UDRP suspended in Ukraine

The World Intellectual Property Organization has stopped accepting cybersquatting complaints against .ua domains due to the war in Ukraine.

WIPO has posted a note to its web site stating: “In consultation with the .UA Registry, the Center has determined that it is not in a position to accept new .UA filings under the .UA Policy until further notice.”

Hostmaster, the .ua registry, said: “The decision is due to the fact that Ukrainian registrars and registra[nts] may now be deprived of the opportunity to fully participate in arbitration proceedings.”

The service will resume following the end of martial law in the country, Hostmaster said.

Ukraine uses a variation of UDRP that has the same three basic criteria for a finding of cybersquatting, with the crucial difference that domains must be “registered OR used in bad faith”, rather than “registered AND used in bad faith”.

WIPO has been handling .ua disputes since 2019. About 60 cases have been processed so far.

Hostmaster has also suspended domain deletes until martial law is over, for pretty much the same reasons.

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Gee, thanks. auDA cuts price of .au names by five cents

Australian ccTLD registry auDA has cut the wholesale price of .au domains by a measly five cents, according to local reports.

Aussie domainer blog Domainer reports that registry back-end provider Afilias, owned by Donuts, has notified registrars that the price is coming down to AUD 7.83 ($5.56), from AUD 7.88, not including sales tax.

The cut kicks in June 1 and effects all new registrations, renewals and transfers.

With about 3.6 million .au domains under management, that amounts to $180,000 a year out of the registry’s pocket, but the price reduction obviously won’t be noticeable for any but the most prolific domain collector.

1 Comment Tagged: afilias, auda, donuts, prices

ICANN salary porn: 2021 edition

It’s that time of year again when ICANN publishes its tax returns and we all get to ogle the phat paychecks its top brass are cutting themselves with domain registrants’ money.

Headlining, CEO Göran Marby actually got paid a bit less in fiscal 2021, which ended last June, than he did the previous year — $908,674, plus another $68,866 from “other” sources.

That total of $977,540 is lower than the total of $1,059,222 he received in fiscal 2020, largely due to receiving about $94,000 less in bonus payments.

Marby was given a 5% pay raise in February 2021, though not without some director dissent.

The Form 990 goes on to disclose the salaries of 35 ICANN management and directors, showing that 19 of them make over $300,00 a year. Five, including Marby, receive over half a million dollars.

Directors, if they choose to draw a salary, take home a flat $45,000, which is sometimes paid to their companies instead. Chair Maarten Botterman had $75,000 paid to his consulting company.

The filing reveals that VP Cyrus Namazi, who left the Org during the period after attracting sexual harassment complaints from at least two female colleagues, was given a $375,000 golden parachute.

And former COO Susanna Bennett was given $380,380 in severance payments, despite the fact that her departure was originally described by Marby as her own voluntary decision.

Law firm Jones Day was the best-paid contractor, billing $8,769,608 in the year. That was up from $5,513,028 in the previous year.

Software developers Architect, Zensar and OSTechnical received $2,769,856, $1,396,232 and $1,093,070 respectively, presumably for work on the ICANN web site.

ICANN’s revenue for the year was $163,942,482, of which $97.5 million came from registrars and registries.

The Org had $555,804,201 in assets at the end of the year.

You can download the forms here.

Comment Tagged: 990, financials, ICANN, salaries, tax

A sign of things to come? Verisign slashes outlook in post-pandemic slowdown

Verisign is warning that its business is going to grow slower than expected in 2022, due to the after-effects of the pandemic and general economic conditions.

The registry tonight reported first-quarter revenue of $347 million, up 7% on the comparable period a year ago, after raising its .com prices 7% last year.

But the company has slashed its sales estimates for the year.

CEO Jim Bidzos told analysts this evening that the company and its registrars have started to see a post-pandemic slowdown in sales, exacerbated by other unspecified “macro-economic factors”.

“Incremental demand for new registrations that grew during the pandemic is subsiding,” Bidzos said.

Many domain companies, including Verisign, saw growth spikes during the pre-vaccine pandemic, when many small businesses moved to online sales to stay afloat during recurring lockdown restrictions.

But that’s all over now, and the economic fallout most of us are feeling seems to also be affecting domain sales.

The company said its net income for the first quarter was $158 million, up from $150 a year ago. Its operating margin slipped a little, however, from an enormous 65% to an enormous 64.8%.

Verisign ended the quarter with 161.3 million .com domains and 13.4 million .net domains under management, up 4% combined at 174.7 million.

The renewal rate for .com and .net domains was estimated at 74.8%, up from 73.5% a year ago.

The company expects its domain base to grow between 1.75% and 3.5% this year. That’s down quite significantly from its February estimate of growth between 2.5% and 4.5%.

It added 10.1 million new names in the quarter, compared to 10.6 million in Q4 and 11.1 million in Q1 last year.

While Bidzos did not drill very deep into the other factors contributing to his pessimistic outlook, he did say that the war in Ukraine was not a factor. Sales in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are “not material”, he said.

I suspect what we’re looking at here is probably related to what the media here in the UK is calling the “cost of living crisis”, which is seeing the price of staples such as food and energy skyrocket and many people cut back on luxuries as a result.

UPDATE: This article was updated July 28, 2022 to correct the number of .net registrations from 13.1 million to 13.4 million.

1 Comment Tagged: coronavirus, covid-19, earnings, financials, pandemic, verisign, war

UDRP comments reveal shocking lack of trust in ICANN process

Is trust in the ICANN community policy-making process on the decline? Submissions to a recent public comment period on UDRP reform certainly seem to suggest so.

Reading through the 41 comments filed, it’s clear that while many community members and constituencies have pet peeves about UDRP as it stands today, there’s a disturbing lack of trust in ICANN’s ability to reform the policy without breaking it, and very little appetite for a full-blown Policy Development Process.

It’s one area where constituencies not traditionally allied or aligned — such as domain investors and intellectual property interests — seem to be on the same page.

Both the Intellectual Property Constituency and the Internet Commerce Association are among those calling for any changes to UDRP to be drafted rapidly by subject-matter experts, rather than being opened to full community discussion.

The IPC called the UDRP “a vital and fundamental tool that has a long and proven track record”, saying it has “generally been consistently and predictably applied over the course of its more than 20-year history”. Its comment added:

it is critically important that future policy work regarding the UDRP not diminish, dilute, or otherwise undermine its effectiveness. Such policy work should be extremely deferential to and reliant on the input of experts who have actual experience working with and within the UDRP system, and resistant to efforts that would weaken the UDRP system; any such work should be based on facts and evidence of problems in need of a systematic policy-level solution, and not merely to address specific edge cases, differences of opinion, or pet issues.

That’s pretty much in line with the ICA’s comments, which state that participants in future UDRP reform talks “should be experts… individuals who have extensive personal and practical knowledge of the UDRP through direct personal involvement”.

That language — in fact several paragraphs of endorsement for an expert-driven effort — appears almost verbatim in the separately filed comments of the Business Constituency, of which the ICA is a member.

The ICA’s reluctance to endorse a full-blown PDP appears to come from the experience of the Review of all Rights Protection Mechanisms in all gTLDs PDP, or “Phase 1”, which ran from 2016 to 2020.

That working group struggled to reach consensus on even basic stuff, and at one point frictions reached a point where allegations of civility rules breaches caused warring parties to lawyer up.

“Phase 1 was lengthy, unproductive, inefficient, and an unpleasant experience for all concerned,” the ICA wrote in its comments.

“Perhaps the biggest problem with Phase 1 was that structurally it was inadvertently set up to encourage disagreements between interest groups rather than to facilitate collaboration, negotiation, and problem solving,” it said.

The BC arguable goes further in its deference to experts, calling on ICANN to invoke section 13.1 of its bylaws and drag the World Intellectual Property Organization — leading UDRP provider and drafter of the original 1999 policy — as an expert consultant.

The BC also wrote:

It is imperative that stakeholders do not unnecessarily open up a can of worms with the UDRP through destabilizing changes; rather, they should take a focused and targeted approach, only entertaining improvements and enhancements which stand a reasonable chance of gaining consensus amongst stakeholders

WIPO itself is thinking along the same lines:

If the choice is made to review the UDRP, the process should be expert-driven and scoped

To avoid undoing the UDRP’s success, ICANN needs to give serious consideration to the weight to be accorded to the various opinions expressed. So-called “community feedback” referred to, for example, in section 4 of the PSR seems to lack specific depth and can seem more ideological or anecdotal

Comments from ICANN’s contracted parties also expressed concerns about a PDP doing more harm than good.

The Registries Stakeholder Group has almost nothing to say about ICANN’s report, but the Registrars Stakeholder Group expressed concerns that “any updates could have unintended consequences resulting in a less effective UDRP”.

It uniquely brought up the issue of volunteer fatigue and ICANN’s cumbersome backlog of work, writing:

Although the RrSG recognizes that there are some minor areas for improvement in the UDRP, it is the position of the RrSG that a full policy development process (PDP) is not necessary. The UDRP was adopted in 1999, and has been utilized for over 60,000 UDRP cases. The RrSG is not aware of any major issues with the UDRP, and is concerned that any updates could have unintended consequences resulting in a less effective UDRP. Additionally, not only is there a backlog of policy recommendations waiting for ICANN Board approval or implementation, but the RrSG is also aware of substantial community volunteer fatigue even for high-priority issues.

These comments were filed in response to a public comment period on an ICANN-prepared policy status report.

Not every comment expressed skepticism about the efficacy of a PDP. Notably, the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group — the constituency arguably most likely to upset the apple cart if a Phase 2 PDP goes ahead — appears to fully expect that such work will take place.

There were also many comments from individuals, mostly domainers, recounting their own experiences of, and reform wish-lists for, UDRP.

ICANN’s report will be revised in light of these comments and submitted to the GNSO, which will decide what to do with it.

2 Comments Tagged: bc, cybersquatting, gnso, ica, ICANN, ipc, ncsg, pdp, rrsg, rysg, trademarks, udrp

CentralNic sees 51% growth in Q1

CentralNic says it expects to report first-quarter growth of 51% and that its 2022 performance is likely to exceed expectations.

The company, which acts as registry and registrar but now makes most of its money from domain monetization, said it expects Q1 revenue to come in at about $156 million, with and adjusted EBITDA of about 18 million.

The gains are largely driven by its online marketing segment, CentralNic said in a statement to the markets this morning.

The company said in January that its 2021 annual revenue growth was 37%.

Comment Tagged: centralnic, earnings, financials, revenue

Ukraine won’t delete domains until war is over

Hostmaster, the Ukrainian ccTLD registry, has indefinitely paused domain deletions due to the ongoing war with Russian.

The company said its domain redemption period, which usually lasts 30 days after a registration expires, will now run until the end of martial law, which was brought in by the government shortly after the invasion.

The registry had previously, and perhaps optimistically, extended the window to 60 days. But the war continues, and many registrants are still unable to renew their names.

Since the first extension, registrars have already recovered over 300 names that were not renewed in time, Hostmaster said.

The price to restore an expired .ua name is the same as a renewal, the registry said.

Comment Tagged: .ua, hostmaster, redemption, russia, ukraine, war

Covid surge scuppers ICANN LA meetings

ICANN has lost out on a chance to test a return to in-person meetings ahead of ICANN 74, due to a surge in Covid-19 cases in its home town of Los Angeles.

The US Centers for Disease Control has increased its risk rating for LA to “High”, compelling ICANN to scrap plans for a face-to-face board meeting next week.

Chair Maarten Botterman wrote:

The Board discussed the rising cases, the change in the CDC risk level, the trajectory, and the collective responsibility we have to ensure the health and safety of all of the participants, including ICANN Org staff who would support the events – and we recognized the additional risk of bringing all of ICANN leadership together in one place, under these circumstances – only six weeks before ICANN74.

The meeting will instead be held virtually by Zoom.

It’s not yet clear whether this will have any impact on ICANN’s next public meeting, which is due to take place in The Hague, the Netherlands, this June.

Botterman wrote that the Org is monitoring the situation on the ground and will provide updates as necessary.

ICANN has already announced a stringent set of restrictions, including mask wearing and social distancing, for ICANN 74.

Comment Tagged: coronavirus, covid-19, ICANN, icann 74, pandemic, the hague

Vox Pop defends its favorite cybersquatter

The .sucks registry, Vox Populi has complained to ICANN about the fact that its biggest customer keeps losing cybersquatting cases.

In its submission to ICANN’s recently closed public comment period on UDRP reform, Vox Pop bemoans the fact that panels keep finding that Honey Salt, a shell company based in a tax haven, isn’t really engaging in non-commercial free speech.

Honey Salt was the registrant of thousands of .sucks domains, all matching famous trademarks, that redirected visitors to a wiki-style gripe site, populated with content scraped from third-parties, at Everything.sucks.

After a long series of lost UDRP cases, Honey Salt started allowing its domains to expire and zone files suggest only a couple hundred or so remain today.

Neither Honey Salt nor Everything.sucks responded to ICANN’s public comment period, which was seeking input on possible changes to UDRP.

But Vox Pop did on their behalf, complaining bitterly that “forum shopping and bias obstruct free speech” and citing mostly Honey Salt’s lost UDRP cases to evidence its arguments:

Despite 4(c)(iii) of the UDRP stating “noncommercial or fair use” is legitimate use of a domain name – numerous UDRP decisions contradict the Policy’s express recognition of fair use and free speech rights in favor of trademark owners. Several recent UDRP decisions have jeopardized free speech rights for all domain name registrants because of the lack of guidance from ICANN and/or a misapplication of free speech rights and/or bias as it relates to criticism sites.

Honey Salt had consistently argued, UDRP decisions show, that Everything.sucks was non-commercial free speech and as such was not cybersquatting under UDRP precedent and WIPO guidance.

But panels repeatedly pointed out that Everything.sucks was in fact commercial.

At first, the site hosted banners linking directly to sales landers for the domains in question — basically asking the brand owners or others to fork out hundreds or thousands of dollars to claim their matching domains.

When panelists got wise to that, the site started instead publishing the transfer authorization codes for the domains in question, so literally anyone could initiate a transfer and take ownership of the name without even asking Honey Salt’s permission — if they were willing to pay the transfer fee.

Everything.sucks and Honey Salt would not have benefited financially from these transfer fees, which often were thousands of dollars, but Vox Pop, and sometimes its registrar sister company Rebel, which sells .sucks names at cost, would.

Everything.sucks has removed the AuthCodes, but in the most-recent .sucks UDRP case Eutelsat v Honey Salt, the panel called the AuthCode scheme “little more than a ruse to generate registration fees in the thousands of dollars range”.

Vox Pop is now complaining to ICANN, I’m guessing with a straight face, that transfer fees are ICANN-mandated and therefore registrants cannot be blamed if registrars charge for transfers:

The panelist, in an unfounded grasp, used the ICANN-mandated transfer fee, charged by the registrar as rationale to find commercial use by the registrant and hence bad faith by the registrant. Other UDRP panels have similarly disingenuously blamed registrants for ICANN-mandated transfer and renewal fees imposed by registrars; panelists argue that the ICANN-mandated transfer is bad faith even though the registrant has no say or participation.

It’s an incredibly ballsy complaint by Vox Pop, given that it is Vox Pop, as the registry, that sets the price for transfers and renewals in .sucks, and that it is Vox Pop, as the Eutelsat panel noted, that has flagged many trademarks as “premium”-tier names that costs thousands of dollars to transfer and renew.

Vox also argues that it is possible for trademark-owners to “forum shop” between the various UDRP providers, in the hope of finding a panel more favorable to intellectual property interests over free speech rights.

It’s certainly not the only ICANN commenter to make this point, but it’s a pretty thin argument in the case of Honey Salt and .sucks.

Vox argues that WIPO repeatedly favors IP rights over free speech rights, and the outcome of Honey Salt’s UDRP cases may indicate why it holds that view.

Of the 20-odd UDRP cases Honey Salt has defended, most were filed with WIPO and all those filed with WIPO resulted in a complainant win. Three were filed with the National Arbitration Forum and three were filed with the Czech Arbitration Court.

The only case Honey Salt won on the merits was Miraplex v Honey Salt, one of the first cases, filed with the Czech Arbitration Court. That panel bought the defense that Everything.sucks was non-commercial free speech.

But one of the panelists in that case later sat on another Czech Arbitration Court case, Cargotec v Honey Salt, which decided in favor of the complaint. The same guy ruling two different ways on almost identical facts does not suggest panelist bias.

While at least one UDRP panel has suggested Honey Salt is just a front for the .sucks registry, Vox Populi has previously denied any connection exists.

2 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, everything.sucks, honey salt, ICANN, momentous, rebel, sucks, udrp, vox populi, wipo

ICANN picks recipient of $1 million Ukraine aid

ICANN has decided to donate $1 million to the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster, an international organization that helps people stay connected during times of crisis.

The donation was announced at ICANN 73 in early March, not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and ICANN has spent the last six weeks picking a recipient and doing its due diligence. For ICANN, that’s basically warp speed.

The ETC is one of 11 “clusters”, overseen by the UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which provide relief during humanitarian crises. Other clusters help with food, medicine, and so on.

Its partners include UN agencies, other governmental bodies, charities, and private companies such as Cisco and Iridium.

The ETC has been on the ground in Ukraine since March 3, preparing to provide emergency communications and strengthen infrastructure against cyber-attacks, though its latest report notes that Ukraine’s infrastructure is holding up pretty well so far.

ICANN CEO Göran Marby said in a statement:

This is an initiative for which we have no precedent; it is a first for ICANN. I am proud of the org for the drive and commitment to quickly identify the best path and organization to efficiently deliver meaningful support. The ETC’s vision of “a world where safe and local access to reliable communications is always available” is well aligned with our mission to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifier systems.

ICANN’s board has approved an ongoing program of similar donations, not just for Ukraine.

Comment Tagged: etc, ICANN, russia, ukraine, war