ICANN is about as fast as a pregnant elephant

Making a binding policy at ICANN takes about the same amount of time as gestating a human fetus, but only when the organization and community are working at their absolute fastest.
It’s much more often comparable to an elephant pregnancy.
That’s according to a timetable researched by ICANN senior policy director Marika Konings and circulated to the GNSO Council this week.
Konings found that the latest iteration of the GNSO’s Policy Development Process has to last for a bare minimum of 263 days, three days shorter than the average human pregnancy.
However, that deadline would only be met if ICANN staff were fully resourced, all community participants were firing on all cylinders, and there was full agreement about the policy from the outset.
That’s obviously a completely fanciful, largely theoretical scenario.
The more realistic estimated average time for a PDP to run to completion – from the GNSO Council kick-starting the process with a request for an Issue Report to the ICANN board voting to approve or reject the policy – is 620 days, Konings found.
That’s slightly slower than the gestation period of an Asian elephant.
In other words, if some hypothetical policy work were to start in the GNSO today, we could not reasonably expect to see an outcome one way or the other until February 3, 2014.
Konings’ findings were accompanied by an assessment of eight relatively recent PDPs, which took between 415 days and 1,073 days to reach a board vote. The median time was 639 days.
Some GNSO Councilors think ICANN needs a fast-track PDP for no-brainer policies. I tend to agree.

3 Comments Tagged: gnso, ICANN, pdp

OpenSRS now offering .jobs and .aero

Tucows has started offering .jobs and .aero domain names through its OpenSRS reseller channel.
According to a blog posting, resellers will have to opt in to offering these gTLDs. Prices are $125/year for .jobs and $50/year for .aero.
It’s potentially good news for both registries, particularly .jobs. Both are restricted, sponsored gTLDs, but .jobs has a much less strict set of entry requirements than .aero.
The OpenSRS network has about 11,000 resellers, according to the company, which is largely responsible for Tucows being the third-largest ICANN-accredited registrar by domain volume.

2 Comments Tagged: .aero, .jobs, employ media, opensrs, tucows

June .nxt conference canceled

The .nxt conference on new generic top-level domains, planned for London next month, has been postponed until later this year, the organizers have announced.
.nxt CEO Kieren McCarthy blamed the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the new gTLD program timetable following ICANN’s six-week TLD Application System outage.
McCarthy wrote on the .nxt web site:

Our main goal for this conference is to give a comprehensive overview of the new gTLD process, including: providing an understanding of this new market; assisting applicants in moving forward; learning lessons from the past; and giving everyone a significant new industry an opportunity to meet, debate and network. We just don’t feel this is going to be possible for the 20-22 June timeframe.
…
We gave serious consideration to running the conference despite the lack of information and tight timeline but decided in the end it would be better for everyone to hold a conference that was in a position to achieve its aims.

The conference had already signed up almost twice the number of attendees than the previous two San Francisco-based events (which were in the 150-200 range), according to McCarthy.
Tickets for the June event will be honored for the rescheduled .nxt, which is likely to happen in the late third or early fourth quarter, he said.
People who booked hotels through official channels will get a full refund, but those who made their own arrangements will have to make their own cancellations.

1 Comment Tagged: .nxt

New gTLD applicant asks for money back

At least one new generic top-level domain applicant has requested a full $185,000 refund of its application fee, according to ICANN.
This exchange is from last night’s Twitter chat with ICANN executives:

@icann Has anyone asked for a refund yet? #icannchat

— Kevin Murphy (@DomainIncite) May 22, 2012

A11: As of last night we had received two new requests for refund since full refund offer: one for $185k & one for $5K #newgTLD #ICANNchat

— ICANN (@ICANN) May 22, 2012

It’s interesting that the answer was qualified with “since full refund offer”, suggesting there may have been more requests for refunds prior to ICANN’s decision to up the maximum refund from $180,000 to $185,000.
It’s not known which applicant asked for the refund or why.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, refund

Chinese DDoS knocks 123-reg offline

Customers of major UK domain registrar 123-reg suffered a couple of hours of downtime this afternoon due to an apparently “massive” denial of service attack.
The attack targeted its DNS servers and originated in China, according to a report in The Register.
Users reported sites offline or with spotty availability, but the company managed to mitigate the effects of the attack fairly quickly. It’s now reporting mostly normal service.
123-reg, part of the Host Europe Group, has hundreds of thousands of domains under management in the gTLD space alone.

Comment Tagged: 123-reg, ddos, host europe, security

Four action sports gTLDs fall off a cliff

Adrenaline TLD has confirmed that it no longer plans to apply to ICANN for the sport-themed top-level domains .surf, .skate, .bike and .board.
The news was implicit in the announcement from Starting Dot that it has partnered with Adrenaline for .ski earlier this week, but the company today confirmed as much.
In a statement this morning, Adrenaline’s Rob Rozicki said:

Although we are not filing applications for the remaining four TLD’s in this application window we will investigate bringing them to the market in the next round of applications. However if you are an applicant for any of our other TLD’s please contact us to see how we can work together to help the action sports community.

Rozicki is also working with Starting Dot’s marketing agency, the newly formed DomainDicition, as head of North American online marketing.
The .ski project can be found at dot-ski.com. Its Twitter handle is @dot_ski.

3 Comments Tagged: .ski, adrenaline tld, domaindiction, starting dot

Digital Archery lessons from tonight’s tweet-up

ICANN held a Twitter session tonight during which executives answered questions about the new gTLD program in that notoriously restrictive 140-character format.
Unsurprisingly, in light of the frustration borne out of ongoing delays, most of the questions were about timing.
New gTLD applicants wanted to know when ICANN plans to host its Big Reveal event, when the Digital Archery application batching system will open, and when the batches will be confirmed.
The only specific date applicants were given was May 29, which is when ICANN plans to publish its updated program timetable.

A15: Additional schedule details to be posted by 29 May. – @rodbeckstrom #newgTLD #ICANN #ICANNchat

— ICANN (@ICANN) May 22, 2012

But @ICANN gave away enough information to make a broad estimate about the date digital archery will commence.
First, ICANN confirmed that the Big Reveal will be before its public meeting in Prague kicks off on June 23.

A8: Update on timeline to be published shortly. Target reveal date still before Prague. – @rodbeckstrom #newgTLD #ICANN #ICANNchat

— ICANN (@ICANN) May 22, 2012

ICANN also said that the digital archery process will begin before the reveal day and finish after.

A1: Secondary timestamp (digarchery) scheduled 2 open b4 reveal day & close aftr. Designed for reliability & timeliness #ICANNchat #newgTLD

— ICANN (@ICANN) May 22, 2012

A6: #ICANN will publish batches after the reveal, after the digital archery process is complete. – @rodbeckstrom #ICANNchat #newgTLD

— ICANN (@ICANN) May 22, 2012

The archery window will be open for about three weeks, we learned.

A12: The secondary timestamp process will be open for approx 3 weeks, details later. – @rodbeckstrom #newgTLD #ICANN #ICANNchat

— ICANN (@ICANN) May 22, 2012

We can draw some broad conclusions from this information.
The latest possible date for the Big Reveal, given what ICANN said tonight, is June 22 (the Friday before Prague), so the latest possible date for the digital archery window opening is June 21.
In that case, digital archery would run June 21 – July 12, or thereabouts.
Because the archery can’t start before the applications are all submitted, the earliest window would be May 31 – June 20.
My estimates err towards the lower end. I think we’re looking at archery starting within a week of the application window closing and ending immediately before or during Prague.
If ICANN decides that it wants the archery out of the way before the meeting begins, the window could have to open as early as May 31.
If it wants the window to close post-Prague, we’re looking at it opening around June 11.

1 Comment Tagged: batching, digital archery, ICANN, new gTLDs, tas

Neustar hires Becky Burr as privacy chief

Neustar has recruited one of the ICANN community’s best-known lawyers as its new chief privacy officer.
Becky Burr is set to join the company June 1, reporting to general counsel Scott Blake Harris, according to a Neustar press release.
Burr is well-known in the domain name industry.
While at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration during the Clinton administration, she was one of the people most heavily involved in ICANN’s creation.
In private practice as a partner at the law firm Wilmer Hale since 2000, she’s been involved in many of the industry’s most fractious legal disputes.
Over just the last couple of years she’s represented the .Jobs Charter Compliance Coalition in its fight against Employ Media, ICM Registry in its quest to get .xxx approved, and most recently Big Room in its attempts to fend off a .eco trademark infringement lawsuit.
She’s also sat on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and its country-code Names Supporting Organization.

Comment Tagged: becky burr, neustar

Battle over .jobs to drag on into 2013

Employ Media’s fight to avoid losing its contract to run .jobs won’t be resolved this year, according to the latest batch of arbitration documents published by ICANN.
February 2013, two years after the the battle was joined, is now the absolute earliest the company could find out whether ICANN has the right to shut down .jobs due to an alleged contract breach.
As you may recall from deep in the mists of time (actually, February last year) ICANN threatened to terminate Employ Media’s contract due to the controversial .Jobs Universe project.
The registry gave thousands of .jobs domains, mostly geographic or vocational strings, to its partner, the DirectEmployers Association, which started competing against jobs listings sites.
A coalition of jobs sites including Monster.com complained about this on the basis that .jobs was originally designed for companies to list their own jobs, not to aggregate third-party listings.
The coalition believed that the .Jobs Universe project was essentially a fait accompli, despite Employ Media’s promise that all the names now allocated to DirectEmployers would be subject to an open RFP process.
ICANN eventually agreed with the coalition, issued a breach notice, and now it finds itself in arbitration under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce.
Employ Media demanded arbitration in May last year, but it has inexplicably taken until now for it, ICANN and the ICC to publish a draft timetable for the process.
A face-to-face hearing has now been scheduled for January 28 to February 8, 2013. Between now and December, it’s paper filings – claims and counterclaims – all the way.
Arbitration clauses were added as standard to ICANN’s registry agreements in order to create a cheaper, faster option than fighting out disagreements in the courts.
However, with both sides lawyered up and a process now likely to last at least two years, it’s easy to wonder just how much more efficient it will be.
It won’t be an easy decision for the ICC panel.
While I still believe Employ Media was a bit sneaky about how it won ICANN approval for the .Jobs Universe project – and it certainly disenfranchised other jobs sites – there’s no denying that .jobs is now a much healthier gTLD for registrants as a result of DirectEmployers’ involvement.
An ICANN win might actually be a bad thing.

1 Comment Tagged: .jobs, .jobs charter compliance coalition, arbitration, employ media, ICANN, icc

TAS reopens after humiliating 40 days

Forty days after it was taken offline for a bug fix, ICANN has reopened its TLD Application System, giving new gTLD applicants a week to finish off their applications.
TAS will now close May 30 at 2359 UTC, which is 1559 in California next Wednesday afternoon.
But applicants are being warned that waiting until the final day “may not provide sufficient time to complete all submission steps before the submission period closes.”
The date of the Big Reveal of applications, which I’m now expecting to come at some point before the Prague meeting at the end of June, is likely to be confirmed in the next day or so.
As well as fixing the bug – a data leakage vulnerability that enabled applicants to see each others’ file names, affecting over 150 users – ICANN has made system performance improvements and cleaned up its HTML preview function, in response to user complaints.
Repairing the vulnerability has cost ICANN “hundreds of thousands of dollars” since TAS was taken offline April 12, chief operating officer Akram Atallah estimated last Thursday.
The fact that the system has reopened half a day ahead of the most recently scheduled deadline – it was due to open at 1900 UTC tonight – is unlikely to win ICANN many plaudits.
If the opinions of the opinionated are any guide, the TAS outage has left ICANN with a severe dent in its already patchy reputation, even among fervent supporters.
Atallah and senior vice president Kurt Pritz came in for a pummeling during an ICANN summit attended by registrars and registries, many of them gTLD applicants, late last week.
Several outspoken long-time community members made it clear that their confidence in ICANN’s ability to hit deadlines is at an all-time low.
Expectations of professionalism have increased, as AusRegistry CEO Adrian Kinderis told Atallah, now that ICANN has $350 million of applicant cash in its bank account.
The bug itself may have been as unavoidable and understandable as any bug in new software, but ICANN’s tardiness resolving the problem has left applicant trust in many cases shattered.

3 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, tas