Senator calls for ICANN ethics controls

An influential US senator has called on the US government to impose new ethics rules on ICANN.
In a letter to the US Department of Commerce, which has an oversight relationship with ICANN, Senator Ron Wyden said that new “strict ethics guidelines” should be created.
The letter appears to be in direct response to Peter Dengate Thrush’s move from his role as ICANN’s chairman to a potentially lucrative job with a new top-level domains applicant.
(And, presumably, at the behest of whoever told Wyden about it.)
Dengate Thrush’s last major act at ICANN was to lead the vote to approve its new generic top-level domains program, this June at ICANN’s public Singapore meeting.
Three weeks later, he joined Minds + Machines parent Top Level Domain Holdings, which plans to build its entire business model around applying for new gTLDs.
“As news reports have indicated, a formerly high-ranking official at ICANN has left the organization and was immediately hired by one of the domain name companies regulated by ICANN,” a Wyden press release reads.
Wyden wants new ethical guidelines designed to prevent a “revolving door” built into the IANA contract, which is the one way Commerce can still exert unilateral control over ICANN.
He wrote: “any IANA employees ought to be made subject to the same ethics rules in place as NTIA [National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of Commerce] employees.”
The IANA contract is up for renewal before March next year.
Pretty much anybody with a vested interest in getting more control over of the DNS is currently doing their best to hack the contract by lobbying the NTIA, directly or indirectly.
I wonder who’s behind this particular appeal.

4 Comments Tagged: department of commerce, iana, ICANN, national telecommunications and information administration, ntia, ron wyden

RodBeckstrom.xxx will never see the light of day

ICM Registry has reserved the names of dozens of ICANN directors, former directors and members of staff from the new .xxx top-level domain.
RodBeckstrom.xxx, it seems, is going to be permanently protected from cybersquatters.
I’ve reported before that thousands of celebrity names – about 4,300, it has since emerged – were placed into Registry Reserved status.
I can’t believe it did not occur to me until now to see if any domain industry “personalities” were also given the same preemptive protection.
It seems that every current member of the ICANN board has had their name reserved. One borderline case appears to be Ray Plzak, who’s only protected as RaymondAPlzak.xxx.
Two former ICANN directors who left the board this year – Peter Dengate Thrush and Rita Rodin Johnston – are also reserved, though Rita only as RitaRodin.xxx.
Further back, there’s spotty coverage. Raimundo Beca (left the board in 2010), former CEO Paul Twomey (2009) and Michael Palage (2006) have their names reserved, but many others have not.
Lots of ICANN staffers have been bestowed reserved status too, but again it appears to be quite random whether they’re included or not.
It does not appear to be based on rank (some VPs are excluded, but some mid-level employee names are reserved) or profile (some reserved names will be unfamiliar to anybody who does not attend ICANN meetings).
ICM has also reserved the names of all of its own employees.
I have been unable to find any big industry names from outside ICM and ICANN that are on the list. Bob Parsons is going to have to defensively register bobparsons.xxx, for example.
It’s worth noting that it’s against ICM’s rules to register any personal name under .xxx that is not the registrant’s own legal name or stage name, no matter what their intentions are.
Unlike .com, with .xxx registrants have to enter into an agreement with the registry – not just the registrar – when they buy a .xxx name.
It’s quite possible – though I’ve yet to confirm – that ICM will be able to disable any unauthorized personal name registered in .xxx without the offended party having to file an expensive claim.
And because registrants’ identities will be checked by ICM at the time of registration, even if they use Whois privacy, that should presumably be fairly easy to enforce in most cases.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, icm registry, xxx

Eurid to release 9,000 .eu names after lawsuit

It’s going to be first-come, first-served on almost 9,000 seized .eu domain names next month, following a Eurid lawsuit against a Chinese cybersquatter.
The registry operator said today that it has taken control of the domains, which were registered shortly after .eu launched in 2006 by one Zheng Qinying, and will start to release them October 24.
Eurid went to court in 2007 after a string of cybersquatting cases against Zheng highlighted the fact that, as a Chinese citizen with no presence in the EU, she did not qualify to own .eu names.
An appeals court finally ruled a year ago that Zheng had no right to the domains, and Eurid now plans to make them available again on a first-come, first-served basis.
Don’t get too excited.
Judging by the small number of English domains on the 8,894-strong list, Zheng, despite being quick off the mark after .eu launched, registered quite a lot of garbage.
Don’t expect to see too many valuable English keyword domains. Do expect to see a lot of domains that probably would not stand up to a cybersquatting complaint.
The gems may lie in the many European surnames on the list. There may be some good non-English generics on it too, but this monolingual Anglo-Saxon has no idea.
The full list of Zheng’s domains in CSV format can be downloaded here.
UPDATE: A longer, no-holds-barred commentary by HosterStats’ John McCormac can be found here.

2 Comments Tagged: .eu, eurid, zheng qingying

Facebook hires ICANN director

ICANN director Erika Mann has reportedly been hired to head up Facebook’s new Brussels office.
Mann started last week as one of a handful of “politically connected new talent” to join the social networking company recently, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Mann was a Member of the European Parliament between 1994 and 2009, representing a German constituency.
She joined ICANN’s board of directors last December, after her appointment by the Nominating Committee. She’s currently the only female director with a vote.
Facebook is an increasingly active ICANN participant.
Its envoy, global domain name manager Susan Kawaguchi, sits on the Whois Policy Review Team, for example.

Comment Tagged: erika mann, facebook, ICANN

Watch ICM’s first .xxx TV commercials

ICM Registry has posted its first wave of TV commercials for .xxx onto YouTube.
The theme running through the four commercials is that not registering a .xxx may save you a bit of cash, but that registering one will make you rich.
Or something.
I can’t say I “get” the humor, but I’m probably not the demographic.
Here’s the first three. The character, “King Gavin”, is played by Gavin McInnes, founder of Vice magazine.



ICM says the commercials will start to air on TV in the US soon.

4 Comments Tagged: icm registry, xxx

Windows 8 and the emotional reaction to new gTLDs

Watching videos and reading reports about the Windows 8 demos at Build 2011 yesterday, I found myself experiencing a quite overwhelming feeling of despair.
I’m not usually what you’d call an early adopter.
I did buy my current laptop on the day Windows 7 was released. Not because I’m a Microsoft fanboy; I just needed a new laptop and figured I may as well wait for the new OS to come out.
I resisted buying a mobile phone until 2006. The one I have now cost me £5. I have literally no idea if it does internet or not. The thing I thought was a camera lens turned out to be a flashlight.
I bought an iPod once, but the only reason I haven’t stamped it to pieces yet is because it’s full of photos of loved ones I cannot retrieve because it’s “synched” to a PC that I did stamp to pieces.
I’ve never owned a touch-screen device, and I don’t really want to.
I’m not interested in gestural interfaces or chrome-free environments; I want menus that tell me what the software does and let me click on the thing I want it to do.
Hence my despair at Windows 8, which appears to be doing away with useful stuff in favor of, I dunno, looking nice or something. Microsoft appears to be trying to appeal to (shudder) Apple users.
I felt the same about Google+, which I have yet to join. Apparently it’s quite good, but my initial reaction to its launch earlier this year was “For god’s sake, why?” and “Do we really need more shit to update?”
I fear change…
(tenuous link alert)
…and I feel certain I’m having exactly the same emotional reaction to Windows 8 as many people are having to ICANN’s new gTLD program.
Just as I don’t want to have to think about typing onto a screen (a screen, for crying out loud!) there are millions of people just as pissed right now that they’re being forced to think about new gTLDs.
“But we don’t need them!” they wail. “Everything works just fine as it is!”
Yeah, well that’s how I feel about all the shiny shiny fondlelabs everybody else in the world seems to be currently obsessing over.
I share your pain, Bob Liodice.
But sometimes technology companies come out with new stuff because they think that’s the way to innovate and (of course) make more money.
It’s just the way it is. You’ve got to accept it and move on. If you’re smart, you’ll figure out a way to turn the thing to your advantage.
Everybody currently using Windows 7, Vista or XP will eventually upgrade to Windows 8, even if it’s probably going to be a prettier but less useful version of its predecessors.
If you still buy DVDs, one day you’ll probably be forced to buy a Blu-ray player, just the same as you were forced to upgrade from VHS.
And if you think VeriSign’s mindshare monopoly on the domain name system is the way things should stay forever, new gTLDs are going to make you think again.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, Microsoft, new gTLDs, new TLDs, windows 8

How much money will ICM make from .xxx blocks?

There’s a pretty ludicrous report in the Australian media today, claiming that Aussie businesses are being forced to pay AUD $400 million to ICM Registry to protect their brands in .xxx.
The laughable number ($411 million) appears to have been fabricated from whole cloth. The report in the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun does not even bother trying to source or justify it.
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that ICM is going to make some money out of its .xxx sunrise, including from Sunrise B – the one-time defensive “blocks” that do not result in a domain registration.
The company priced Sunrise B at $162 per domain based on an assumption that it would see 10,000 of them. Any fewer and it would lose money, any more and it would profit.
According to official registry reports, no TLD launched in the last five years – .asia, .co, .jobs, .mobi – saw more than about 10,000 domains defensively registered during its sunrise period.
But my hunch is that .xxx will blow those out of the water. I would not be at all surprised if the final number tops 20,000 names.
It’s just a hunch at this point, based on a comparison to the .co launch – which had a reported 11,000 sunrise applications last year – and four main assumptions:
First, that 10,000 was a conservative estimate. I don’t think ICM would have risked making a big loss.
Second, based on a very small number of conversations, I think that some companies are not taking any chances. They’re applying for blocks in more second-tier brands that maybe they strictly need to.
Third, ICM has a much larger registrar channel than .co enjoyed, and much more aggressively FUDdy registrar marketing tactics.
ICM has approved about 70 registrars, compared to the 10 that .CO Internet had at launch, and a lot of registrar promotion has focused on the “Protect Your Brand!” angle, which was discouraged by .co.
Fourth, the vast amount of mainstream media attention the .xxx sunrise has been receiving, most which has doggedly followed the same line as the registrar FUD.
While the value of defending against typosquatting during the .co sunrise last year was probably more important to trademark holders from a security and traffic loss perspective, the brand protection angle did not receive nearly the same amount of press as .xxx has.
ICM president Stuart Lawley has done dozens of media interviews since the sunrise kicked off last week. I even heard him on a UK radio news show aimed at teenagers.
And this press has been going on for over six years, remember. ICANN first approved .xxx in 2005, and the story has been in and out of the media ever since.
It’s worth noting that a Sunrise B block, with its one-time fee, basically denies ICM Registry a bunch of recurring revenue events forever.
Nike is going to be paying $20 to .CO Internet for its defensively registered nike.co domain name every year until the end of time, in addition to the up-front sunrise fee.
If it blocks nike.xxx, it will pay $162 to ICM now but it will also deny the registry its $60 fee for every year it could have been a renewing domain. In three years, ICM’s losing revenue.
But Sunrise B is very probably going to be profitable for ICM. At 20,000 applications, its top line would be $3.24 million, with profit probably pushing seven figures.
Nowhere near $411 million, obviously, but not a bad payday for selling domain names that will never resolve.

1 Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, icm registry, sunrise, xxx

ICANN “not an advocate” for new gTLDs

ICANN is a facilitator of, not an advocate for, new top-level domains.
That’s the message ICANN is choosing to present as its executives begin their global awareness-raising campaign for the new gTLD program.
President Rod Beckstrom was in Sao Paolo, Brazil, at the Futurecom conference yesterday. In his address there, he said, according to an ICANN press release:

I want to make clear that ICANN is an organization that is not advocating new gTLDs for anyone. Our role is merely facilitation to implement the policy and the programs approved by our community, so we are here to educate not to advocate.

That will come as little surprise to anyone familiar with ICANN’s communications plan – it needs to tell people what new gTLDs are, and what they are not, without sounding like a salesman.
Senior ICANN staff, as well as chair Steve Crocker, are scheduled for a deal of outreach-focused globe-trotting over the next few months.
Beckstrom is due in London next week for a panel discussion on new gTLDs, and I understand similar events in Paris and Berlin have also been lined up.
I’m also on the London panel, along with Nominet’s Lesley Cowley and Lorna Gradden from Com Laude. The value of this kind of thing is in the questions, so hopefully there’ll be a decent turnout.
Beckstrom is also slated to appear at Gitex in Dubai next month.
Crocker is keynoting the newdomains.org conference in Munich in two weeks, and the Bulgarian Domain Forum event is also anticipating ICANN staff participation.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, newTLDs

ICANN hires CFO

ICANN has found itself a chief financial officer, filling the role vacated by Kevin Wilson in January.
Xavier Calvez was most recently the CFO of the creative services division of Technicolor in Los Angeles.
He’s French, and has previously worked for Deloitte and KPMG.
Calvez has already started work at ICANN’s office in Marina Del Rey, but he still needs to be given the nod officially by the board of directors.

Comment Tagged: ICANN

How many brands will lie in their gTLD applications?

The Association of National Advertisers and related groups are currently telling ICANN and anyone who will listen that big brands don’t want new top-level domains.
But many of the ANA’s members, including members of its board, are understood to be currently talking to domain consultants and registries about applying for their own .brand gTLDs.
Assuming that the ANA is not lying, and that its members don’t want .brands, what on earth are these companies going to say in their applications next year?
If they are thinking about applying purely defensively (and I use that word loosely), truly believing that new gTLDs are useless, how will they answer the all-important Question 18(b)?

How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

The question, which was added to the Applicant Guidebook this year at the request of the Governmental Advisory Committee, is not scored, but is expected to be answered.
The answers will be published, and they will also be used in ICANN’s future reviews of the program.
The ANA is already on-record stating “there are no material or obvious benefits”, so an answer to 18(b) from one of its members that states anything other than: “We don’t think it will benefit anyone.” is going to look like a horrible lie.
And lying isn’t allowed. It’s in the Guidebook’s terms and conditions:

Applicant warrants that the statements and representations contained in the application (including any documents submitted and oral statements made and confirmed in writing in connection with the application) are true and accurate and complete in all material respects

Any company that lies in its application runs the risk of losing its whole $185,000 application fee and having its application rejected.
Okay, I admit, I’m being a bit cheeky here – I don’t really think anyone will be rejected for using a bit of colorful marketing BS in their applications. I doubt the evaluators will even notice.
I am perhaps suggesting that the ANA’s outrage today may not fully reflect the diversity of opinions among its board and general membership.
Either way, it’s going to be fascinating to read the applications filed by ANA members, and to compare their words to the positions they’re allowing ANA management to put forth on their behalf today.

4 Comments Tagged: ana, association of national advertisers, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs