ICANN shutters Australian office, cans staff

ICANN has closed its office in Australia, according to a few (so far officially unconfirmed) reports we’ve received today.
Multiple sources also tell DI that all ICANN staff working at the Sydney office were let go over the Christmas period.
Sydney is/was a relatively small branch, with only a handful of staff based there, including some in legal and compliance departments.
According to ICANN’s last budget, its lease on the office was due to expire in February. Rent was pegged at $155,000 (US).
I believe the closure may be due to a rationalization of ICANN’s facilities costs under the new executive team.
The Sydney office was set up while Paul Twomey was ICANN’s CEO and spent a lot of his time in his native Australia.
I’ve not heard anything yet about whether the same fate has befallen the Palo Alto, California office, which was opened during Rod Beckstrom’s tenure as CEO for similar reasons.
ICANN is headquartered in Los Angeles, having recently relocated from neighboring suburb Marina Del Rey.
It also has a European office in Brussels, which last year moved from temporary facilities to a more permanent set-up.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN

.cat wants to ditch registrar ban

PuntCAT, the .cat registry, has become the first gTLD operator to apply to ICANN for the right to dump the registrar ownership ban in its contract.
If the request is approved by ICANN, the company will be able to own an ICANN-accredited registrar and start selling .cat domain names more or less directly to registrants.
The company has proposed several amendments to its existing contract that would allow it to become an “affiliate” of — ie own — a registrar with respect to its own gTLD.
ICANN believes the request, which is open for public comment until February 13, will not create any competition problems.
ICANN approved the rules for enabling cross-ownership in October, after competition concerns from the European Commission and US Department of Commerce appeared to disappear.
The .cat request was handled via the Process for Handling Requests for Removal of Cross-Ownership Restrictions on Operators of Existing gTLDs, which absolutely nobody is calling PFHRFROCOROOOEG.
Under the rules, the alternative to amending an existing contract is adopting the standard new gTLDs registry agreement wholesale, but I’m not expecting any incumbent registries to do that.
PuntCAT is pretty much unique among “sponsored” gTLD operators in that it’s experienced steady growth, not subject to the same degree of speculation-related spikes as others, since launching in 2006.
It currently has roughly 60,000 domains under management, growing at about 10,000 names a year. Three Spanish registrars hold over half of the market between them, led by Nominalia.
But the gTLD faces an uncertain future.
The Catalonia region of Spain, which .cat represents, is set for an independence referendum in 2014. If it were to split off into a new country, it would get its own potentially competing ccTLD.
Sales could benefit from the imminent delegation of .dog, which three companies have applied for as a gTLD, but PuntCAT’s rules state that all .cat sites must have Catalan-language content.

2 Comments Tagged: .cat, cross ownership, ICANN, puntcat, vertical integration

ICANN finally coming to London

ICANN is to visit the UK for the first time in its 15-year history, with one of its 2014 public meetings now confirmed for London.
The organization is also planning to host its third meeting in Singapore, the city where its first meeting was held, just three years after its last visit, according to recently passed board resolutions.
Buenes Aires, Argentina has been selected for the third meeting in 2013, following Beijing and Durban, ICANN’s second visit to Argentina after the 2005 Mar Del Plata event.
The final meeting in 2014 will be held somewhere in North America, but the city has yet to be decided.
Fingers crossed for Vegas.

Comment Tagged: ICANN

Vietnamese registrar on the ICANN naughty step

ICANN has issued a broad breach notice against Vietnamese domain name registrar Mat Bao.
The company hasn’t escrowed its registrant data as required since February, according to ICANN, and it owes over $4,500 in accreditation fees.
It also hasn’t given ICANN a URL for its registrar web site, nor is it providing Whois service, according to the breach notice.
The registrar has fewer than 1,000 gTLD domain names under management, according to the latest registry reports.
ICANN has given it until January 17 to resolve its problems or risk losing its accreditation.

Comment Tagged: compliance, ICANN, mat bao

.co sees DUM grow by a quarter, renewals dip to 63%

.CO Internet said that domains under management in its .co TLD has grown by 24.39% so far in 2012, standing at about 1.4 million at the end of November.
In a blog post last week, the repurposed Colombian ccTLD registry also said that its “blended renewal rate” for the last few months is roughly 63%.
That’s down slightly from the 66% that .CO reported on its first general availability anniversary in July 2011.
Second-year renewals are higher, in the mid-70s, according to the company.
About 93% of its DUM are second-level .co domains, the rest are mostly Colombia-targeted .com.co names.

Comment Tagged: .co, .co internet

Swedish registry wins new gTLD testing contract

The registry operator for Sweden’s .se ccTLD has been picked to provide pre-delegation testing for new gTLDs.
ICANN announced at the weekend that Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur has won the two-year contract, which will see the organization scratch-build a testing suite and have it up and running by March.
ICANN said .se “has proven track of technical capability, operations excellence, and significant experience in the industry”.
The registry has a pretty good record when it comes to cutting-edge domain name technologies — .se was the first TLD to implement DNSSEC, preceding .com by about five years.
All new gTLDs will have to run DNSSEC, the cryptographically signed DNS protocol, from the outset, and testing such services is part of the pre-delegation testing provider’s remit.

4 Comments Tagged: .se, ICANN, new gTLDs, pre-delegation testing, Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur

gTLD Objector says .sex, .gay, .wtf are all okay

The Independent Objector for ICANN’s new gTLD program has given a preliminary nod to applications for .sex, .gay, .wtf and six other potentially “controversial” applied-for strings.
Alain Pellet this week told applicants for these gTLDs that he does not expect to file objections against their bids, despite an outpouring of public comments against them.
The strings given the okay are .adult, .gay, .hot, .lgbt, persiangulf, .porn .sex .sexy, and .wtf.
A total of 15 applications have been submitted for these strings. Some, such as .gay with four applicants, are contested. Others, such as .wtf and .porn, are not.
The IO is limited to filing objections on two rather tightly controlled grounds: Limited Public Interest (where the bid would violate international law) and Community (where a community would be disenfranchised).
For each of the nine strings, Pellet has decided that neither type of objection is warranted.
In his preliminary finding on .gay and .lgbt, he also noted that to file an objection “could be held incompatible with the obligation of States not to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity which is emerging as a norm”.
As part of a lengthy analysis of the international legal position on homosexuality, De Pellet wrote:

even though the IO acknowledges that homosexuality can be perceived as immoral in some States, there is no legal norm that would transcribe such a value judgment at the international level. Thus, the position of certain communities on the issue is not relevant in respect to the IO’s possibility to object to an application on the limited public interest ground.

For the porn-related applications, Pellet noted that any bid for a gTLD promoting child abuse material would certainly be objected to, but that ICANN has received no such application.
On .wtf, which received many public comments because it’s an acronym including profanity, Pellet observed that freedom of expression is sacred under international law.
He regarded the problem of excessive defensive registrations — as raised by the Australian government in the recent wave of Governmental Advisory Committee early warnings — is outside his remit.
Pellet’s findings, which I think will be welcomed by most parts of the ICANN community, are not unexpected.
Limited Public Interest Objection, originally known as the Morality and Public Order Objection, had been put forward in the wake of the approval of .xxx in 2010 as a way for governments to bring their national laws to bear on the DNS.
But it was painstakingly defanged by the Generic Names Supporting Organization in order to make it almost impossible for it to be used as a way to curb civil rights.
The GAC instead shifted its efforts to the GAC Advice on New gTLDs objection, which enables individual governments to submit objections vicariously based on their own national interest.
Pellet’s findings — which are preliminary but seem very unlikely to be reversed — can be read in full on his web site.

4 Comments Tagged: .adult, .gay, .lgbt, .sex, gac, ICANN, independent objector, new gTLDs, porn, wtf

Iran warns on 29 new gTLD bids

The Iranian government has filed late Early Warnings against 29 new gTLD applications, mostly on the basis that the applied-for strings are un-Islamic and “unethical”.
Bids for .gay, .sex, .wine, .bet, .poker and others relating to sexuality, alcohol and gambling are “in conflict with ethical standards” in Iran, according to the submissions.
We hear that the 29 warnings were filed with ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee December 10, well after the November 20 deadline that most other governments on the GAC stuck to.
We understand that problems obtaining visas for ICANN’s meeting in Toronto this October may have been blamed for the delay.
The initial batch of Early Warnings for the most part overlooked “moral” problems with gTLD strings, focusing far more on consumer protection, defensive registration costs and geographic sensitivities.
Not so with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is much more concerned about words it believes promote anti-Islamic behavior or represent Islamic concepts without the required community support.
The government says in its opposition to .gay, for example, that the gTLD would be responsible for:

Agitation and irritation of the humanity and faith; and spread of hatred and hostility in the society.
Encourage people to perform non-religious, Unethical and Non-rational actions in the society.
Encourage people on doing unlawful actions according to Islam religion in the society.
Getting away society from healthy environment for doing daily activities.

Several other Early Warnings use the same or similar language. Iran suggests that the applicants could remedy the problem by banning registration in Islamic nations.
Not all of its warnings are related to sex, drink and gambling, however.
It’s also objected to .krd, which has been applied for to represent the Kurdish community in the region, saying it could “raise serious political conflicts” and lacks support.
The .eco applicants have also been hit with warnings on the grounds that ECO is an acronym for the Economic Cooperation Organization, a regional intergovernmental organization focused on trade.
ECO meets the criteria for IGOs to register .int domains, according to Iran, which is the GAC’s current proposed method of creating a list of protected second-level domain names for IGOs.
The full list of Iran’s objections is published here.

1 Comment Tagged: .gay, .poker, .sex, gac, gac early warnings, ICANN, iran, new gTLDs, wine

Surprise! Verisign to increase .net fees

Verisign has just announced that it will increase its .net registry fee by 10% next year.
The changes, which will become effective July 1, 2013, see the charge for a one-year registration increase from $5.11 to $5.62.
The increase, which is permitted under Verisign’s contract with ICANN, was inevitable given the fact that the company has just lost the right to increase .com prices.
US Department of Commerce intervention in .com means that prices there are frozen for the next six years, so Verisign can be relied upon to seize every alternative growth opportunity available to it.
The last time .net’s fee was increased was January 2012, when it went up by 10% to the current $5.11.

3 Comments Tagged: .com, .net, verisign

Two ICANN directors update their conflicts profile after .africa complaint

ICANN directors Mike Silber and Chris Disspain have updated their official statements of interest — used to identify potential conflicts on the board — after a complaint from a .africa applicant.
The new SOI statement more clearly specifies the relationship between South African ccTLD policymaker ZADNA — for which Silber acts as treasurer — and Uniforum, which has applied for the .africa gTLD.
(December 28 Update: Silber, in the comments below, states that the update to his SOI was in no way a response to the DCA complaint.)
It also gives a bit more information about Disspain’s employer, .au policymaker AuDA, and ARI Registry Services, which is providing the back-end registry services for dozens of new gTLD applicants.
Here’s Silber’s new SOI summary, with the relevant new text highlighted:

Member of the Management Committee and Treasurer of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) South Africa. He is also, a Director and Treasurer of the .za Domain Name Authority, the ccTLD administrator for .za. The .za Domain Name Authority has concluded an arms-length operating agreement with Uniforum t/a the .za Central Registry for Uniforum to operate the .za registry. Under the agreement, Uniforum will collect and pay transaction fees to .za Domain Name Authority. Uniforum is acting as the registry service provider for various new gTLD applicants.

Here’s Disspain’s, again with my emphasis:

Director and CEO of .au Domain Administration Limited, the .au ccTLD manager; .au has sponsorship agreement with ICANN under which .au pays ICANN a yearly amount based on the amount of names under management. Former Officer of ICANN, Paul Levins, is a Director of .au Domain Administration Limited. .au Domain Administration Limited licenses AusRegistry Pty Ltd to run the registry for the second level names in .au. Under the Registry License agreement, AusRegistry pays fees to auDA; companies affiliated with AusRegistry are affiliated with new gTLD applications.

AusRegistry is technically ARI’s parent, but they share many of the same senior executives.
The updated statement comes shortly after a complaint filed with ICANN’s Ombudsman by .africa applicant DotConnectAfrica about Silber and Disspain’s alleged conflicts of interest over the gTLD.
While the indirect connection between Silber and DCA’s rival .africa applicant Uniforum is clear, it was not obvious to Ombudsman Chris LaHatte what Disspain’s conflict was supposed to be.
LaHatte found no actions that constituted conflicts of interest from either director, but he appeared to nudge the board to providing fuller disclosure, which is what seems to have happened here.

5 Comments Tagged: .au, .za, auda, conflicts of interest, ICANN, new gTLDs, zadna