverse and innovative digital community.

In August, Some Guy with the same last name, who said he is a student at Liberty University in Virginia, said Asxit LLC should take over .net as well.

They’re not the funniest or craziest submissions ICANN has received over the years, but they might be worth a chuckle if you’re clock-watching on a Friday afternoon.

The sad part is of course that ICANN is now duty-bound to commit legal and board resources preparing a response to this request before throwing it out entirely.

2 Comments Tagged: .com, .net, ICANN, reconsideration, rfr, verisign

Second-shot gTLD bid rules revealed

ICANN has published the first, early draft of rules for new gTLD applicants that want to change their applied-for strings at the thirteenth hour.

In a shock move last month, ICANN’s board of directors said that applicants would be able to nominate a second-choice gTLD, as a means to reduce the number of contention sets and potentially increase the number of approved TLDs.

The decision, which has yet to be formally approved by the board, arguably raised more questions than it answered, and has been criticized for being a top-down imposition and introducing much more complexity into the application process.

But the poor Org staffers tasked with turning the idea into reality have now published a first draft of the proposed rules, which could eventually make it into the final Applicant Guidebook, that may answer some of those questions.

But I’m not convinced the idea has been sufficiently thought through yet. Here’s my take.

There’s going to be two Reveal Days

In 2012, Reveal Day was the day ICANN published the applicant names and applied-for strings of all 1,930 new gTLD applications. It was a simple one-time info dump, letting all applicants know who they were competing against.

As host of a Reveal Day panel discussion, I’d been given a hard copy of the spreadsheet in advance and virtually had to fight off applicants wanting a sneak peek with a dirty stick, despite the reveal being mere minutes away.

This time around, giving applicants the option of a pre-selected back-up string complicates matters, so there would be two reveals: Preliminary Reveal Day and Final Reveal Day.

On Preliminary Reveal Day, ICANN would publish the list of applicants along with their primary and secondary desired strings. Applicants would instantly know whether they were in contention, and get a rough idea of of what their second-chance options were.

They would then have a Replacement Period, currently penciled in at [14 days] to decide whether to stick to their first choice or switch their entire application over to their back-up.

If you’re a tiny podcast aggregator who suddenly finds your .podcasts application facing a contention resolution auction against Amazon, Spotify and Joe Rogan, you might want to switch to .knittingpodcasts or something.

Pick a crappy string

I present the example of .knittingpodcasts only half jokingly — the way the rules are currently drafted appears to actively encourage the selection of crappy back-up strings.

ICANN staffers told community members at two implementation meetings this month that applicants should pick second-choice strings “unlikely to be picked up by somebody else as their alternate”.

The whole point of allowing replacement strings is to reduce the number of contention sets. Applicants will not be allowed to switch to a string that is another applicant’s primary or secondary string. The draft text reads:

Applicants must be aware that they will be prevented from using their replacement string in cases where a designated replacement string is identical to another replacement string or applied-for primary string, as this would increase the risk of new instances of contention being created or existing instances being increased.

So, unless you’re hoping to get very lucky indeed, you’d be mad to apply for .crypto and nominate .blockchain as your back-up, as you’d be prevented from switching to your second-choice, which is very likely to be already contested.

Your best chance of avoiding contention would be to pick a string just crappy enough that nobody else is likely to apply for it, but not crappy enough that it doesn’t make business sense to apply for.

Avoid plurals, dummy

It now seems incredibly likely that ICANN is going to ban single/plural equivalents from coexisting, so choosing the plural of your primary string as your back-up (or vice-versa) would probably be an exercise in futility.

If the ban is approved, plural/singular matches will be placed in the same contention set anyway, so picking .podcasts as your alternate for .podcast will in most cases not avoid contention. There are some edge cases here, which I’ll get to below.

There’s no going back

Once you’ve opted to switch to your secondary string, you can’t later change your mind and switch back, even if all your original competitors have dropped out of the race and you’d have a free run at your primary.

The draft rules currently state: “Applicants who opt for their replacement string will be unable to revert to their original primary string at any stage during the program.”

They later state: “Applicants should note that if all applicants for a given string opt for their respective replacement strings, it is possible that there may be no remaining active application for the primary applied-for string.”

War-gaming undesirable consequences

I think we can all agree that .podcast is a more desirable gTLD than .podcasts.

Spotify says there are something like six million podcasts in its library. Selling a .podcast domain to a fraction of those podcasters could be a very lucrative business and provide millions of registrants with cool domains.

But how many entities would feel a .podcasts domain is more appropriate for their businesses? A handful of podcast aggregators, maybe? Certainly a substantially smaller number. The .podcasts registry would have to sell at a huge premium price to make up for the loss of volume.

So, let’s say Company A and Company B both apply for .podcast as their primary string. Company A selects .knittingpodcast as its back-up, while Company B selects .fishingpodcast.

After Preliminary Reveal Day, both applicants become afraid that their rival is better-funded and more committed to their application, so to avoid an auction decide to switch to their secondary string.

Remember, ICANN is bent on banning private resolution of contention sets, and while language has yet to be published or finalized, the current thinking is that private resolution would also be banned during the Replacement Period. The rules might even go so far as to ban non-monetary resolution, or communication between competing applicants.

So Company A and Company B, both fearful of the other’s financial clout, switch to their back-ups and a year or two down the line the internet has a .fishingpodcast gTLD and a .knittingpodcast gTLD, but no .podcast gTLD.

Let’s say instead that Company B ignored ICANN advice and named the plural .podcasts as its back-up, and both applicants switched. Now, not only would the more desirable singular .podcast not get delegated, but the single/plural ban would mean it would never be delegated.

Is that a desirable outcome? Populating the DNS with second-choice gTLDs nobody wants? (.com fanboys feel free to leave a comment below).

I can’t help but feel that a lot of this stuff is going to need much more intensive war-gaming, possibly involving top psychologists and game theorists, before the rules are finalized and approved.

Comment Tagged: auctions, contention, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, plurals, replacement period, reveal day

Nominet names directors after tight election

Ashley La Bolle and Rex Wickham have been named Nominet non-executive directors after an election that saw the top three candidates finish with very close numbers.

Nominet said La Bolle, who works for Tucows, and Wickham, who works for 2020Media, were elected after three rounds of votes and took their seats immediately at the company’s AGM yesterday.

La Bolle was an incumbent, having been originally elected three years ago amid one of the most fractious periods in Nominet’s history.

Wickham replaces Simon Blackler, who won his seat in 2021 as lead of the PublicBenefit.uk campaign, which managed to oust key members of management and board and force Nominet to refocus its business the same year. He did not stand for reelection.

Voting results shared by the company show that Rob Golding of Astutium came a close third in the race, receiving a third-round total of 272,213 votes, compared to Wickham’s 287,794 and La Bolle’s 297,258.

Turnout was 10.6%, the lowest level in the last few years, perhaps indicating a lack of displeasure with Nominet’s current direction.

Comment Tagged: elections, nominet

Lawyer ban coming to ICANN

Tell us who you’re working for, or get out.

That’s the message, mainly targeting lawyers in private practice, underpinning a proposed change to the rules governing participating in ICANN policy-making proceedings.

The Org has published a new “discussion draft” of a Community Participant Code of Conduct Concerning Statements of Interest, which proposes closing a loophole that currently allows lawyers to keep their clients’ identities secret.

Today, everyone who participates in policy-making has to file a Statement of Interest, disclosing among other things their employers and/or clients, so their fellow volunteers know who they’re dealing with.

But there’s an exemption where “professional ethical obligations prevent you from disclosing this information”.

The new proposals would remove this exemption. The text (pdf) reads:

withholding relevant information about the interests involved in the deliberations could impair the legitimacy of ICANN’s processes. When disclosure cannot be made, the participant must not participate in ICANN processes on that issue.

This rule would also apply, for example, to participants from companies that are secretly working on technology patents relevant to the area of policy work, ICANN said.

Imagine an employee of a Big Domains firm pushing hard for a change to Whois policy while their employer is covertly intending to patent elements of the technology that would be needed to implement that policy.

The other example I’ve been given is of a lawyer in private practice who’s representing a company that intends to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD in the Next Round, where disclosing the desired string might be unwise.

If Pepsi is planning to apply for .pepsi, thinking it will give it a competitive advantage over Coca-Cola, having its outside counsel essentially announce that fact to the world could tip off its rival to start working on its .coke application.

In both those situations, the proposed new SOI policy would ask the would-be volunteer to either disclose or recuse. If discovered to have lied about their interests, they could be banned from all future ICANN policy-making work.

The proposals also target those working for trade groups who keep their member lists private. The document states:

If participants are participating on behalf of a trade association, consortium, or similar organization, those participants are urged to identify where other participants within ICANN can locate pertinent information about the membership or funding of that organization.

The proposals appear to have originated with ICANN Org after community efforts to reach consensus on SOIs failed.

A GNSO working group called CCOICI, for Council Committee for Overseeing and Implementing Continuous Improvement, after internal disagreements last year recommended keeping the lawyer loophole.

But when it came to a GNSO Council vote almost exactly a year ago, the Contracted Parties House (registries and registrars) unanimously rejected the CCOICI recommendations, precisely because of the loophole.

The Non-Contracted Parties House gave the changes their unanimous approval.

CPH members’ interests are of course generally known by virtue of the fact that they’re CPH members, representing their employers.

As I reported back in March, the CPH continues to think the SOI rules need strengthening, and that position is shared by members of the influential Governmental Advisory Committee.

The proposals are open for public comment until December 2.

3 Comments Tagged: gnso, ICANN, soi, transparency

Identity Digital to take over .ai

Identity Digital is to take over the running of .ai, following a deal with the Government of Anguilla announced today.

The two parties said they “plan to build a world-class registry management program that prioritizes quality domains and instills trust in .AI domain names for years to come”.

It looks like a back-end deal. There’s no suggestion of any kind of redelegation.

Currently, .ai is run by a small local outfit called DataHaven.Net, on a fairly basic web site that gives off all the vibes of being a one-man show and perhaps a little bit slapdash.

Identity Digital, by contrast, runs its huge portfolio of TLDs on the Amazon cloud and has pretty much blanket coverage of ICANN-accredited registrars. Only 40 registrars are listed on the current .ai registry site.

The ccTLD has grown to be a significant player in the last two years, growing from about 150,000 domains mid-2022, prior to generative AI entering the popular imagination, to 533,068 at the start of this month.

Identity Digital said that .ai already accounts for 20% of Anguilla’s revenue, and that this new deal should help increase that amount.

3 Comments Tagged: ai, identity digital

ICA teams up with WIPO on UDRP reform

The Internet Commerce Association and WIPO are jointly chairing an off-the-books review of the UDRP, ahead of a likely ICANN review of the anti-cybersquatting policy next year.

WIPO said today that the review is being coordinated by Brian Beckham of WIPO and Zak Muscovitch of the ICA, and comprises another 16 participants, mostly UDRP lawyers, panelists, and WIPO itself.

ICANN is being represented by director Sarah Deutsch. Domainers are represented by Telepathy’s Nat Cohen. The brand owner representative is Mette Andersen of regular UDRP complainant Lego.

The team is also drawing on the expertise of a couple dozen experts, a who’s who drawn from all sectors of the industry from registrars to domainers to IP interests to the UDRP providers themselves.

The composition looks very much like what an ICANN policy working group on this topic would look like, but the talks are being held outside of the usual policy development process.

WIPO says: “The core aim of this project is to maintain the UDRP as an efficient and predictable out-of-court dispute resolution mechanism for clear trademark-based disputes.”

But the organization seems to be engaging in some expectation management aimed at those who believe UDRP needs to be gutted. WIPO said:

Any recommendations should be borne out by a demonstrated compelling need for a change, and must be considered against this background, as any perceived case-specific or anecdotal faults of the UDRP do not warrant a wholesale revision of this industry best practice.

The group is expected to produce a report early next year for public input, and share a final report with ICANN thereafter, when the GNSO community is expected to kick off its owner formal Policy Development Process looking at UDRP.

UDRP review has been on the back-burner for the last couple of years since an initial public comment period, mainly due to workload issues faced by ICANN staff and community volunteers.

The GNSO was expected to open its PDP preparations more or less now, but the GNSO Council is expected to vote this Thursday to delay the start of the project for another six months, due to delays implementing other rights protection mechanism reviews.

Given how long PDPs typically take, by my estimate you’re looking at at least three years before any changes to UDRP are approved.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, ica, ICANN, trademarks, udrp, wipo

Response to sex harassment lawsuit “inadequate”, say ICANN vets

ICANN’s response to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former long-serving employee was “inadequate” and failed to address “pervasive and obvious problems” women experience in the community, some veteran community members have said.

In a letter to chair Tripti Sinha, 15 people, not exclusively female, also say that previous responses to reports of harassment have focused more on protecting ICANN’s reputation rather than protecting the affected party.

Tanzanica King, a former senior member of ICANN’s meetings team and the Org’s second-longest-serving employee, sued ICANN in August, complaining about specific instances of harassment and a broader “frat boy culture”.

In response, ICANN said many of King’s claims were “untrue”, saying it “strives to create a positive, safe, and inclusive work and community environment” and has “a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment”.

Sinha later announced a forthcoming “strengthening” of the Org’s anti-harassment policy and named its new Ombuds as Liz Field, a woman with experience overseeing anti-harassment policies in governmental and quasi-governmental settings.

Now, the 15 veteran community members, drawn from contracted and non-contracted parties but all writing in their personal capacity, have called ICANN’s initial response “profoundly disappointing”. They wrote (pdf).

It is time to acknowledge that ICANN Org and the Community must make the necessary changes to create a welcoming and professional Community and to protect and defend both Org staff and Community members against harassment and sexual abuse. Denial of this issue has gone on for too long, protecting ICANN’s reputation rather than protecting victims.

The September 24 letter goes on to specifically criticize the Office of the Ombuds, until about a year ago led exclusively by men and then on an interim basis by a woman who was also an Org staffer, for not having the power or willingness to act on harassment reports. They wrote:

An ombuds must have independence and the ability to act; ICANN’s Office of the Ombuds has neither. Typically when harassment has been raised with the Ombuds, the Office did not have the ability to protect the reporter and the impacted person. The Office has illustrated over and over that their function is to protect ICANN Org’s interests—reputation, financial interest, or damage to organizational integrity.

Sinha has since responded (pdf), saying the ICANN board takes the issue “very seriously” and asking permission to publish the letter as “a positive way to encourage dialogue”.

She added that the new Ombuds reports directly to the board and that she “is fully empowered to act as an independent, impartial dispute resolution provider, with autonomy and authority.”

ICANN has not retracted its statement in response to the King lawsuit as the letter-writers requested.

1 Comment Tagged: harassment, ICANN

Unstoppable tops four million names

Unstoppable Domains says it has now registered over four million names on its collection of blockchain-based alternative naming systems.

The volume appears to spread across multiple extensions. Unstoppable runs names such as .crypto, .x, .wallet and .nft, as well as dozens of more obscure branded strings, such as .pudgy and .bald, with its partners.

If we were to treat the whole Unstoppable portfolio as a single TLD, it would be about as large as India’s .in or France’s .fr, and hundreds of thousands of names larger than XYZ.com’s .xyz.

It would be more than twice as big as RealNames was at its peak, and many times larger than AOL Keywords. Just saying.

2 Comments Tagged: unstoppable domains

Amazon readying fashion and book gTLDs

Amazon appears to be dusting off two of its long-dormant gTLDs, targeting the books and fashion industries ahead of launch next year.

But it’s probably not worth getting too excited about if you only speak English. The TLDs are .ファッション (.xn--bck1b9a5dre4c), which is Japanese for “fashion” and .書籍 (.xn--rovu88b), which is Chinese for “books”.

Updated dates filed with ICANN show Amazon Registry is planning to take both to general availability in early November 2025. That’s not a typo, the dates really are over a year away.

No pricing or registration policy information is available.

The two TLD have both already carried out their mandatory sunrise periods — eight years ago — and currently have 50-odd names in their zone files, which all appear to be internal or sunrise registrations.

Amazon has 54 gTLDs, a mixture of dot-brands and generic terms, according to my database, but only nine generics have launched and only two have registrations measured in the thousands.

The company applied for its dictionary-word, product-category TLDs at a time when it thought it would be able to keep them a closed shop where it could keep all the domains to itself.

Comment Tagged: .ファッション, .書籍, amazon, amazon registry