ICANN expecting to approve most new gTLDs?

Good news for new gTLD applicants?
ICANN appears to be assuming that the vast majority of applications will pass their evaluations and make it at least as far as pre-delegation testing, judging from recent comments.
Of the 1,400-odd unique strings being applied for, ICANN reckons that “close to the maximum” will need to be tested before being added to the DNS root.
The hint came in a Q&A with respondents to ICANN’s pre-delegation testing provider RFP published yesterday.
With added emphasis, here’s what ICANN just said:

Question 7: Can ICANN provide a definitive statement of the anticipated minimum number of pre-delegation tests?
The total number of applied-for strings that will be approved is unknown at this point. Therefore, we cannot assert the minimum number of registries to be tested but only the maximum: 1,400. We expect that the actual numbers of registries tested should be close to the maximum.

It’s a positive sign for applicants, but there are obviously some big unknowns in the process, most notably Governmental Advisory Committee interventions, which are a little under a week away.
On the negative side, ICANN seems to be digging its heels in on the number of pre-delegation tests that will be required, despite recent requests from applicants to streamline the process:

Question 17: Is it possible to execute a single test per Back-End Registry Service Provider (as this would limit the requirement to about 80 such tests)?
The AGB [Applicant Guidebook] specifies one Pre-Delegation Test per Registry Operator (contracted party to ICANN).

This appears to mean that multiple applications using Verisign or Afilias, for example, as their back-ends will have to be individually tested, despite possible duplicative work.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, pre-delegation testing

Melbourne IT scales back HARM proposal

Melbourne IT has published a revised, less-complicated version of its High At-Risk Marks (HARM) proposal for protecting famous brands in the new gTLD program.
The new version throws more than a few bones to trademark lawyers, most of whom rejected many aspects of the original proposal at a meeting in Washington DC this September.
It’s a lot closer to the eight-point wish-list published jointly by the Intellectual Property Constituency and Business Constituency last month.
HARM envisions a two-tier set of trademark rights protection mechanisms in new gTLDs, with the super-famous brands that get cybersquatted and phished on a regular basis enjoying greater privileges.
Companies that could prove their trademarks were subject to regular abuse would, for example, benefit from a perpetual Trademark Claims notification service on “brand+keyword” domains.
The new version would lower the bar for inclusion on the list.
The first HARM said trademarks should be registered on five continents, but the new version reduces that to a single registration, provided that the jurisdiction does substantive review.
A provision to only extend the protection to five-year-old marks has also been removed, and the number of UDRP wins required to prove abuse has also been reduced from five to one.
I’ve previously expressed my fondness for the idea of using UDRP decisions to gauge the risk profile of a trademark, but it was recently pointed out to me that it may incentivize mark holders to pay people to cybersquat their marks, in order to win slam-dunk UDRPs and thus benefit from better RPMs, which makes me less fond of it.
Even if such skullduggery is an outside risk, I think a single UDRP win may be too low a bar, given the number of dubious decisions produced by panelists in the past.
The revised HARM would still exclude dictionary words from the special protections (as the paper points out, Apple and Gap would not be covered). The proposal states:

Melbourne IT believes it will be difficult to get consensus in the ICANN community that this mechanism should apply to all trademark owners, most of whom do not suffer any trademark abuse. Many trademarks also relate to generic dictionary words that would be inappropriate to block across all gTLDs.

The original HARM paper was put forth as compromise, designed to help prevent or mitigate the effects of most cybersquatting, while being slightly more palatable to registries and registrars than the usual all-or-nothing demands coming from trademark lawyers.
While not particularly elegant, most of its recommendations were found wanting by the ICANN community, which is as bitterly divided as always on the need for stronger rights protection mechanisms.
The IPC and BC did adopt some of its ideas in their recent joint statement on enhanced RPMs, including the idea that frequently squatted names should get better protection, but rejected many more of the Melbourne-proposed criteria for inclusion on the list.
Meanwhile, many registrars shook their heads, muttering something about cost, and new gTLD applicants staunchly rejected the ideas, based on the mistaken notion that paying their $185,000 has rendered the Applicant Guidebook immutable.
Read the new Melbourne IT paper here (pdf).

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, harm, ICANN, melbourne it, new gTLDs, trademark claims, trademarks

Tucows abandoned two new gTLD bids

Tucows originally applied for six new gTLDs but withdrew two of the applications, it emerged yesterday.
During a conference call with analysts, announcing the company’s third-quarter financial results, CEO Elliot Noss said that Tucows’ cash-flow statement had benefited from a $370,000 ICANN refund.
That works out to two full $185,000 refunds, meaning the applications were withdrawn before June’s Big Reveal.
The fact that the money was not recorded until the third quarter is likely due to the delays ICANN subjects applicants to when they request refunds.
Tucows, via a subsidary, has live gTLD bids for group, .marketing, .media and .online, all of which are contested.
Noss reiterated during the earnings call that he does not expect the company to see serious revenue from new gTLDs until 2014, though he speculated that some uncontested geographic gTLDs may start contributing the the second half of 2013.

6 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, tucows

Goatse.cx emerges as email provider after $10k sale

Notorious trolling domain goatse.cx is now being used to sell email addresses, part of the reemerging trend for domain owners to monetize their names with vanity email accounts.
If you’ve never heard of goatse.cx before, I’d strongly suggest remaining blissfully ignorant as your investigations will inevitably lead you into NSFW territory. Some things cannot be unseen.
Others may recall that it was the domain used in the early part of the century by pranksters and trolls to distribute hello.jpg, quite possibly the most disturbing image on the internet at the time.
Now, goatse.cx appears to be entirely safe for work.
According to The Register, the domain was acquired for $10,200 by an Australian who now proposes to charge $5 per year for an email account.

5 Comments Tagged: goatse.cx

IEDR admits blame for hack that brought down Google and Yahoo

IEDR, the Irish ccTLD registry, has admitted that an attack on its own web servers was responsible for google.ie and yahoo.ie being hijacked last month.
In a detailed statement, the registry said that hackers spent 25 days probing for weaknesses in its systems, before eventually breaking in through a vulnerability in the Joomla content management software.
This enabled the attackers to upload malicious PHP scripts and access the back-end database, according to the statement. They then redirected yahoo.ie and google.ie to an Indonesian web site.
It’s a reverse of position for IEDR, which had appeared to blame one of its registrars (believed to be Mark Monitor) for the lapse in security when the hack was discovered last month.
IEDR told ZDNet October 11: “an unauthorised change was made to two .ie domains on an independent registrar’s account which resulted in a change of DNS nameservers”.
But today it said instead: “The IEDR investigation also confirmed that neither the Registrar of the affected domains nor its systems had any responsibility for this incident.”
The registry has filed a complaint with the Irish police over the incident, and apologized to its customers for the disruption.
It also said it plans to roll out a Domain Lock service to help prevent hijacking in future, though I doubt such a service would have prevented this specific incident.

3 Comments Tagged: .ie, google, hacking, hijack, iedr, security, yahoo

ICANN, Verisign and NTIA “ready for 100 new gTLDs per week”

The three main entities responsible for managing the domain name system’s root zone have confirmed that they’re ready to add 100 or more new gTLDs to the internet every week.
In a statement, (pdf), ICANN, Verisign and the US National Telecommunications & Information Administration jointly said:

Based on current staffing levels and enhancements that are currently underway to the [Root Zone Management] system, the Root Zone Partners are able to process at least 100 new TLDs per week and will commit the necessary resources to meet all root zone management volume increases associated with the new gTLD program.

The letter was sent in response to a request from ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which asked in July whether ICANN, Verisign and the NTIA were ready for the new gTLD load.
The three-party Root Zone Management procedure used to add TLDs or update existing ones is getting more automation, which is expected to streamline the process.

7 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, ntia, root zone, verisign

Trademark Clearinghouse “breakthrough” at private Brussels meeting

ICANN’s various stakeholder groups reached a “breakthrough” agreement on the Trademark Clearinghouse for new gTLDs, according to attendees at a closed-doors meeting last week.
The meeting in Brussels evidently saw attendance from members of the Business Constituency and Intellectual Property Constituency, in addition to the registries and registrars that have been involved in the development of the TMCH implementation model to date.
It was a discussion of nitty-gritty implementation details, according to attendees, rather than reopening the policy discussion on matters such as the mandatory Trademark Claims service period.
Crucially, ICANN appears to have dropped its strong objection to a community-developed proposal that would put the TMCH in the “critical path” for domain registrations.
The community proposal requires a centralized Clearinghouse serving Trademark Claims notices live rather than in a batch fashion, meaning up-time would be paramount.
Senior ICANN executives including chief strategy officer Kurt Pritz were adamant that this model would create an unacceptable single point of failure for the new gTLD program.
But CEO Fadi Chehade, who in Toronto last month appeared to disagree with Pritz, does not appear to have shared these concerns to the same deal-breaking extent.
In a blog post reviewing the meeting’s conclusions last night, Chehade wrote that the community has settled on a “hybrid” solution:

Participants reviewed the features of possible centralized and decentralized systems, and agreed to support a “hybrid” system for Trademark Claims. In this system, a file of domain name labels derived from the trademarks recorded in the Clearinghouse (and hence subject to a Claims Notice) would be distributed to all registries and updated on a regular basis, and a live query system would be used to retrieve the detailed data from the Clearinghouse when necessary to display the Claims Notice to a prospective registrant.

This description appears to closely match the community proposal (pdf) developed by the registries.
ARI Registry Services CTO Chris Wright, one of the key architects of the community TMCH proposal, made no mention of a “hybrid” solution in his update following the Brussels meeting.
According to Wright, “ICANN has tentatively agreed to proceed with the community-developed Trademark Clearinghouse”.
The meeting also concluded that there’s no way to provide blanket privacy protection for trademark data under Trademark Claims, something that has been worrying trademark holders for a while.
At a session in Toronto last month registries observed that the whole point of Trademark Claims is to provide information about trademarks to potential registrants.
That means it can be mined in bulk, and there’s not a heck of a lot registries can do to prevent that even with technical solutions such as throttling access.
Chehade blogged:

There was discussion on implementing an appropriate framework for access and use of the data. The group considered whether measures were necessary specifically to address potential mining of the Clearinghouse database for purposes other than to support the rights protection mechanisms. Given that the Trademark Clearinghouse is designed to provide trademark data for particular purposes, there was agreement that most controls would be ineffective in attempting to control data elements once provided to other parties.

So, how much community support do the Brussels agreements have?
The meeting was not webcast and there does not appear to be a recording or transcript, so it’s difficult to know for sure who was there, what was discussed or what conclusions were reached.
Concerns were expressed by members of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, as well as the Internet Commerce Association, about the fact that ICANN did not widely publicize the meeting, which was first reported in an ICA blog post last week.
The ICA’s Phil Corwin also questioned whether key members of the IPC and BC — based on the US Eastern seaboard — would be able to attend due to Hurricane Sandy’s impact on air travel.
While there seems to be a feeling that solid progress on the Clearinghouse is definitely a positive development for the new gTLD program, the fact that the consensus was apparently reached behind closed doors does not appear to be in lockstep with Chehade’s commitment to increase transparency at ICANN.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, ICANN, new gTLDs, tmch, trademark claims, trademark clearinghouse

New gTLD marketing conference coming to New York

Momentum Consulting has announced a conference focused on marketing with new gTLDs for New York City next March.
The Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress is designed for brand managers, trademark lawyers and marketing executives, according to organizers.
The preliminary agenda was published today. It includes speakers from Citibank, which has applied for two new gTLDs, Neustar, Afilias, Domain Diction, PIR, Deloitte and Donuts.
ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has also been invited to deliver the keynote, according to the agenda.
Lead sponsors include Afilias and Domain Diction. DI, Domain Name Wire and The Domains are media sponsors.
The event will run from March 11 to 12 in New York City. The venue does not appear to have been confirmed yet.

3 Comments Tagged: Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress, ICANN, new gTLDs

Geo gTLD applicants make “public interest” case for priority approval

ICANN’s has reached out to governments supporting geographic gTLD applicants over the last week, urging them to submit formal comments on the proposed “Draw” mechanism for prioritizing applications.
A barrage of correspondence from regional and city governments, some dating back as early as March when Digital Archery was still in play, has been published by ICANN over the last 48 hours.
They’re accompanied by much more recent responses from ICANN’s newly installed new gTLD program general manager, Christine Willett.
ICANN has heard from, among others, the state backers of .tirol, .zuerich, .hamburg and .berlin, all arguing that their geographic gTLD bids should be prioritized as being in the “public interest”.
The Draw mechanism would give priority to internationalized domain names, but not geographic gTLDs.
What’s missing from all the letters are any attempts to explain or justify the “public interest” claims.
ICANN’s responses are all the same: thanks for your letter, please contribute to the current public comment period on the proposed new gTLD prioritization lottery.
The letters can all be found on ICANN’s correspondence page. The comment period closes Friday.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs

Chehade sets out 12-point plan for next six months

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has set out his goals for ICANN over the next six months in an open letter to the community.
The ambitious 12-point to-do list includes finishing off the next Registrar Accreditation Agreement, finalizing the Trademark Clearinghouse, and launching “a community effort” to address the Whois debate.
The document was described by Chehade at the close of the Toronto meeting last month as his “scorecard” for “what I plan to prioritize and do between now and Beijing”.
The next big ICANN meeting is in Beijing next April.
The letter states that “operational excellence”, something the organization was frequently criticized for its lack of under its previous leadership, is ICANN’s “highest priority”.
The new gTLD program is naturally a big part of that. Chehade said that ICANN plans to:

Deliver on every aspect of the new gTLD program launch next year, meeting obligations and securing the necessary resources and personnel to lead the transition from what has been a policy-driven effort to implementation of a responsive and reliable operation. As a first step, we are working to advance the dialogue on implementation of the Trademark Clearing House. We must also execute the prioritization draw, evaluations, and pre-delegation tests flawlessly.

As part of that effort, a new gTLD services department will be created. Part of its task will be to monitor policy work to make sure the policies being created are “implementable”.
Chehade said that the divisive Whois issue, which he controversially referred to as an “easy” problem to solve during remarks in Toronto, will be subject to a new review:

To strengthen our commitment to the public interest, we will launch a community effort addressing the WHOIS debate in a strategic way, to resolve the longstanding open items in this area.

On the RAA, Chehade said that ICANN “will plan to reach consensus on a solid and enforceable Registrar Accreditation Agreement that is fair and balanced.”
The full letter, which also sets out goals for internationalization and the evolution of the multi-stakeholder model, can be downloaded here.

Comment Tagged: beijing, ICANN, icann 46, raa, trademark clearinghouse, whois