ICANN says it WILL raise its domain taxes soon

Prices in all gTLDs will go up after ICANN told registries and registrars last week that it plans to increase the fees it charges them, sometimes called its “tax”, next year.

The extra fee ICANN takes from registrars for each new domain registration and renewal will increase from $0.18 to $0.20, according to an email sent from ICANN VP Russ Weinstein to registrars Thursday evening.

This fee is typically passed on explicitly and directly to registrants in their registrar’s shopping cart.

Less-visible charges on registries will also go up. The fixed quarterly fee will go from $6,250 per quarter ($25,000 per year) to $6,450 per quarter ($25,800 per year) and the per-transaction fee will go up from $0.25 per year to $0.258 per year.

The registry fee changes will take effect January 1, but the registrar fee changes will not take effect until July 1, 2025, the start of ICANN’s next fiscal year, according to ICANN.

“After more than a decade of no changes to registry-level and registrar-level fees, ICANN would like to increase the fees it charges to both parties,” Weinstein wrote.

The two cents tax increase is big in percentage terms — about 11% — while the registry fee is more in line with US inflation at 3.20%.

The fixed registrar accreditation fee is to stay the same at $4,000 per year, while the variable accreditation fee, which is divided between registrars based on their transaction volume, is going up from a total of $3.42 million to $3.8 million per year.

The increases come as ICANN struggles to fill a $10 million hole in its budget — a situation that has already led to layoffs — and some back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the combined fee increases are designed to raise annual revenue in that ball-park.

Due to the differences between the standard Registry Agreement and Registrar Accreditation Agreement, ICANN can push through the registry fee increases fairly quickly and unilaterally, while the registrar changes have some red tape.

The two-cent tax increase will be part of ICANN’s usual budget process, which includes a public comment period and consideration by the board of directors, while the variable fee increase will be subject to a registrar vote.

Note: an early, unfinished draft of this post was inadvertently published on Friday, for which I can only apologize.

2 Comments Tagged: budget, ICANN, prices, ra, raa

Senator says domain industry “enables” Russian disinfo attacks

An influential US senator has accused major registries and registrars including GoDaddy and Namecheap of facilitating Russian disinformation campaigns.

Senator Mark Warner, the Democrat chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told registrars that “legislative remedies” may be required unless they “take immediate steps to address the continued abuse of your services for foreign covert influence”.

The threat came in letters sent to registrar groups Namecheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, NewFold Digital, NameSilo, and .com registry Verisign today.

Warner’s letters seem to have been inspired by Facebook owner Meta, perhaps the domain industry’s most prolific antagonist, and align closely with Meta’s views on issues such as cybersquatting and Whois access.

The criticisms also stem from a recent FBI seizure of 32 domains that were being use to proliferate fake news about the invasion of Ukraine and the upcoming US presidential election.

The Russian campaign, known as Doppelganger, used domains such as fox-news.in and washingtonpost.pm to trick visitor into thinking they were reading news sources they trust.

Warner tells the registrars (pdf) they have “ostensibly facilitated sustained covert influence activity by the Russian Federation and influence networks operating on its behalf”.

The main concern appears to be the lack of access to private information in Whois records. Warner’s list of industry sins includes:

withholding vital domain name registration information from good-faith researchers and digital forensic investigators, ignoring inaccurate registration information submitted by registrants, and failing to identify repeated instances of intentional and malicious domain name squatting used to impersonate legitimate organizations

Warner called for “immediate” action “to address the continued abuse of your services” as the US presidential election looms, and in its aftermath. Voters go to the polls November 5.

1 Comment Tagged: abuse, cloudflare, fake news, godaddy, meta, namecheap, namesilo, newfold digital, verisign

bit.ليبيا? Libya to get its Arabic ccTLD

Libyan ccTLD .ly is to get an Arabic version, ICANN has said.

The TLD is ليبيا. (Arabic reads left to right, so the dot goes at the end), means “Libya”, and the ASCII Punycode that will actually show up in the DNS is .xn--mgbb7fyab.

ICANN said that the string has passed the String Evaluation phase of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track process and is now eligible for delegation.

It’s not entirely clear how long Libya was in the “Fast Track” process, but Wikipedia has records of requests for ليبيا. going back over a decade. That’s not unusual.

But ليبيا. is an unusual, though not unprecedented, case of an IDN ccTLD set to be delegated to a different manager than the existing Latin-script ccTLD’s registry.

The Arabic version is set to go to the General Authority of Communications and Informatics, Regulatory Affairs Directorate, while .ly is delegated to the General Post and Telecommunication Company.

.ly is of course well known on the Anglophone internet as a domain hack, with the best-known registrant probably URL shortening service bit.ly.

Comment Tagged: .xn--mgbb7fyab, ICANN, idn cctld fast track, idns, ly

Verisign gets eight more years running the root

Verisign and ICANN have renewed their deal that sees Verisign run the DNS root, according to the company.

Verisign said the Root Zone Maintainer Agreement was renewed on October 20 for another eight-year term.

The RZMA is basically a technical services contract under which Verisign updates and publishes the root zone file (basically a list of TLDs and their nameservers) according to ICANN’s instructions. All the other root zone operators mirror that file.

It’s the first renewal since ICANN secured its independence from the US government in 2016, but Verisign and its predecessors have been managing the root since 1993.

The deal is separate from Verisign’s contracts to run .com and .net.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, root zone, rzma, verisign

Two-horse race for open ICANN board seat

A Brit and a Canadian have been put forward to fill the seat on the ICANN board of directors that unexpectedly became vacant last month.

The ccNSO-appointed seat 12 was left empty with the abrupt resignation of Katrina Sataki in September.

Now, the ccNSO says two candidates will face election — Byron Holland, CEO of Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA, and Nick Wenban-Smith, general counsel of .uk registry Nominet.

The election is not expected to take place until next February, following due diligence and a ccNSO community Q&A with the candidates.

Sataki is European, so a Wenban-Smith win would keep the geographic mix on the board unchanged. A Holland win would tilt the balance towards North America.

Both candidates are men, so the result will not go towards balancing the gender mix. After ICANN 81 next month, there will be one additional woman on the board, but this gain will be reversed when the CEO changes in December.

Comment Tagged: board, ccnso, ICANN

Chinese say internet not ready for single-letter gTLDs

Several major Chinese tech organizations have urged ICANN not to lift its ban on single-character gTLDs, saying the risk of confusion is too great.

Allowing single-character gTLDs in Han script was the most objected-to part of the draft Applicant Guidebook in ICANN’s just-closed public comment period, with the objections all coming from China.

Han script is used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. A single character can convey the same semantic impact as a whole multi-character word in European languages.

But the commenters warned that a single character can have multiple meanings, increasing the risk of confusion.

Rui Zhong of the Internet Society of China said for example that the Han character “新” can mean “new” but is also the abbreviation for the Chinese province of Xinjiang and the nation of Singapore.

Lang Wang of CNNIC warned: “the similarities in pronunciation, form, and meaning of Han script single-character gTLD could lead to the risks of phishing, homophone attacks, intellectual property disputes, etc”.

It seems the issue may be a bit more complex than visually identical words having multiple definitions in other languages, with multiple commenters saying that single-character words do not reflect the reality of modern Chinese usage.

1 Comment Tagged: cnnic, ICANN, idns, new gTLDs, next round, single-character

Unloved INTA slams ICANN over new gTLDs

The new gTLD program is an existential threat to ICANN if it continues to ignore the concerns of IP interests, according to the International Trademark Association.

Trademark owners are becoming disillusioned with the ICANN process and “instead have opted to pursue more balanced outcomes through regulators, legislatures, and courts”, INTA said in comments on draft new gTLD program rules yesterday.

INTA warned that there has been “a decline in interest in the work of ICANN as otherwise engaged members have determined that there is very little return on the thousands of hours of time that they have devoted to ICANN’s continuous improvement”. It said:

The ICANN Board, Org and review team members would do well to consider the consequences of continuing to ignore the input of non-contracted parties especially when it comes to addressing ongoing harms within the domain name system. At a time when governments are vying to assume more policy oversight over the DNS, ICANN is well positioned to double down on the multistakeholder model by giving serious consideration and adjusting proposed policies in a balanced manner.

ICANN’s refusal to take on board the IP lobby’s suggestions when it added new DNS abuse requirements to its registry and registrar contracts earlier this year seems to be at the root of the outburst.

INTA said that it is “opposed to new [gTLD application] rounds” until “substantial reforms are made to ICANN’s approach to domain abuse and contract compliance”.

The comments were by far the angriest filed in response to the ICANN public comment period, just closed, that sought input on several draft sections of the new gTLD program’s Applicant Guidebook.

Pre-rant, INTA substantively said that the AGB needs to give brand owners and potential dot-brand applicants more clarity on when subsequent application rounds will launch.

Currently, ICANN expects the Next Round’s first wave to kick off in the second quarter of 2026, but subsequent application windows are subject to a checklist of triggering events that on the face of it is a little confusing.

Threats of government intervention undermining the legitimacy of the ICANN multistakeholder model are of course far from new. I’ve been writing about them for 20 years or more.

But the latest INTA threat may ring a little hollow given that ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee also filed comments on exactly the same issues, so we know exactly what governments think: they’re totally cool with how the AGB is being drafted, and just seem happy to be involved.

3 Comments Tagged: agb, gac, icann. next round, inta, new gTLDs

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