.wine applicants changing tune on geo protection?

Aggressive lobbying of ICANN by the wine-making industries on both sides of the Atlantic may be about to bear fruit.
Applicants for .wine and .vin are talking to the organization about providing special protection for a list of “geographic indicator” terms, according to CEO Fadi Chehade.
In a letter to French secretary of state for digital Axelle Lemaire published last week, Chehade said:

The parties involved are now working on devising a mechanism which would offer protections to a reserved list of names, which would be contractually protected through ICANN’s registry agreement, along with a set of rules around how those names could be distributed to parties that have interests in and the rights to them. Once they are finalized, ICANN would be charged with monitoring and ensuring compliance with these commitments.

While the details have not yet been revealed, this appears to be what wine makers have been looking for.
GIs are terms such as “Napa Valley” and “Champagne”. While they are protected under various national and international laws, they don’t enjoy the same degree of global recognition as trademarks.
They do not qualify for inclusion in the Trademark Clearinghouse, so would not automatically be protected when .wine and .vin launch.
ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee was unable to reach consensus on what should be done about GIs. European countries wanted protections, but the US, Canada and Australia were against the idea.
Wine makers presented a pretty unified front, however, even when they did not benefit from the support of their own governments.
Industry groups and the European Commission had separately started Cooperative Engagement Processes with ICANN — a prelude to filing Independent Review Process complaints.
These CEPs are evidently what kick-started the current negotiations.
There are three applicants for .wine — Donuts, Famous Four and Afilias. Only Donuts has applied for .vin.
Donuts declined to comment on the talks referred to in the Chehade letter.

6 Comments Tagged: .vin, geographic indicators, ICANN, wine

DreamHost hit with big breach notice

DreamHost, a web hosting provider which says it hosts over 1.3 million web sites, has been hit with a lengthy ICANN compliance notice, largely concerning alleged Whois failures.
The breach notice raises questions about the company’s popular free Whois privacy service.
Chiefly, DreamHost has failed to demonstrate that it properly investigates Whois inaccuracy complaints, as required by the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, according to ICANN.
The notice contains numerous other complaints about alleged failures to publish information about renewal fees, its directors and abuse contacts on its web site.
The domain highlighted by ICANN in relation to the Whois failure is senect.com

ICANN sent three compliance notices to DreamHost concerning a Whois inaccuracy report for the domain name and requested DreamHost demonstrate that it took reasonable steps to investigate the Whois inaccuracy claims. DreamHost’s failure to provide documentation demonstrating the reasonable steps it took to investigate and correct the alleged Whois inaccuracy is a breach of Section 3.7.8 of the RAA.

Weirdly, senect.com has been under private registration at DreamHost since the start of 2012.
ICANN seems to be asking the registrar to investigate itself in this case.
DreamHost offers private registration to its customers for free. It populates the Whois with proxy contact information and the registrant name “A Happy DreamHost Customer”.
DomainTools associates “A Happy DreamHost Customer” with over 710,000 domain names.
As an accredited registrar, DreamHost had over 822,000 gTLD domain names at the last count. According to its web site, it has over 400,000 customers.
The breach notice also demands the company immediately start including the real contact information for its privacy/proxy customers in its data escrow deposits.
ICANN has given the company until November 21 to resolve a laundry list of alleged RAA breaches, or risk losing its accreditation.

Comment Tagged: compliance, dreamhost, ICANN, privacy, whois

ROTD lends geo names to CentralNic registrar push

CentralNic and Right Of The Dot have teamed up to offer a series of geographically themed registrar storefronts for new gTLDs.
Under a joint venture, the companies are launching sites such as london.domains, vegas.domains, tokyo.domains and nyc.domains.
ROTD, the new gTLD venture launched by Mike Berkens and Monte Cahn, acquired these premium domains from Donuts during the .domains Early Access Period.
The second level strings all match the third-party geo-gTLDs that will be offered via these sites. Another 12 will be launched before the end of the year, the companies said.
CentralNic, best known as a registry, will provide the back-end for the site, as part of its push into the registrar side of the market that kicked off with its $7.5 million acquisition of Internet.bs.

3 Comments Tagged: .domains, centralnic, right of the dot, rotd

Oops! Cock-up reveals ICANN survey respondent emails

An ICANN contractor accidentally revealed the email addresses of almost 100 people who responded to a survey related to a review of the Generic Names Supporting Organization.
An invitation to participate in a follow-up survey was sent out to respondents today with all the email addresses in the To:, rather than BCC:, field.
Westlake Governance, which is conducting the survey for ICANN, quickly sent an apology:

We have been sending invitations in batches, and regret that we included your address in the only set of invitations that was copied inadvertently in the “To” line as addressee, rather than as a “Bcc.”
We sincerely apologise for this breach of our internal protocols and potentially of your privacy.

The misfire revealed that 15 out of the 98 listed respondents have @icann.org email addresses, suggesting roughly 15% of the responses came from ICANN staffers.
While the survey certainly anticipated responses from within the organization — one question gives “staff” as an option for the respondent to state their affiliation — some are not happy anyway.
Neustar vice president Jeff Neuman tweeted:

Should #ICANN staff be providing feedback on GNSO review? I see value in that; but results should not be grouped in with other responses.

— Jeff Neuman (@jintlaw) November 1, 2014

The massive, 93-question survey (pdf) was designed to kick-start the next cycle in ICANN’s interminable reviews of its policy-making bodies, in this case the GNSO.
The results of the survey will be used to inform a review of the GNSO’s structure, which could potentially re-balance power within the organization.

Comment Tagged: gnso, ICANN

ICANN board bill tops $2 million

ICANN’s board of directors cost the organization over $2 million in pay and expenses in its fiscal 2014, a document released last night shows.
The total bill for the year ended June 30 was $2,000,609, up 16% on FY13’s $1,721,191 and up 27% on the FY12 figure.
The majority of the expenditure went on travel and other expenses. Just $538,983 went on compensation.
ICANN directors get $35,000 per year basic, plus another $5,000 for each board committee they chair. Board chair Steve Crocker gets $75,000 and accumulated $149,000 in FY2014 expenses.
Six directors chose to receive no compensation whatsoever, though they all racked up travel expenses.
The $2 million total does not include any contribution from CEO Fadi Chehade.
Chehade’s salary was $559,999. He also received $253,826 in bonuses and accumulated expenses totaling $519,421.
FY14 was of course the year in which Chehade and members of the board traveled extensively for outreach related to the IANA stewardship transition process and the NetMundial initiative.

1 Comment Tagged: budget, ICANN

Nominet hires venture capitalist as new CEO

Nominet has named Lesley Cowley’s replacement as CEO as Russell Haworth, a Thomson Reuters alum who’s spent much of 2014 working as a venture capitalist.
Russell was previously managing director of Thomson Reuters’ Middle East & Africa division.
Since January, he’s been a co-founder and partner at Saya Ventures, an investment company focused on early-stage technology companies.
“Russell will lead the organisation as it develops its core registry business, explores the potential of new technologies, and delivers on its commitment to ensuring the internet is a force for good,” Nominet said.
He’s set to join the .uk registry in January 2015.
He replaces Cowley, who resigned in May and earlier this month revealed several new jobs.

1 Comment Tagged: .uk, nominet

Quitted ICANN director gets old job back

Olga Madruga-Forti, who quit ICANN’s board of directors earlier this month, has gone back to work for the US Federal Communications Commission.
I gather that while ICANN was aware of her new job, it was unable to announce the move at the time of her resignation.
The FCC said Madruga-Forti will be chief of Strategic Analysis and Negotiations Division at its International Bureau.
She worked for the FCC for nine years until 1997 as special counsel with responsibility for satellite policy. She’s spent the intervening years working for satellite companies in the US and Argentina.

Comment Tagged: ICANN

Former pop star is .uk’s 10,000th cybersquatting case

Nominet has processed its 10,000th cybersquatting dispute, according to the company.
Conveniently for the .uk registry’s public relations department, the complainant in the case was Aston Merrygold, a well-known former member of the pop group JLS.
He won astonmerrygold.co.uk, which was registered to London-based Martyn O’Brien, using Nominet’s 12-year-old Dispute Resolution Service.
Merrygold does not have a trademark covering his name, but the DRS panelist found that he had rights anyway, due to his relative fame and numerous TV appearances.
O’Brien registered the name in 2008, along with the names of Merrygold’s band-mates, after JLS appeared in the final of TV talent show The X Factor.
JLS had a brief but successful pop career before breaking up last year. Merrygold currently intends to go solo, which presumably inspired the DRS complaint.
Nominet also announced today that Tony Willoughby, who has been chair of the DRS panel since 2002, has stepped aside and will be replaced by DRS appeals panelist Nick Gardner.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, drs, nominet

gTLD auctions net ICANN another $13m

ICANN has raised another $12.9 million from new gTLD auctions.
A small batch of three contention sets — .realty, .salon and .spot — were resolved last Wednesday in the third so-called “last resort” auction.
.realty went to Fegistry for $5,588,888, .salon to Donuts for $5,100,575 and .spot to Amazon for $2.2 million.
ICANN now has accumulated new gTLD auction sales totaling $27.8 million.
It raised $14.3 million selling off .buy, .tech and .vip in September. The auction for .信息 fetched $600,000 in June.
ICANN’s share — after auctioneer Power Auctions is paid off — is being put into a special fund, rather that ICANN’s current account. The community will one day have to decide what to spend it on.

Comment Tagged: .realty, .salon, .spot, amazon, auctions, donuts, Fegistry, ICANN, last resort

Is the free ride over for Verisign’s .net?

Verisign’s .net is on the rocks due to new gTLDs, executives have confirmed.
Speaking to investors and analysts on the company’s third-quarter earnings call last week, CFO George Kilguss said that .net “is experiencing some headwinds from the launch of the new gTLD program”.
Further comments from Kilguss and CEO Jim Bidzos seem to confirm what DI reported a month ago: .net is in trouble.
Latest stats collated by DI show that the .net zone file shrunk by over 121,000 domains in the seven months between March 26 and October 26 this year.
Executives said on the call that .net stood at 15.1 million names at the end of September. That compares to 15.2 million at the end of the previous quarter.
“It’s been relatively flat,” Kilguss said. “I actually think .net has held up pretty well over the year with all these new names coming on… So I don’t view .net’s performance as anything negative.”
Bidzos told analysts that “confusion” around the new gTLDs was to blame.
“I think generally, .net may be more susceptible to that confusion that swirls around new gTLDs,” he said.
He characterized .net as being like new gTLDs, falling into “that category of ‘different'”.
In my view, this is an implicit acknowledgement that .net has been getting a free ride for the last 20 years.
Asked whether the .net weakness could spill over to .com, Bidzos said that .com is a “trusted brand” because it’s almost 30 years old and has a 17-year record of uninterrupted up-time.
While there’s no doubt that .com is a trusted brand, it’s not because of its up-time or longevity, in my view — .net has the same stability record and is actually fractionally older than .com.
The reason .net is suffering now is that that for the last two decades it’s been essentially a defensive play.
People buy the .net when they buy the .com because they’ve been marketed as a bundle — the only two truly generic TLDs out there. Unlike .org, .net lost its semantic differentiation a long time ago.
As .com buyers start to see more and more options for duplicative or defensive registrations in their shopping carts, they’re going to be less likely to grab the .net to match their .com, in my opinion.
And it’s likely to get worse.
“It’s going to continue,” Bidzos said. “We’re seeing hundreds of more new gTLDs coming, and they’re coming at the rate of many every single week. So that confusion is likely to get worse.”

3 Comments Tagged: .net, new gTLDs, verisign