New gTLD lottery tickets now on sale

ICANN has started selling its $100-a-pop New gTLD Prioritization Draw raffle tickets in Los Angeles, with a little less than a week to go until the make-or-break drawing.
The organization is understandably eager not to balls it up this time — the Draw replaces Digital Archery, which was killed off largely due to how silly it was — so there are strict rules in place.
Due to the Californian lottery laws the Draw will operate under, applicants have to show up in person to buy their tickets, or ask a designated proxy to do it for them.
To avoid any funny business, each buyer has to show up with a government ID with details matching those on the special Designation Form, which in turn must be signed by a named individual from the gTLD application itself.
It’s strictly one ticket per application, of course.
Some applicants have got in early. Here’s photographic evidence that some applicants have successfully bought theirs, courtesy of Uniregistry counsel Bret Fausett.

The draw itself will take place on December 17, starting at about 1pm local time, at the LA airport Hilton. Anyone who shows up to buy tickets after 11am that day will be turned away.
With over 1,900 applications, we could be looking at eight hours or more of pulling pieces of paper out of a bucket.
The whole thing will be webcast for people who, like me, have nothing better to do with their time.
Opting out of the process is as simple as not buying a ticket, but there’ll be a secondary draw to determine the prioritization of opted-out applications.
Applications for internationalized domain names will be drawn first, followed by non-IDNs, followed by opted-out IDNs, followed by opted-out non-IDNs.
Why is this lottery so important?
For many applicants it’s going to determine their time to market, which could mean the difference between launching into a market eager for new real estate and launching into one jaded by flops.
In some cases a good draw number could be worth millions. But unfortunately for applicants, they won’t be able to trade their tickets or prioritization slots.

Comment Tagged: icann. new gtlds, prioritization draw

Van Gelder leaves NBT, goes solo with consulting biz

Stephane Van Gelder, who co-founded the French registrar Indom in 1999, is leaving the company at the end of the year.
He’s founding a new company, Stephane Van Gelder Consulting, saying he wants to provide consulting services to domain portfolio owners, registrars and registries.
Indom was acquired by European registrar holding company Group NBT two years ago for about $22 million.
Van Gelder was until October chair of ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization Council, and has recently kindly provided DI with a few provocative guest posts.

1 Comment Tagged: group nbt, indom, stephane van gelder consulting

List your job openings for free on DI Jobs

DI Jobs has been given a total overhaul, and I’m pleased to announced that you can now list your domain name industry job openings completely free of charge.
You can check out the new site here.
The new service supports logos, maps, tags, and allows extensive job descriptions to be uploaded. After posting, ads can be edited by the poster via the account interface.
It’s new software, so should be considered a “beta” for the time being, but early testers tell me everything is functioning as expected so far.
It’s our intention to keep the listing service free forever, though we may introduced premium-placement options at a later date.

Comment Tagged: di jobs

Go Daddy gets its fourth CEO in a year

Go Daddy has appointed Blake Irving, formerly of Microsoft and Yahoo, as its new CEO.
He’s the fourth man to take the top spot at the market-leading registrar in the last 12 months.
Founding CEO Bob Parsons stepped aside for his protege COO Warren Adelman a year ago, but he too was replaced in August by the company’s new investors.
Irving was most recently chief products officer at Yahoo, but has spent most of his career as a Microsoftie, heading up the Windows Live platform at the tail end of his 15-year tenure.
He will take over from interim CEO Scott Wagner of KKR Ventures on January 7 next year.
Domain Name Wire has a few quotes from the new guy over here.

Comment Tagged: go daddy

YouPorn owner arrested in tax evasion probe

YouPorn owner and regular ICM Registry antagonist Fabian Thylmann has reportedly been arrested in Belgium in connection with a German tax evasion investigation.
He was taken into custody at Brussels airport today under a warrant from the Cologne District Court, according to German daily Die Welt.
Thylmann is the owner — some say nominally so — of Manwin Licensing, the online porn empire behind brands such as YouPorn, Brazzers and, under license, Playboy.
Manwin sued ICANN and ICM late last year over the .xxx gTLD, saying it violates US antitrust laws, charges which are denied.
The company is also engaged in an ICANN Independent Review Panel procedure over the same issues.
ICM says that the lawsuit, and a related boycott, are merely attempts to disrupt its business. Thylmann, the company claims, offered to invest in ICM but was rebuffed.
According to Die Welt, Manwin’s German headquarters was raided last Tuesday as part of an ongoing tax evasion probe, which was spurred in part by the newspaper’s own investigation into the company.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, icm registry, manwin, xxx, youporn

Ombudsman asks DCA to simmer down after .africa conflict of interest complaint

ICANN’s Ombudsman dismissed a complaint from DotConnectAfrica about alleged conflicts of interest on ICANN’s board of directors, but scolded DCA for its “intemperate” blog posts.
DCA complained in October that two members of the board — Mike Silber and Chris Disspain — have conflicts of interest in relation to the contested .africa gTLD.
DCA has applied for .africa without notable government support, whereas South African registry Uniforum has applied with formal backing from most African governments.
According to DCA’s complaint, as described by Ombudsman Chris LaHatte in a new blog post, Disspain and Silber somehow have conflicts of interest related to this contention set.
Silber is treasurer of ZADNA, the South African domain name authority, which oversees .za policy and ergo Uniforum’s ccTLD business, which is arguably a close connection to the .africa applicant.
Disspain is CEO of auDA, which oversees policy for Australia’s .au ccTLD and therefore has a relationship with AusRegistry, a major back-end provider for new gTLD applicants.
It’s not at all obvious what the alleged conflict of interest related to .africa is in Disspain’s case.
When LaHatte asked DCA executive director Sophia Bekele to explain the precise nature of the conflicts, he did not receive any information beyond identification of these two employment connections, both of which are already fully disclosed by ICANN.
Both men are members of the board’s New gTLD Program Committee, which wields the board’s power over the new gTLD program and is designed to comprise only non-conflicted directors.
LaHatte blogged that he was unable to find any discussion of .africa in any board or committee meeting minutes — because ICANN has not discussed any individual gTLD applications yet — and was therefore unable to find any unfair treatment of DCA.
Dealing with unfair treatment is of course the Ombudsman’s job. LaHatte concluded:

I consider that no disqualifying conflict of interest, or indeed any conflict of interest at all, is present in the actions of both Chris Disspain and Mike Silber. It is likely this complaint has led to increased awareness of the possibilities of conflict of interest, which the Board will carefully consider in terms of the existing policy about conflict, when the issue arises. I consider this should continue to be a matter for consideration in gTLD decision making by the Board.

But the Ombudsman also, it seems, had some concerns about the nature of DCA’s lobbying campaign over the last several months, which has been as vitriolic has it has been scattershot.
As previously noted, some of its allegations against its .africa rival have been baffling.
LaHatte clearly picked up on the tone of the debate also, blogging:

There has been considerable amount of discussion on blogs, Twitter and other sites and in comments on the ICANN website in relation to the new .africa gTLDs applications. Regrettably much of the discussion has been intemperate.
…
An aspect of this application has been the unfortunate tone of much of the debate on various websites blogs and other places. During the course of this investigation I discussed this with Sophia Bekele (at the Toronto meeting) and suggested that perhaps a less aggressive approach would be appropriate. She readily agreed to this.
The discussion and debate continues to be fairly vigorous, but I would suggest to the competing parties for .africa that they should pay attention to the ICANN rules about respectful communication.

As Uniforum has said little, and DCA a lot, I can also assume that the blog posts being referred to are DCA’s.
The company has for several months regularly posted often incomprehensible allegations on its blog, usually in multicolored text with liberal use of italics and bold.
Bekele was also last week rumbled using a fake identity on a mailing list to support DCA’s position.

2 Comments Tagged: africa, auda, conflict of interest, dotconnectafrica, ICANN, new gTLDs, uniforum, zadna

Russian iTunes Store infiltrated by .xxx banners after snafu [NSFW]

Russian iTunes users reportedly got a shock today when they discovered masses of sexually explicit content from the .xxx gTLD in their iTunes Store.
According to local reports, attempts to visit a part of the store dedicated to foreign movies displayed a bunch of banner ads for .xxx web sites instead of the expected content.

@arcoolov @markgurman @9to5mac This is NOT a joke. How do you explain replies in the comments? A legitimate issue twitter.com/iphones_ru/sta…

— iphones.ru (@iphones_ru) December 5, 2012

Digging a little deeper, it appears that the images were being drawn directly from xxx.xxx, a promotional directory site owned and managed by ICM Registry, the .xxx registry.
Speculation in the Apple blogs is that an iTunes Store developer inadvertently typed “xxx.xxx” somewhere as a placeholder URL, not realizing that .xxx is actually a live TLD.
There’s a lesson here for new gTLD registries somewhere, I’m sure.

4 Comments Tagged: apple, icm registry, itunes, xxx, xxx.xxx

.africa gTLD applicant caught using fake identity

DotConnectAfrica executive director Sophia Bekele has been rumbled using a fake identity to post to an ICANN mailing list, but says she did so due to “hatred” from other posters.
Members of the AfrICANN list discovered this week that a poster going by the name of “Lerato Ma” had Bekele’s name in her email headers.
Over several months, “Ma” had frequently defended DCA, which is locked in a bitter contention battle over the .africa gTLD.
Bekele told DI that she had been forced to used a pseudonym due to the hostility she’s experienced on the list when posting under her real name.
“The open display of hatred, aggression and personal anonymity [sic] towards my person and DCA is compelling me to post under Lerato Ma,” she said in an email.
“There is nothing to hide, it is just to protect myself from all that aggression,” she added. “It is not an important issues for us.”
AfrICANN is not an official ICANN mailing list, nor does it have any power. It’s hosted by Afrinic, the African IP address registry, and is used to discuss issues related to ICANN in Africa.
Unlike most ICANN mailing lists, which operate under a code of acceptable behavior, it has a fairly rough-and-tumble tone to it. Bekele and DCA are sometimes mocked by name.

7 Comments Tagged: africa, africann, afrinic, dotconnectafrica, ICANN

TLDH hires ICANN’s former new gTLDs head

Top Level Domain Holdings has hired Michael Salazar, former head of the new gTLD program at ICANN, as its chief financial officer.
The hire, which is still subject to some regulatory checks, will also see Salazar become an executive director of the company, which has applied for dozens of new gTLDs.
Salazar was at ICANN for three years, before leaving this June in the wake of the TLD Application System and Digital Archery messes.
Before ICANN, he was with KPMG for 16 years, according to TLDH.
It’s the second time TLDH has brought a former ICANNer on board to fill a senior role.
Former chair Peter Dengate Thrush controversially joined the company as executive chairman in July 2011, but recently announced that he will be leaving the company in January.
Salazer replaces David Weill, CFO as well as a founding director of the company, who is leaving. He’s the second original director, after Clark Landry, to quit in as many months.

5 Comments Tagged: ICANN, m+m, Minds + Machines, new gTLDs, tldh

ITU chief offers hand of friendship to ICANN

Are ICANN and the International Telecommunications Union going to start playing nicely?
That’s the message coming out of the ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai this morning, when ITU secretary general Hamadoun Toure said the two organizations are “complementary”.
Addressing his “good friend”, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, during the WCIT opening ceremony, Toure said:

I have invited Fadi to recognize here the impact of ICANN on the development of Internet, and I’ve said this, this morning in our heads of delegations meeting that I believe we should be reaching out and them accepting here means that they are on the same road.
I think if you help us, we can walk the talk and I believe I can count on you and the words that I received when I heard of the acceptance of Fadi Chehade’ to this meeting was a testimony of everyone here, believing that it’s time to start working together to be complementary and to work together. And I believe we have started the first step of that.

Chehade himself addressed delegates during the opening ceremony too, speaking partly in Arabic, his first language.
WCIT was widely feared by certain countries — notably the US — due to concerns that some governments would try to assert authority over ICANN’s internet governance functions.
That fear seems to have been calmed in recent weeks, but the substantive policy work at WCIT, which runs until December 13, will be the real test of the ITU’s relationship with ICANN.

3 Comments Tagged: ICANN, itu, wcit