Still no closure on GAC new gTLD advice

ICANN board members met again to discuss the Governmental Advisory Committee’s advice on new gTLDs at the weekend and, again, made baby steps towards addressing it.
The main update in a just-published New gTLD Program Committee resolution is that dozens of previously frozen applications for “closed generic” gTLDs have been thawed.
These applicants will be able to proceed to contracting with ICANN, as long as they agree to sign a version of the Registry Agreement that prohibits use of the string as a closed generic.
Closed generics haven’t been killed off, but anyone still planning to operate one is still in GAC limbo.
The NGPC said in its latest scorecard (pdf):

ICANN has received communications from many of the applicants for strings mentioned in this advice, stating that they are prepared enter the Registry Agreement as approved by the NGPC, which prohibits exclusive registry access for generic strings. Since moving forward with these applicants is consistent with the GAC advice, the NGPC directs staff to move forward with the contracting process for applicants for strings identified in the Category 2 Safeguard Advice that are prepared to enter into the Registry Agreement as approved.

The hundreds of “Category 1” strings — those, such as .law, .health and .games, that the GAC believes need extra regulation before being approved — are still on hold.
The NGPC said: “The NGPC is working on an implementation plan for the advice and will inform the GAC of the details upon approval by the NGPC.”
Does that mean ICANN will be accepting the advice? Right now, that’s not clear.
There was no movement on Amazon’s application for .amazon and transliterations, which were put on hold following the GAC’s advice at the Durban meeting in July.
Amazon submitted a lengthy argument challenging the legal basis of the GAC’s advice, which the NGPC is still mulling over.

2 Comments

New gTLD delegations probably not delayed by US government shutdown

If the US government shuts down tonight, would that delay the delegation of new gTLDs?
Probably not, from what I gather.
For reasons beyond the ken of most sane people*, the US legislature is currently deadlocked on a bill that would provide the funds to keep the executive wing of the government running.
It’s looking increasingly likely that the government is to shut down.
That’s a big deal for a whole range of important reasons, obviously, but it also has implications for new gTLD applicants.
The DNS root zone belongs to the US government, remember.
It’s managed by Verisign and ICANN’s IANA department suggests appropriate changes, but without USG the tripartite relationship that enables new TLDs to be delegated falls apart.
Without the NTIA in the mix, ICANN can make all the root zone change requests it wants and Verisign lacks the authority to execute them.
So there’s a reason to be worried if you’re a new gTLD applicant. If the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is out of the office for an indeterminate period, you may be looking at more delays.
However, it looks like the NTIA may have got that covered.
According to the Department of Commerce’s “Plan for Orderly Shutdown Due to Lapse of Congressional Appropriations”, (pdf) a “Telecomm. Policy Specialist”, tasked with “Emergency protection of internet management (ICANN)” is on the list of “Excepted Positions”.
I gather that this means that there’s going to be an NTIA person working during any possible shutdown to manage root zone changes, including gTLD delegations.
* It’s been several years since I lived in the States, and my grasp of the nuance of American political life has waned accordingly, but I gather the shutdown is somehow related to protecting insurance companies’ profit margins. Or defending the constitutional right to get better healthcare than people poorer than yourself. Something like that.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, ntia

PIR rebrands, talks up “Facebook-like” new gTLDs

Public Interest Registry is dropping the .org from its primary branding in preparation for the launch of its new gTLDs.
CEO Brian Cute said that branding the registry around .org “made a lot of sense when we were a single product company”, but that the time has come to put the PIR name front and center.
The new logo incorporates “Your”, as a result of focus groups, testing and because Cute says “really reflects to us our commitment to the communities we serve”.
PIR has applied to ICANN for .ngo, for Non-Governmental Organization, along with Latin equivalent .ong and four transliterations of .org in Cyrillic, Hindi and Chinese.
Cute told DI that the plan for .ngo and .ong is to have a space in which, unlike .org, the identities of the registrants have been validated.
There’s going to be a searchable directory, a portal, and a “Facebook-like” service for registrants, he said.
“We’re going to have profile pages, so if a registrant doesn’t want to stand up a full website, there’ll be a Facebook-like profile they can populate,” he said.
It sounds like PIR is thinking about a template-driven approach to getting content on .ngo domains, somewhat similar to how .tel works (though it won’t be mandatory in .ngo) or Employ Media’s .Jobs Universe.
But Cute said neither of those concepts inspired PIR, which is building its profile service from scratch.
It’s an interesting way to market a TLD, and I’m positive that PIR won’t be the only new gTLD applicant to do something along these lines.

4 Comments Tagged: .ngo, .ong, .org, new gTLDs, pir, public interest registry

TLDH has the end in sight, but no revenue

Top Level Domain Holdings made less than $12,000 in the first half of the year, but says its new gTLD business may start generating revenue in the fourth quarter.
In its interim financial results, published this morning, the company also revealed that it plans to launch its own domain name registrar and, via a partnership, web site building tools.
Revenue for the six months to June 30, which was almost all due to monetization of its second-level domains portfolio, was £7,000 ($11,295), compared to £346,000 ($558,000) a year earlier.
TLDH’s loss for the period grew to £1.8 million ($2.9 million) from £1.5 million ($2.4 million).
But in a lengthy statement chairman Fred Krueger assured investors that he is “confident” that the long process of getting TLDH’s applied-for gTLDs to market is drawing to a close.

Looking forward, I am confident that ICANN will broadly continue to sign contracts in line with the timelines we announced in July 2013, allowing .LONDON potentially to begin its launch and initial marketing as early as the first half of 2014. Given the recent signing of contract between .KIWI and ICANN, we may see our first revenues as a back-end registry operator as early as Q4 2013, and revenue from the sale of domain names from our first wholly-owned new gTLD by Q1 2014.

The company currently has interests in 25 uncontested gTLDs and has applied for 48 more, according to Krueger.
With more private and ICANN new gTLD auctions coming soon, TLDH has cash on hand of £7.4 million ($12 million).
Given the average selling price of a new gTLD is currently $1.3 million, there’s seems to be little chance of TLDH securing its entire portfolio of applied-for strings without additional funding.
Losing private auctions could be a way to generate cash to win more than the nine auctions that its $12 million implies, however.
Krueger also revealed TLDH’s revenue plans beyond its Minds + Machines registry services business.

As we enter into this final phase, we are pursuing other potential revenue-producing ventures by developing our own registrar, and, in cooperation with the website-building company Needly, providing a clean path for users to get a complete online solution – a web presence and email, as well as a domain name.

Krueger is also CEO of Needly, which makes a web content management platform.

Comment Tagged: auctions, m+m, Minds + Machines, new gTLDs, tld, top level domain holdings

Name Collisions: Unanticipated Effects [Guest Post]

I attended the TLD Security Forum sponsored by Artemis in San Francisco five weeks ago. By happenstance, I became involved in a small group formed after the meeting that dedicated themselves to replicating the Interisle study (“Name Collisions in the DNS”) and carrying on with the next step in the analysis.
The work among competitors that occurred over the next four weeks was collaborative, intensive, and competent: an excellent example of how the multi-stakeholder model can accomplish significant work and publish it to the broad internet community in an effort to resolve an issue. It brought the right people together to accomplish more, faster than any other governance model would achieve.
Their work is easily identifiable among the many comments submitted on the name collision issue. Without offering an opinion on conclusions here, I note that the competence of work shines through and should be carefully considered.
The Interisle study sounded an alarm because it reported a potentially high number of domain name “collisions” that might result from the delegation of new gTLDs. The term “collision” is somewhat of a misnomer and the key issue, I think, is the use of search-list processing by companies in configuring their networks.
The Interisle report published the volumes of NX Domain responses by TLD and described possible harms but did not link harms to specific types of queries nor delve into the data in order to draw firm conclusions or propose mitigations.
There is nothing wrong with this –- the report was competently executed given the time available.
This is where several interested parties, mostly applicants, jumped in. In an impromptu meeting after the conference a half-dozen companies coordinated: the purchase of servers to analyze previously collected root-zone data (the “Day In The Life” or DITL data); acquisition of memberships in OARC, to whom the servers were donated; and the analysis of vast amounts of data.
Considerable time was spent redesigning queries in order to replicate the Interisle results from the DITL data so that the next step in the analysis would be seamless as the work transitioned from Interisle to this collaborative group.
Hypotheses were developed, queries written, data summarized and statistically tested. Every difference between the Interisle data and the newly analyzed data was discussed until the team was satisfied it would withstand public scrutiny.
The team met twice weekly in conference calls and traded numerous emails to flesh out technical details. Data scientists learned about the DNS, DNS experts learned about z-tests and the effects of non-standard distributions.
The team agreed to publish the data, which it has, so that anyone could perform analysis similar to that done by this team.
For me, these technical discussions brought to mind the reaffirmation of the effectiveness of the ICANN model that occurred as a result of this issue. Work continues and will be discussed at the next TLD Security Conference on October 1st in Washington, DC.
This is a guest post written by Kurt Pritz, ICANN’s former chief strategy officer. He is currently an independent consultant working with new gTLD applicants and others.

Comment Tagged: name collisions, new gTLDs, tld security forum

Crocker to speak at second gTLD collisions summit

ICANN chair Steve Crocker is among a packed line-up of speakers for an event on Tuesday that will address the potential security risks of name collisions in the new gTLD program.
It’s the second TLD Security Forum, which are organized by new gTLD applicants unhappy with ICANN’s proposal to delay hundreds of “uncalculated risk” applied-for gTLDs.
The first event, held in August, was notable for statements playing down the risk from the likes of Google and Digicert.
While Crocker is scheduled to speak on Tuesday, anyone expecting insight into the ICANN board’s thinking on name collisions is likely to be disappointed.
The title of his talk is “The Current State of DNSSEC Deployment”, which isn’t directly relevant to the issue.
Crocker, due to conflicts of interest protections, is also not a member of ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee, which is tasked with making decisions about the collision problem.
While Crocker’s views may wind up remaining private, we can’t say the same for Amy Mushahwar and Dan Jaffe, representing the Association of National Advertisers, both of whom are also speaking.
The ANA is firmly in the Verisign camp on this issue, claiming that gTLD name collisions create unacceptable security risks for organizations on the internet.
Also on the line-up for Tuesday are Laureen Kapin of the US Federal Trade Commission and Gabriel Rottman of the American Civil Liberties Union, both of whom could bring new perspectives to the debate.
The TLD Security Forum begins at 9am at the Washington Hilton and Heights Meeting Center in Washington, DC. It’s free to attend and will be webcast for those unable to show up in person.

Comment Tagged: aclu, ana, artemis, association of national advertisers, ftc, ICANN, name collisions, new gTLDs, shinkuro

Samsung signs the first dot-brand gTLD contract

Samsung has become the first company to sign a Registry Agreement for a dot-brand gTLD.
As of yesterday, the electronics giant is now officially contracted with ICANN to run .삼성, its name in its native Korean.
It’s surprising that Samsung would be the first; while its application has priority number 18, its application also makes it pretty obvious it’s a primarily defensive move, reading:

The new gTLD proposed by SAMSUNG SDS has purpose in protecting online brand of SAMSUNG Group including SAMSUNG by defending abusive registration by third parties and further raising global awareness by domain usage utilizing company name.

The contract has not yet been published in full — expect that over the next few days — so it’s not yet clear whether Samsung has managed to negotiate any special dot-brand-specific amendments.
The base Registry Agreement contains lots of obligations, such as Sunrise periods, that really aren’t applicable to single-registrant spaces.
I understand the new Brand Registry Group is currently trying to negotiate a baseline set of dot-brand amendments with ICANN, so it’s possible that Samsung has jumped the gun by signing so soon.
But it could also mean that .삼성 will be the first-ever dot-brand TLD to go live on the internet, which is likely to benefit from substantial media coverage compared to subsequent delegations.
ICANN has signed 48 new gTLD contracts since July, way behind its originally target of 40 per week.
.삼성 will have its back-end registry managed by .kr ccTLD operator KISA.

1 Comment Tagged: .삼성, ICANN, new gTLDs, registry agreement, samsung

newdomains.org ticket compo winners announced

The winners of the recent DI prize draw, with three free tickets for the newdomains.org conference at stake, have been confirmed.
To enter the competition, you simply had to leave a comment on DI completing the sentence “The biggest challenge facing new gTLDs next year will be…”
I read all the submissions and found them all interesting but ultimately the comments were completely irrelevant in determining the winners, which were selected by three random numbers generated by Random.org.
The winners were:

• Colin Campbell of .CLUB Domains.
• Jeffrey Sass of .CLUB Domains.
• Phil Buckingham of DotAdvice.

It definitely looks weird that two people from the same company won tickets. Weird enough that for half a second I wondered whether justice would be better serviced if were to fix a different outcome.
But I didn’t. If it looks unjust, blame randomness. Fate’s a bitch.
Many thanks to all who entered. There were some interesting comments.

5 Comments Tagged: competition, new gTLDs, newdomains.org

Authentic Web wants to be dot-brands’ pocket registrar

Toronto-based start-up Authentic Web launched today with a set of workflow automation tools for dot-brand gTLD registries.
Because ICANN requires all new gTLDs, even the closed ones, to make registrations via accredited registrars, there’s often talk about dot-brands signing up with “pocket” registrars.
That’s what Authentic Web wants to be, according to CEO Peter LaMantia. The company is focused on the dot-brand market.
The company’s new Brand Registry Asset Manager will provide a way for dot-brands to control the registration process workflow so that only approved second-level domains are registered, he said.
For example, a smaller dot-brand might have a single person responsible for registering all domains in the gTLD, while a multinational might have multiple layers of delegated power.
Instead of plonking down a credit card at Go Daddy to buy a .com domain, a marketing manager would place a request into the BRAM system and have it approved up a chain of command before the ultimate Add command was made with the registry.
Authentic Web would usually act as the registrar middleman, but the plan is to also integrate the software with third-party registrars.
The software will also give dot-brands greater visibility over their portfolios, LaMantia said.
Many big brands already have a hard time keeping track of their existing portfolios of domain names in gTLDs they do not control, he said.
“I know a lot of companies that do this on Excel sheets,” he said. “If they own the registry they’re not going to want to do that. That’s the hole in the market.”
BRAM is web-based and hosted by Authentic Web, so it won’t at first integrate with existing enterprise identity systems, though LaMantia said integration tools are on the road-map.
The software will be priced on a monthly subscription basis, with a per-domain component.
LaMantia, who founded Authentic Web last year, previously was president of the registrar Aplus.net.

1 Comment Tagged: authentic web, dot-brands, new gTLDs, workflow

ICANN to publish new gTLD contract changes

ICANN has decided to start publishing red-lined versions of its new gTLD Registry Agreements, so applicants can see what special terms ICANN is willing to accept.
It’s a reversal of its previous position, and follows complaints from applicants and back-end providers.
So far ICANN has signed almost 50 new gTLD contracts, all of which have been published, but it’s not easy to compare them all to the baseline Registry Agreement found in the Applicant Guidebook.
By publishing versions with the changes highlighted, applicants will be able to go into contract negotiations with a better idea of how far ICANN is willing to bend.
ICANN said today:

Upon further consideration, ICANN has concluded that publishing redlined versions of Registry Agreements would be helpful to the entire ICANN community, and would also support ICANN’s efforts to provide operational transparency.

It added that so far there have been no substantial changes in the contracts it’s signed, apart from gTLD-specific Public Interest Commitments and approved Registry Services.
It will start publishing the redlines next month.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, registry agreement