ICANN staffer linked to hacked intelligence firm

Former ICANN director Veni Markovski, who currently heads Eastern European relations at the organization, has been fingered by Wikileaks as a Stratfor source.
Stratfor is the “global intelligence” outfit, once described by Barron’s as “The Shadow CIA”, which had its email server pwned by the hacker group Anonymous last year.
Wikileaks was given over five million Stratfor emails by Anonymous, which it started to publish earlier this week.
According to several of these emails, Markovski reached out to Strafor, and was then cultivated as a “source”, after the company’s analysis was quoted in coverage of the 2008 South Ossetia war.
I think the emails say a lot more about Stratfor and its methods than they do about Markovski.
Shortly after making contact, Stratfor senior Eurasia analyst Lauren Goodrich asked a colleague to check out this “Shady Bulgarian”.
“Was wondering if he has OC [organized crime] or FSB [the Russian Federal Security Service] connections,” Goodrich wrote.
This background check seemed to extend to checking for media references and then reading the resume Markovski publishes openly on his web site.
The subsequent response from Stratfor analyst Fred Burton described Markovski as “hooked into the Bulgairan OC, but nothing too shady bout that since he is Bulgarian”.
Quite what “hooked into” was supposed to mean in this context is open to interpretation.
In September 2008 emails, Goodrich described him as a “Bulgarian billionaire telecommunications oligarch” and “kinda a strange guy, but very powerful in business circles.”
Markovski joined ICANN as manager of regional relations for Eastern Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2007.
A familiar face at ICANN, he also served on its board of directors between 2003 and 2006. He’s chair of the Internet Society of Bulgaria, and founded the Bulgarian ISP bol.bg.
The Wikileaks emails reveal that Goodrich and Markovski communicated about political and security developments in the region from 2008 until at least June of last year.
One of the questions Markovski was asked, ironically, was “What can a small company like Stratfor do to protect itself from cyber-attacks?”
But the relationship, frankly, doesn’t appear to be much different to that of a journalist and his source. I’ve seen no evidence in the leaks of nefarious activity or of money changing hands.
Despite all the “Shadow CIA” marketing nonsense, there’s a substantial school of thought that says Stratfor is not nearly as cloak-and-dagger as it likes to make out.
Headlines such as “Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is Wikileaks for Taking It Seriously“, published in The Atlantic this week, strike me as probably closer to the truth.
If you want to judge for yourself, you can read the emails here.
UPDATE: Markovski provided the following statement: “I have not been involved with Stratfor. I am not in the position to address other people’s private emails, which are being quoted in your article.”

Comment Tagged: ICANN, stratfor, veni markovski, wikileaks

M+M in bizarre Bengaluru gTLD bid

Minds + Machines is to apply to ICANN for .bangaluru, a top-level domain for the Indian city of Bengaluru.
Parent Top Level Domain Holdings announced today that M+M will enter into a joint venture with local partner India TL Domain for the application.
Confusingly, the proposed gTLD appears to be a misspelling – or at least a very uncommon spelling – of the name of the city in question.
The city is still often known by its old colonial name, Bangalore. But in 2006 it officially renamed itself Bengaluru, its original Kannada name.
But a TLDH spokesperson has confirmed that the company is applying for .bangaluru, with an A, which does not appear to be an official name for the city in any language.
The application has the support of the Bengaluru’s mayor’s office, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, which is a prerequisite for city gTLD applications.
On its web site, BBMP calls the city “Bengaluru”, but in its letter of support for the M+M/ITLD bid it refers to “Bangaluru” and “dot Bangaluru”.
Is the city going to get a gTLD with a confusing Latin spelling? It certainly appears that way.
Bengaluru is India’s third most-populous city, with six million citizens. It’s known as India’s tech hub.
M+M and ITLD have also previously been linked to a joint-venture bid for .mumbai, though a question mark was raised over its governmental support last August.

Comment Tagged: .bangaluru, .bengaluru, india tl domain, Minds + Machines, tldh, top level domain holdings

DomainIncite turns two

I almost forgot. Actually, I did forget.
Yesterday was DomainIncite’s second birthday.
It was an eventful year for the site, reflecting an eventful year for the industry. We broke a metric ton of domain name news and our page view and unique reader counts more than doubled.
And of course we launched DomainIncite PRO, our subscription-supported analysis service. For PRO, we’ve brought on board two new contributing analysts already, with a third hopefully coming soon.
As this is the one day of the year I let the Chinese wall in my head crumble, I’d like to give my annual shout-out to all of DI’s advertisers, past and present. Your support is very much appreciated.
As readers with young children in their families will know, two is the age at which kids start becoming aggressive, pain-in-the-ass monsters that will stop at nothing when it comes to seeing what they can get away with.
Just sayin’.
Anyway, it’s all good. Happy birthday me.

12 Comments Tagged: domainincite

Sedari working on .africa gTLD bid

Sedari has been contracted to support the controversial African Union-backed .africa top-level domain application.
The new gTLD specialist will supply UniForum with its usual suite of financial, technical and policy support services, Sedari said today.
South Africa-based UniForum was given approval for its .africa bid by the AU last week, raising questions over a longstanding rival application by DotConnectAfrica.
UniForum is already responsible for South Africa’s .za country-code top-level domain.

Comment Tagged: africa, african union, dotconnectafrica, sedari, uniforum

Four companies given OK for .osaka

While GMO Registry announced yesterday that it had been given government approval to apply for the geo-gTLD .osaka, apparently it was not alone.
Four companies were given the same approval by the Osaka Prefecture, according to local gTLD consultancy UrbanBrain.
As well as GMO, letters of non-objection have been given to UrbanBrain parent company Interlink, BusinessRalliart, and Future Spirits, UrbanBrain’s Jacob Williams said.
Interlink is a Japanese ISP and domain registrar, Future Spirits is a hosting company, and BusinessRalliart is a technology company already linked to bids for .okinawa and .ryukyu.
Whether all four actually apply is another matter entirely — cash could be saved if the companies combine their efforts now or if some of the less cash-rich applicants withdraw.

Comment Tagged: .osaka, businessralliart, future spirits, gmo registry, interlink, urbanbrain

New gTLD magic number upped to 144

The number of registered new gTLD applicants has increased to 144, according to ICANN.
That’s up from 100 two weeks ago and up from 25 on January 19.
It refers to the number of registered users in the TLD Application System, the web-based tool used for filing new gTLD applications.
Each TAS slot can be used to file up to 50 applications; 144 registered TAS users could mean anything from 144 to 7,200 gTLD applications.
I err towards the lower number. Some consultants have told me they open a new account for each application they plan to file, due to some technical limitations in the system.
Most people are expecting a last-minute rush of applications — primarily hold-out dot-brand applicants — shortly before the system closes to new registrants March 29.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, tas

GMO to apply for .osaka gTLD

GMO Registry has won governmental support for a .osaka new top-level domain bid for the Japanese prefecture of Osaka.
The company announced today that the prefecture awarded it the necessary letter of support after a tender process that ran in January.
Osaka is also the name of Japan’s third-largest city. The prefecture has a population of about 8.8 million.
The .osaka application joins GMO’s steadily growing collection of proposed Japanese geo-gTLDs. It already has governmental support for .tokyo, .okinawa and .ryukyu.
It also plans to apply for .shop off its own back.

3 Comments Tagged: .osaka, gmo registry, ICANN, new gTLDs

ICA demands probe of “shoddy” UDRP decisions

The Internet Commerce Association has called for an ICANN investigation into the National Arbitration Forum’s “seriously flawed” record of UDRP decisions.
The demands follow two recent NAF cybersquatting cases thought to be particularly egregious.
In the first, Hardware Resources, Inc. v. Yaseen Rehman, the domain hardwareresources.org was transferred based on a trademark that explicitly denounced rights to the term “hardware resources”.
In the second, Auto-Owners Insurance Company v. Nokta Internet Technologies, NAF allegedly broke from standard UDRP procedure when it handed autoownersinsurance.com to the complainant.
Both were cases of potentially valuable generic domains being lost, and both were recently singled out by IP attorney Paul Keating as being particularly dubious decisions.
The ICA represents some big domainers and some of the big domaining registrars. Its counsel, Phil Corwin, wrote to ICANN yesterday to demand a review of NAF’s practices:

NAF’s administration of the UDRP in the cases cited above appears to be seriously flawed and creates the appearance of substantial bias and ineptitude. ICANN has a responsibility to make serious inquiry into this matter and to take remedial action based upon its findings.

According to Corwin, there’s circumstantial evidence that NAF encourages “forum shopping” due to its habit of appointing a small number of adjudicators known to be friendly to complainants.
Regular readers of DomainIncite and other domain industry news blogs may have noticed that when we report incredulously about UDRP decisions, it’s usually with reference to NAF cases.
Corwin’s letter comes as part of a larger ongoing campaign by the ICA to get ICANN to sign formal contracts with its approved UDRP resolution providers, which it lacks today.

1 Comment Tagged: ica, ICANN, naf, udrp

How many defensive registrations is too many?

How will ICANN measure the success of its new top-level domains program, and how many defensive registrations is too many?
These questions are now firmly on the ICANN agenda, following the publication of 37 draft recommendations for how to measure the success or otherwise of new gTLDs.
The advice of the Consumer Trust Working Group, published last night and now open for public comment, is a must-read for anyone interested in the emerging new gTLD market.
The recommendations describe myriad ways ICANN could benchmark the performance of new gTLDs three years from now, to fulfill its promise to the US Department of Commerce to study the effect of the program on consumer choice and competition.
While it’s a broad document covering a lot of bases, I’m going to be disappointingly predictable here and immediately zero in on the headline wedge issue that I think will get most tongues wagging over the coming weeks and months:
Defensive registrations.
The working group decided to recommend that, as a measure of success, domain name registrations in new gTLDs should be no more than 15% defensive* three years after launch.
Defensive in this case would mean they were registered during the mandatory Sunrise period.
The idea is that consumer choice can be demonstrated by lots of registrations in new gTLDs, but that defensive registrations should not count toward that goal.
The 15%-Sunrise baseline number was chosen fairly arbitrarily – other suggestions were 20% and 12% – and is designed to spur community discussion. It’s not final.
Still it’s interesting.
It implies that if a registry has 15,000 Sunrise registrations, it needs to sell another 85,000 domains in three years to be seen as having made a successful contribution to consumer choice.
By way of an example, if it were to be retroactively applied to .xxx, the most recent gTLD to launch, ICM Registry would have to get its total registrations up to 533,000 by the end of 2014.
Is 15% too low? Too high? Is it even a useful metric? ICANN wants to know.
Whatever the ultimate number turns out to be, it’s going to be handy for plugging into spreadsheets – something opponents of new gTLDs will find very useful when they try to make the case that ICANN endorses a certain dollar value of trademark extortion.
Because many registries will also accept defensive registrations after Sunrise, two more metrics are proposed.
The group recommends that domains in new gTLDs that redirect to identical domains in legacy TLDs – strongly implying a defensive registration – should be no more than 15% after three years.
It also recommends that ICANN should carry out a survey to see how many registrants own matching second-level domains in legacy TLDs, and that this should also be lower than 15%.
I’ve only outlined three of the working group’s recommendations here. Many of the other 34 are also interesting and will be much-debated as the new gTLD program continues.
This is vitally important stuff for the future of new gTLDs, and applicants would be well advised to have a good read — to see what might be expected of them in future — before finalizing their applications.
* It should be noted that the recommendation as published confusingly reads “Post-Sunrise registrations > 15% of total registrations”, which I think is a typo. The > operator implies that non-defensive registrations only need to be over 15% of total registrations, which I’m certain is not what the working group intended to say.
(UPDATE: this typo has now been corrected).

2 Comments Tagged: competition, consumer choice, defensive registrations, ICANN, new gTLDs, sunrise

Europe to warn consumers about .bank “risks”

The European Banking Authority has told ICANN it believes that proposed financially-oriented gTLDs such as .bank are dangerous and should be banned.
The EBA, the European Union’s central banking regulator, said it plans to issue consumer alerts, warning people about “the risks of these new naming conventions”.
In a letter to ICANN published today, EBA chair Andrea Enria said that a global gTLD such as “.bank” would not give consumers a good guide as to whether the bank was regulated in their own country.
Financial gTLDs have a “not-yet-identified benefit” and could create a “moral hazard”, Enria wrote. The EBA is also worried about the cost of trademark enforcement, he said.

the EBA believes that it is not feasible to address most of the supervisory concerns of its members on the risks of misuse of the proposed gTLDs and calls the ICANN to reconsider its plans for allowing the such of the above mentioned gTLDs and ban the establishment of such gTLDs altogether.

The EBA was formed just over a year ago as the successor to the Committee of European Banking Supervisors. Its members are the heads of the financial regulators of the EU member states.
The letter could come as a blow to the American-led .bank application proposed by the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable’s BITS division.
The BITS project envisages a tightly controlled namespace for banks, governed by a fairly strenuous set of security measures.
But the establishment of a .bank gTLD is one area where we are almost guaranteed to see ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee exercising its new-found objection powers.
If the Europeans and the Americans do not see eye to eye, .bank will not see the light of day.

3 Comments Tagged: .bank, .fin, aba, bits, eba, fsr, ICANN, new gTLDs