ICANN homes in on new gTLD application fee

ICANN has narrowed down the expected application fee for the next round of new gTLDs, and while it’s towards the lower end of previous guidelines, it’s still much higher than in 2012.

The bog-standard base application fee is now expected to be $220,000, according to a draft document circulated by ICANN.

That’s up on the $185,000 applicants paid in 2012, but it’s at the less-pricey end of the $208,000 to $293,000 range ICANN outlined at its meeting in Rwanda this June.

But the base fee is simply to get your foot in the door. It’s accompanied by an à la carte menu of additional services incurring additional fees, some of which were part of the base fee in 2012.

Because the new gTLD program is being run on a cost-recovery basis, the fee is set according to how many applications ICANN expects to receive, which is rather speculative and based largely on anecdotal evidence.

That predicted number is now 1,500, down on the 1,930 actual applications received in 2012.

The $220,000 fee is the lowest up-front fee that applicants would have to pay, and does not include extra payments they would have to make in the event of contention, additional evaluations or objections.

There are 10 different additional fees that could be incurred by applicants, including one that’s new to me — an “Occupancy fee” which the document says is “for lingering applications”.

I can’t help but think that this is an attempt to avoid a repeat of Nameshop, which applied for the banned string .idn in 2012 and continues to refuse to admit defeat, withdraw its application, and get its refund.

The new ICANN document notes that this proposed squatters’ rent is still open to discussion, but other fees, while not given a price tag yet, appear more likely to become a reality.

It seems dot-brand applicants will have to pay extra fees for their Spec9 and Spec13 exemptions, which allow them to work outside the usual registrar channel and allocate names only to themselves.

Applicants for community gTLDs and geographic strings would also pay extra fees.

There’s also the chance that the base fee could go up before the application window opens, depending on the outcome of some still-unconfirmed parts of the application process, such as the mechanism to address name collision risk. This alone could add thousands to each applicant’s bill.

The good news is that if the next round is significantly over-subscribed and ICANN makes back the $70 million it reckons the program cost, it plans to offer rebates to applicants dependent on how much extra cash it has received.

The draft document also includes estimates for the cost of the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program, which enables RSPs to get the ICANN seal of approval before pitching their services to new gTLD applicants.

Also priced on a cost-recovery basis, this program is still expected to cost a maximum of $92,000 per RSP, with the costs potentially falling if more than 50 RSPs apply to be accredited.

ICANN has a pretty good idea that the roughly 45 companies currently providing back-end registry services for gTLDs will probably use the RSP program. If a large number of startups or ccTLD registries want to get involved too, that would bring the price down.

Comment Tagged: fees, ICANN, new gTLDs

Four more dot-brands switch back-ends

Four dot-brand gTLDs have recently changed their back-end providers, according to the latest records, three moving away from Verisign.

US insurance company American Family Insurance has moved its .americanfamily and .amfam from Verisign to GoDaddy, as has AARP, a US interest group representing retired people, with .aarp.

Aquarelle.com Group, a French flower delivery company, has meanwhile switched from French ccTLD operator Afnic to London-based CentralNic (which is still Team Internet’s registry brand).

The AmFam moves are notable because while Verisign has for some time been getting out of the dot-brand back-end business, most of its clients have been migrating to Identity Digital.

I count seven gTLDs making the Verisign-GoDaddy switch, compared to 60 going Verisign-Identity Digital over the last couple years. Verisign is now down to a few dozen dot-brands.

The Aquarelle.com move is notable because it’s rare for a dot-brand to use a back-end in a different time zone that predominantly uses a different language, but Team Internet does have a footprint in France and other Francophone countries so it’s perhaps not wholly weird.

Three of the dot-brands are not heavily used — .aarp has three resolving domains that redirect to aarp.org, while .amfam has about 10 names in its zone that do not publicly resolve and .americanfamily has none.

You might infer from the name “Aquarelle.com” that the company is not a big believer in the dot-brand concept, but you’d be surprisingly wrong — .aquarelle has more than 50 domains that resolve to web sites without redirecting to traditional TLDs.

Comment Tagged: .americanfamily, .aquarelle, aarp, afnic, amfam, centralnic, godaddy, new gTLDs, verisign

Uzbekistan gets its first ICANN registrar

A registrar in Uzbekistan has become the first in the country to receive its official ICANN accreditation, according to the latest records.

Tashkent-based Suvan.net, which does business as @host.uz (ahost.uz), currently specializes in the local .uz ccTLD, where it appears to be the leading registrar by some margin.

The company already sells gTLD domains too, albeit as a reseller. It claims to have over 30,000 customers.

Comment Tagged: accreditation, ahost, ICANN, suvan.net

Almost 100,000 .tr domains registered in one day

Türkiye’s ccTLD has seen a massive spike in registrations, experiencing instant growth of about 8%, at the end of its year-long second-level liberalization process.

The .tr space had 1,187,324 domains at the end of yesterday, according to stats published by government-run registry Trabis, up about 91,000 on the previous day.

That’s more that four time’s .com’s daily growth over the same period.

The sudden growth spurt came due to the registry’s allocation of second-level domains that match previously registered third-level domains under several extensions including .com.tr, .org,tr and .info.tr.

The multi-stage grandfathering process latterly prioritized registrants based on which extension their domain was in and ran from February to early August. The registry decided which registrants had made the cut August 27.

The liberalization came about after Trabis took over from previous registry Nic.tr in 2022. The number of .tr domains has almost doubled since then, crossing on million late last year.

Trabis intends to open up the .tr second level to all comers, full general availability, next Wednesday, September 4.

Türkiye follows the likes of the UK, New Zealand and Australia in opening up the second level of their traditionally three-level spaces.

Comment Tagged: .tr, second-level, trabis

ICA finally comments on .com pricing talks

With the latest public debate about whether Verisign is ripping off registrants with its .com pricing now into its third month, one voice has been conspicuously absent.

But the Internet Commerce Association, which represents domain investors and domaining registrars, has now publicly called for .com wholesale fees to continue to be capped and Verisign’s profit margins to be tempered.

Issuing a statement late last week, the ICA revealed that it has participated in talks with the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration regarding its upcoming renewal of the .com Cooperative Agreement.

ICA said it is “encouraging NTIA to focus on ensuring that price caps have some relation to both the cost of operating the .com registry and a reasonable, if not healthy operating margin”, adding:

We believe that it in the absence of actual competitive market forces determining price, it is crucial that an economic study be conducted to determine what a reasonable price would be for .com registrations, having regard to the costs of operating the .com registry on behalf of ICANN while also taking into consideration the need to make a reasonable profit from the exclusive license. As a trade association focused on Internet commerce, although we are generally uncomfortable with determining prices by any method other than via a competitive marketplace, this method is the next best thing in the circumstances.

The statement completely ignores Verisign’s attempt to preemptively flip the debate on its opponents when it recently claimed that the true price gouging occurs in the “unregulated” retail and secondary markets.

The .com pricing debate first came back into the public sphere in July, when three campaign groups called on NTIA to cancel the Cooperative Agreement and allow the .com registry contract to be open for competitive bidding.

The agreement, terms of which routinely make their way into ICANN’s Registry Agreement with Verisign, allow the company to raise prices 7% in four of each six-year term, options Verisign habitually exercises.

The result is a .com registry that generates the company operating margins in excess of 60%, returning mountains of cash to investors.

Three Republican lawmakers then raised the issue with NTIA and NTIA later said that it intended to renew the Cooperative Agreement, but that it had invited Verisign to talks focused on pricing.

In apparently coordinated statements, both parties said the talks would also extend to pricing in the retail channel and secondary market, which should have made ICA members nervous.

Verisign even put out a lengthy statement calling out registrars and domain investors for selling .com domains at hugely inflated prices, conveniently ignoring the facts that the registrar market is genuinely competitive and that domainers shoulder the risk that the domains they pay annual rent to Verisign for very probably will not ever sell.

Verisign’s arguments are sufficiently flawed that it’s perhaps surprising on the face of it that ICA’s new statement completely fails to address or challenge them.

The fact that Verisign is prepared to throw its most dedicated customers under the bus without too much fear of retaliation — something it does every time .com pricing comes up for debate — is perhaps indicative of its market power.

It’s the only dealer in town, and it knows it can say whatever it wants about the crackheads who frequent its corner.

1 Comment Tagged: .com, cooperative agreement, ICANN, ntia, pricing, verisign

Unstoppable reveals gTLD bid doomed to fail

It’s finally happened. Somebody has announced an application for a new gTLD that will almost certainly fall foul of ICANN’s rules and be rejected.

The would-be applicant is Farmsent, a United Arab Emirates startup that is building a blockchain-based marketplace for farmers and buyers of farm produce, and its domains partner is Unstoppable Domains.

Unstoppable said last week that the two companies are launching .farms domains on Unstoppable’s alternative naming system, and that an ICANN application for a proper gTLD is in the works.

The company said it “will be collaborating with Farmsent to plan and strategize for the next ICANN gTLD application, further solidifying .farms in the wider domain ecosystem”.

The problem is that .farms will likely be banned under the rules set out in ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook for the next round, unless the current draft recommendations are completely rewritten or rejected.

ICANN is to be told to reject applications for the plural and singular variants of existing gTLDs in the next round, and .farms is of course the plural of .farm, which is one of the few hundred names in Identity Digital’s stable.

The draft recommendations would merely require for ICANN to be informed that an applied-for string is a single or plural variant of an existing gTLD in the same language and check in a dictionary to confirm that is indeed the case.

In the case of .farm and .farms, I doubt the dictionary verification would realistically even be needed — though I’d bet checking that box would be at least one billable hour for somebody — as it’s a pretty clear-cut case of a bannable clash.

The ICANN staff/community working group drafting the recommendations has spent a huge amount of time arguing about the language of the plurals rule. It’s a surprisingly tricky problem, especially when ICANN is terrified of being seen as a content regulator.

7 Comments Tagged: .farm, .farms, farmsent, ICANN, identity digital, new gTLDs, next round, subpro, unstoppable

RDRS usage stabilizing?

Usage of ICANN’s experimental Registration Data Request Service may have hit what might in future pass for normal levels, with not a massive amount of fluctuation across several key statistics for the last few months.

But ICANN’s latest monthly stats report, published late last week, shows that July was the worst month so far in terms of closed Whois data disclosure requests, dipping into double digits for the first time since its launch in late 2023.

There were 164 disclosure request in July, down from 169 in June but up on May’s low point of 154. The mix of requester types tilted towards IP owners — 40% versus a lifetime average of 33% — while law enforcement was down.

Only 97 requests were closed during the period, a third consecutive all-time low down from 134 in June and 140 in May. Approved requests were at 22.72% while denied requests were at 65.79%, a slight improvement in terms of the approved/denied mix compared to June.

It took a bit longer to get a request approved in July — 9.3 days on average versus 6.59 in June and a lifetime average of 7.19 days. The median time-to-approval since launch is still two days.

Getting a request denied took about half as long in the period — 10.7 days versus 19.46 in June. The median value is also still two days.

Two new, smaller registrars — one Chinese, one Moroccan — joined the project, and none quit, leading to a total of 92. Registrar coverage remained at 59% of registered gTLD domains.

The number of RDRS queries for domains held at unsupported registrars was down at 27.86% compared to a lifetime average of 29.7% but up against June’s 23.31%.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, privacy, rdrs, whois

“Frat boy culture” ICANN faces more sexual harassment claims

One of ICANN’s longest-serving employees has sued the Org and her old boss, claiming she suffered from years of sexual harassment and discrimination and was then laid off after she complained about her treatment.

The harassment claims relate to two male former ICANN employees and cover alleged behavior from off-color sexual jokes to groping, what the complaint calls “severe and outrageous sexual harassment and sexual assaults”.

But the suit also describes a broader “frat boy culture” at the Org that allegedly under-pays women and overlooks them for promotion while turning a blind eye to complaints about inappropriate behavior by male colleagues.

The suit seeks $77 million in damages and lists 14 causes of action under harassment and employment law, as well as a defamation claim against an outside lawyer ICANN hired to investigate the original complaints.

“Many of the allegations in the complaint are untrue and we will defend our organization and our policies vigorously,” ICANN said in a statement issued after the lawsuit was first reported by local Los Angeles press.

The complainant is Tanzanica King, former meeting strategy and design director, who worked at ICANN for 22 years — the second longest-serving employee — before being laid off a few months ago. She’s given her consent to be named in this article.

Her complaint says:

In exchange for her dedication, [King] has been subjected to the frat boy culture, having been repeatedly passed over for promotions, paid lower salaries than male colleagues, sexually harassed, and then wrongfully terminated for blowing the whistle. For all its poetic waxing of gender equality, ICANN is a rotted apple veiled by a thin shiny veneer.

On the harassment claims, King’s suit covers alleged incidents from 2006 to 2023, mainly involving her direct supervisor on the meetings team, who left ICANN earlier this year. The complaint says he was fired due to the harassment.

The complaint says King’s boss “sexually harassed and sexually assaulted Plaintiff on the basis of her gender, including, without limitation, making unwanted sexual advances and engaging in unwanted verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature”.

The complaint says that ICANN’s top lawyers and HR department “turned a blind eye” to complaints from herself and other colleagues about this alleged behavior over the years.

It adds that interim CEO Sally Costerton this year “disregarded Ms. King’s privacy” and shared details of her complaints with the “entire executive team” after the alleged harasser was fired.

King herself took unpaid medical leave last December — she says due to the toll her experience at ICANN took on her — and lost her job during ICANN’s round of layoffs this May.

A female external lawyer hired by a female ICANN lawyer in May last year to investigate King’s complaints is accused of instead trying to victim-blame and cover up the allegations in order to “hide the facts from the Board of Directors”.

A large portion of the complaint seeks to paint the Org as a “good old boys” club, in which male employees with less time served were either promoted earlier or paid more than King.

The complaint also talks about alleged sexism in the broader ICANN community, referring to a 2018 survey of community members that found that some male ICANN meeting attendees have behaved inappropriately around female peers.

ICANN has spent years trying to portray itself as a female-friendly organization in the traditionally male-heavy tech sector, not too many years ago introducing an anti-harassment policy to sit alongside its long-standing Expected Standards of Behavior.

It has recently trumpeted the fact that its CEO and chair are both currently female, and chair Tripti Sinha has talked about her desire for “gender parity” on the board of directors, something that has yet to be achieved.

Here’s ICANN’s statement in response to the lawsuit in full:

ICANN has been sued by a longtime former colleague. The ICANN Board conducted a thorough independent investigation into the matters the plaintiff previously reported to ICANN. Many of the allegations in the complaint are untrue and we will defend our organization and our policies vigorously. Our arguments will be made in the proper venue.

ICANN strives to create a positive, safe, and inclusive work and community environment, and is committed to the highest possible standards of ethical, moral, and legal business conduct. ICANN enforces this through a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

This is at least the third time ICANN has been subject to legal proceedings related to alleged sexual harassment of female employees by more-senior male employees in the last five years.

Here’s King’s complaint (pdf) in full.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, sexual harassment

Unstoppable gets ICANN accreditation

Unstoppable Domains has become the second blockchain alt-root naming service to get its ICANN accreditation.

The company said today it intends to carry the “the vast majority of generic top-level domains”. It had already been selling .com names, alongside its suite of blockchain extensions, as a reseller.

It also said it intends to sell ccTLD domains, although ICANN accreditation is of course not required for most of those.

It’s the second purveyor of blockchain names to move into the domain name industry after Freename, which got its accreditation last month.

Unstoppable is also working with several blockchain technology companies to prepare applications for new gTLDs when ICANN opens its next application window in 2026.

Comment Tagged: accreditation, ICANN, unstoppable

AI and games among July’s interesting dot-brand domains

A domain hosting a fun little video game for Lidl staff was the highlight dot-brand domain registration in July.

There were 210 registrations in dot-brands in July 2024, spread across 34 individual TLDs. As usual, the largest registrant was German financial services firm Deutsche Vermögensberatung, which gives .dvag domains to its agents, with 90 new regs.

Just like in the non-brand space, not all dot-brand regs immediately resolve publicly. Some never will. Others, technical indicators show, are only designed for private corporate purposes.

These are the new domains that caught my eye in July.

levelup.lidl (also level-up.lidl) — These domains leads to a surprisingly polished, cutesy-cutesy browser game where the player, presumably a new hire at the German supermarket giant, controls a cartoon potato (?) character as they wander around a 3D landscape interacting with other characters to learn about Lidl’s corporate values. Okay, I admit I only gave it five minutes, but it surely beats a PowerPoint.

gemini.google — Gemini is Google’s AI chatbot. The brand has been around since last December, but it took until July for the matching .google domain to be registered. It currently resolves to gemini.google.com, the official Gemini site. Google also registered another of its brands, fitbit.google, in the month, but it does not currently publicly resolve.

sustainability.bostik (and 27 others) — Adhesives maker Bostik registered 28 .bostik domains in July, all related to product categories (paper.bostik, tape.bostik), customer verticals (transportation.bostik, construction.bostik) or corporate purposes (history.bostik, careers.bostik). The company only has 36 active .bostik domains, registering none for over a year, so the new regs suggest a possible rethink of the dot-brand, even though the domains don’t yet publicly resolve.

escapegames.bnpparibas — Why would BNP Paribas, a large French bank, be interested in “escape games”? Is it planning on locking people in its massive safes? The domain doesn’t currently resolve, so I couldn’t tell you.

sellersinyourcommunity.amazon (and variants) — Amazon also registered the likes of sellersofthecommunity.amazon and sellersinthecommunity.amazon, but the registration of siyc.amazon suggests “Sellers In Your Community” is to be the correct brand for whatever localized e-commerce initiative the online retailer has in mind.

Comment Tagged: dot-brands, new gTLDs