ICANN chair reins in new gTLD timeline hopes

Don’t get excited about the next round of new gTLDs launching any time soon.

That’s my takeaway from recent correspondence between ICANN’s chair and brand-owners who are apparently champing at the bit to get their teeth into some serious dot-brand action.

Maarten Botterman warned Brand Registry Group chair Cole Quinn that “significant work lies ahead” before the org can start accepting applications once more.

Quinn had urged ICANN to get a move on last month, saying in a letter that there was “significant demand” from trademark owners.

The last three-month application window ended in March 2012, governed by an Applicant Guidebook that said: “The goal is for the next application round to begin within one year of the close of the application submission period for the initial round.”

That plainly never happened, as ICANN proceeded to tie itself in bureaucratic knots and recursive cycles of review and analysis.

Any company that missed the boat or was founded in the meantime has been unable to to even get a sniff of operating its own dot-brand, or indeed any other type of gTLD.

Spelling out some of the steps that need to be accomplished before the next window opens, Botterman wrote:

the 2012 Applicant Guidebook must be updated with more than 100 outputs from the SubPro PDP WG; we will need to apply lessons learned from the previous round, many of which are documented in the 2016 Program Implementation Review, and appropriate resources for implementing and conducting subsequent rounds must be put in place. At present it appears that WG recommendations will benefit from an Operational Design Phase (ODP) to provide the Board with information on the operational implications of implementing the recommendations. As part of such an ODP, the Board may also task ICANN org to provide an assessment of some of the issues of concern that the Board raised in its comments on the Draft Final Report, as well as those topics that did not reach consensus and were thus not adopted by the GNSO Council. The outcome of such an assessment could also add to the work that would be required before launching subsequent rounds.

…

The Board notes your views regarding SAC114. We are aware of discussions that took place during ICANN70 and the Board is in communication with the Security and Stability Committee (SSAC) and its leadership, as per the ‘Understand’ phase of the Board Advice Process. As with all advice items received, the Board will treat SAC114 in accordance with that process.

Breaking that down for your convenience…

The reference to “more than 100 outputs from the SubPro PDP WG” refers to the now six-year old Policy Development Process for New gTLD Subsequent Procedures working group of the GNSO.

SubPro delivered its final report in January and it was adopted by the GNSO Council in February.

ICANN asked the Governmental Advisory Committee for its formal input a few weeks ago, has opened the report for a public comment period that ends June 1, and will accept or reject the report at some point in the future.

SubPro’s more significant recommendations include the creation of a new accreditation mechanism for registry back-end service providers and a gaming-preventing overhaul of the contention resolution process.

The “the 2016 Program Implementation Review” is a reference to a self-assessment of the 2012 round that the ICANN staff carried out six years ago, producing a 215-page report (pdf).

That report contains about 50 recommendations covering areas where staff thought the system of actually processing new gTLD applications could possibly be improved or streamlined in subsequent rounds.

The Operational Design Phase (ODP) Botterman refers to is a brand-new phase of ICANN bureaucracy that is currently untested. It fits between GNSO Council approval of recommendations and ICANN board consideration.

The ODP is basically a way for ICANN staff to insert itself into the process, between community policy-making and community policy-approval, to make sure the GNSO’s tenuous consensus-building exercise has not produced something too crazily complicated, ineffective or expensive to implement.

Staff denies this is a power-grab.

The ODP is currently being deployed to assess proposed changes to Whois privacy policy, and ICANN has already stated multiple times that it will also be used to vet SubPro’s work.

Botterman’s reference to “issues of concern that the Board raised in its comments on the Draft Final Report” seems to mean this September 2020 letter (pdf) to SubPro’s chairs, in which the ICANN board outlined some of its initial concerns with SubPro’s proposed policies.

One fairly important concern was whether ICANN has the power under its bylaws (which have changed since 2012) to enforce Public Interest Commitments (now called Registry Voluntary Commitments) that SubPro thinks could be used to make some sensitive gTLDs more trustworthy.

The reference to SAC144 may turn out to be a big stumbling block too.

SAC114 is the bombshell document (pdf) submitted by the Security and Stability Advisory Committee in February, in which ICANN’s top security community members openly questioned whether allowing more new gTLDs is consistent with ICANN’s commitment to keep the internet secure.

While SAC114 seems to reluctantly acknowledge that the program will likely go ahead regardless, it asks that ICANN do more to address so-called “DNS abuse” before proceeding.

Given that the various factions within the ICANN community can’t even agree on what “DNS abuse” is, how ICANN chooses to “understand” SAC114 will have a serious impact on how much further the runway to the next round gets extended.

In short, Botterman is warning brand owners not to hold their breath anticipating the next application window. I think I even detect some serious skepticism as to whether demand is really as high as Quinn claims.

And quite beyond the stuff Botterman outlines in his letter, there’s presumably going to be at least one round of review and revision on the next Applicant Guidebook, as well as the time needed for ICANN to build or upgrade the systems it needs to process the applications, to hire evaluators and resolution providers, and to make sure it conducts a sufficiently long and broad global marketing program so that potential applicants in the developing world don’t feel left out. And that’s a non-exhaustive list.

Introducing competition into the registry space is of course one of ICANN’s foundational raisons d’être.

After the org was founded in September 1998, it took less than two years before it opened up the first new gTLD application round.

It was another three years before the second round launched.

It then took eight and a half years for the 2012 window to open.

It will be well over a decade from then before anyone next gets the opportunity to apply for a new gTLD. It’s entirely feasible that we’ll see an applicant in the next round headed by somebody who wasn’t even born when the first window opened.

3 Comments Tagged: dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, odp, sac114, ssac, subpro, trademarks

Sav.com buys FIFTY new registrars

Who said competition in the domain drop-catching space was dying?

Domain registrar Sav.com, which has been emerging as a bit of a favorite among domain investors over the last year or so, has just formed 50 new registrars with ICANN accreditation to power its drop-catching service.

ICANN records show the creation of newly accredited registrars named “Sav.com, LLC – 1” through “Sav.com, LLC – 50” in recent days, each with the same contact information.

They’re no doubt there to increase Sav’s pool of registry EPP connections, increasing the company’s chance of successfully securing dropping domains.

The company has proven popular among domainers recently due to its no-win-no-fee back-ordering service and its habit of passing on registry wholesale discounts to its customers, resulting in very low first-year pricing.

Since its launch in late 2019, it’s been using its original accreditation, purchased from NameKing.com that year, to catch names. It’s grown from around 4,000 names under management to over 400,000 in that time.

Fifty new registrars means at least an extra $200,000 a year going into ICANN’s pocket for accreditation fees. ICANN’s budget for its current fiscal year predicted its registrar base decreasing by 380 accreditations.

The emergence of this new dropnet comes just days after ICANN canned former dropcatcher Pheenix, which used to have over 500 registrars in its network.

Comment Tagged: drop catching, ICANN, sav, sav.com

Disclosure: I sold Tucows shares

TL;DR — I made about $3,700 selling Tucows shares.

I’ve never been much of an investor in anything, largely because I’ve never really had the disposable income. However, back in 2006, when I lived in the US, I opened an online share-trading account and bought around $1,000 worth of shares in various technology companies.

The companies included what at the time I considered safe bets: Dell, AMD, Yahoo! and Adobe. Everyone still uses Yahoo, right?

But I also bought 50 shares of Tucows, the domain name registrar, for $3.75 a pop. I recall being inspired by a post from original ICANN blogger Bret Fausett, who coincidentally now works for Tucows, in which he touted the stock.

I left the US at the end of 2007 and went travelling for a while before returning to the UK.

At some point in 2009, when I tried to sell up and close the account, I was told that because I no longer had the US bank account I signed up with, I would be unable to access the funds.

So I pretty much chalked the experience down to an idiot tax and forgot all about it.

In 2010 I launched this web site.

Recently, I remembered the account and, trading platform policies having changed in the meantime, discovered I probably would be able to access the funds after all.

That $1,000 had turned into over $19,000 over the intervening 15 years, and the Tucows position had grown by almost 2,000%, a gain of over $3,700.

I’ve sold all my shares and am in the process of closing the account. After that, I won’t own any shares in any companies.

In short, I’m probably going to make a few grand by selling Tucows stock that I’ve owned for the last 15 years but which, until recently, I thought I’d lost forever.

Make of that what you will.

I’m disclosing it now not because I think I’ve had any market-moving impact on the stock over the years, but because it just seems like the kind of thing that needs to be disclosed.

1 Comment Tagged: tucows

ICANN to auction off first failed new gTLD

ICANN is planning to auction off .wed, the first new gTLD from the 2012 application round to fail.

The TLD has been running on Nominet’s Emergency Back-End Registry Operator platform since late 2017, when former registry Atgron suffered a critical failure — apparently planned — of its registry services.

After some lawyering, Atgron finally lost its registry contract last October.

Now, ICANN has confirmed that .wed will be the subject of an open Request For Proposals, to find a successor registry operator.

It’s the first time it’s had to roll out its Registry Transition Process mechanism. All previous gTLD terminations were single-registrant dot-brands that were simply quietly removed from the DNS root.

The RFP will basically amount to an auction. Registries will have to pass the usual technical and financial background checks, but ultimately the winner will be selected based on how much they’re willing to pay.

In ICANNese: “The RFP process will identify the highest economic proposal and utilize it as the deciding factor to proceed to evaluation.”

But the money will not stuff ICANN’s overflowing coffers. After it’s covered the costs of running the RFP, any remaining cash will go to Atgron. There’s a non-zero chance the company could make more money by failing than it ever did selling domain names.

It currently has 39 domains under management, the same 39 it’s had since Nominet took over as EBERO, and the successor registry will be expected to grandfather these names. Only 32 of the names appear to be genuine end-user registrations.

Atgron’s business model, which was almost antithetical to the entire business model for domain names, is to blame for its failure.

The company tried to sell domains to marrying couples for $50 a year, on the understanding that the renewal fee after the first two years would be $30,000.

Atgron wanted to actively discourage renewals, in order to free up space for other couples with the same names.

Unsurprisingly, registrars didn’t dig that business model, and only one signed up.

Fortunately, whichever registry takes over from Atgron will be under no obligation to also take over its business model.

ICANN said it expects to publish its RFP “in the coming months” and pick a winner before the end of the year.

1 Comment Tagged: .wed, atgron, auction, ebero, ICANN, registry transition process, termination

“Origami pinwheel” wins logo contest as Newfold comes out

Newfold Digital, by my reckoning the second-largest registrar group, has officially announced itself with a new logo and branding.

The company was formed in February when Clearlake Capital merged Endurance International with Web.com, bringing dozens of domain and hosting brands under one roof.

The company now acts as an umbrella for Web.com, Register.com, Network Solutions, Domain.com, CrazyDomains, ResellerClub, BigRock, BuyDomains, SnapNames and Namejet, among others.

It’s run by former Web.com CEO Sharon Rowlands.

The new logo was the result of a contest among over 100 Newfold employees that was won by system administrator Vishnu Pradeepan.

In a press release, he said:

The abstract shape of the ‘N’ in an origami-style pinwheel symbolizes good luck and represents an endless cycle of energy. That endless cycle of energy represents not just our team, who work tenaciously to ensure our customers are successful, but also the endless possibilities available in our connected world.

It seems you don’t need to pay an expensive ad agency for a decent-looking logo with a free side order of marketing waffle.

Comment Tagged: newfold

Now celebrities and politicians can block their porn names

Celebrities and holders of unregistered trademarks are now able to buy porn domain blocks from MMX.

The company’s subsidiary, ICM Registry, has broadened its eligibility criteria in order to shift more units of the product, upon which it is banking much of its growth hopes.

Previously, to get an AdultBlock subscription you either had to have previously blocked your brand using ICM’s Sunrise B scheme, which ran in 2011, or to have a trademark registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse.

Now, you don’t need to be in the TMCH, and your trademark does not even need to be legally registered.

Celebrities and politicians are explicitly covered. They have to provide evidence to prove their fame, such as IMDB profiles or movie posters. Politicians need to provide links or documentation proving their political activities or government roles.

AdultBlock prevents brands being registered in MMX’s .porn, .adult, .xxx and .sex gTLDs, as an alternative to defensive registrations. The AdultBlock+ service also blocks homographs.

When .xxx launched a decade ago, thousands of celebrity names, largely harvested from Wikipedia, were blocked by default and free of charge.

ICM even blocked the names of 2011-era ICANN executives and directors. Then-CEO Rod Beckstrom benefited from a block on rodbeckstrom.xxx that survives to this day. Current CEO Göran Marby does not appear to have afforded the same privilege.

My name is also blocked, because it’s a match with goodness knows how many famous people called Kevin Murphy.

Despite the obviously sensitive nature of the TLDs for many brands, there’s been very little cybersquatting in .xxx in the near-decade since its launch. There have been a few dozen UDRP complaints, and most of those were filed in 2012.

MMX, amid poor renewals for its less porny gTLDs, has placed a lot of focus on AdultBlock renewals for its short-term growth.

The company is in the process of having its assets acquired by GoDaddy for $120 million, with the deal expected to close in August, subject to various approvals.

Comment Tagged: .adult, .sex, adultblock, cybersquatting, icm registry, mmx, new gTLDs, porn, trademarks, xxx

Pheenix goes AWOL, gets canned

Drop-catch registrar Pheenix has had its registrar contract terminated by ICANN after apparently going AWOL.

ICANN has been chasing the company for breaches related to Whois and access to registrant data since October 2019, but hasn’t heard a peep out of the outfit for a year.

As I noted when ICANN published its first breach notice last month, ICANN hasn’t been able to connect with Pheenix via email or phone or fax since May 2020.

Since then, it’s also discovered that the company is no longer at the mailing address it has on record.

The registrar has not added any domain names since April 2020. It seems clear it no longer has any interest in doing, or perhaps ability to do, business.

The de-accredited registrar bulk transfer process will now kick in. ICANN will select a registrar to move Pheenix’s 6,000-odd domains to.

Pheenix once specialized in drop-catching, and had over 500 ICANN-accredited registrars to its name. Almost all of those were ditched in November 2017.

1 Comment Tagged: compliance, ICANN, pheenix, termination, whois

Could .trust be the next big crypto TLD?

UNR has some big plans for .trust, a gTLD that mysteriously was omitted from its big fire-sale auction last month.

When UNR auctioned 23 of its gTLD portfolio, raising over $40 million over a three-day event, it escaped pretty much everyone’s notice — including mine — that .trust was not among those up for sale.

UNR, the former Uniregistry, acquired the TLD from NCC Group last November. It had been owned before NCC by Deutsche Post.

While it’s technically live, it’s never sold a domain.

It had been expected to launch as a vanilla gTLD around about now, but it seem plans have changed.

Registrars have been told to expect something “innovative” instead, and UNR tells me it has big plans it’s not ready to talk about yet.

My hunch? Crypto.

This is pure speculation based on nothing more than the string being closely associated with the kind of cryptocurrency slash blockchain slash non-fungible token malarkey the interwebs is going barmy for at the moment.

While UNR has not disclosed the identities of its auction winners, it has said at least one buyer is from the blockchain world.

Given UNR’s evident boredom with basic, workaday gTLDs, we’d have to expect its single retained top-level domain to do something a bit special, right?

Comment Tagged: crypto, new gTLDs, nft, trust, uniregistry, unr

.fr up for grabs again

The French government has opened up a call for expressions of interest from registries who fancy a bash at running .fr, the local ccTLD.

A brief procurement document was published last month. The deadline for responses is June 30.

.fr, along with several other ccTLDs representing French overseas territories, has been managed by AFNIC since 1997.

It came under government oversight a decade later, with the contract now coming up for renewal every five years. The current contract began in April 2017 and will end next year.

The new procurement document is light on detail, but it seems to me that to dislodge the incumbent would be an uphill battle.

.fr has over 3.7 million domains under management, making it one of the largest TLDs in the world.

The government estimates the value of the deal at €76 million.

Comment Tagged: .fr, afnic

Locked-down .music could launch this year

One of the most heavily contested new gTLDs, .music, could launch this year after new registry DotMusic finally signed its Registry Agreement with ICANN.

The contract was signed over two years after DotMusic prevailed in an auction against Google, Amazon, Donuts, Radix, Far Further, Domain Venture Partners and MMX.

It seems the coronavirus pandemic, along with ICANN bureaucracy, was at least partly to blame for the long delay.

I speculated in April 2019 that .music could launch before year’s end, but this time DotMusic CEO Constantinos Roussos tells me a launch in 2021 is indeed a possibility.

The contract the company has signed with ICANN contains some of the most stringent restrictions, designed to protect intellectual property rights, of any I’ve seen.

First off, there’s going to be a Globally Protected Marks List, which reserves from registration the names of well-known music industry companies and organizations, and platinum-selling recording artists.

Second, registrants are going to have to apply for their domains, proving they are a member of one of the registry’s pre-approved “Music Community Member Organizations”, rather than simply enter their credit card and buy them.

DotMusic will verify both the email address and phone number of the registrant before approving applications.

There’s also going to be a unique dispute resolution process, a UDRP for copyright, administered by the National Arbitration Forum, called the .MUSIC Policy & Copyright Infringement Dispute Resolution Process (MPCIDRP).

Basically, any registrant found to be infringing .music’s content policies could be slung out.

The content policies cover intellectual property infringement as you’d expect, but they also appear to cover activities such as content scraping, a rule perhaps designed to capture those sites that aggregate links to infringing content without actually infringing themselves.

The registry is also going to ban second-level domains that have been used to infringe copyright in other TLDs, to prevent the kind of “TLD-hopping” outfits like The Pirate Bay have engaged in in the past.

In short, it’s going to be one of the least rock-n-roll TLDs out there.

Tightly controlled TLDs like this tend to be unpopular with registrars. Despite the incredibly strong string, my gut feeling is that .music is going to be quite a low-volume gTLD. There’s no word yet on pricing, but I’d err towards the higher end of the spectrum.

1 Comment Tagged: .music, copyright, dotmusic, ICANN, new gTLDs, udrp