It’s pandemic continuity versus gender diversity in ICANN’s board wish-list
ICANN’s Nominating Committee will be asked to pit two fundamentally opposed principles against each other when they pick three members of the organization’s board of directors this year.
Board chair Maarten Botterman has asked NomCom to prioritize continuity — keeping experienced directors in place — while also increasing gender diversity in the male-heavy current line-up.
Botterman this week sent a letter (pdf) to NomCom chair Ole Jacobsen, offering guidance virtually identical to that found in a December 2019 letter (pdf) to his predecessor.
The two most significant changes concern the impact on the board’s work of the coronavirus pandemic.
Noting that it typically takes a year or two for new directors to learn the ropes, and that it’s useful to have a staggered mix of tenures among the board, Botterman goes on to say:
Continuity is particularly important this year given the recent departure of the Board’s longest-serving, term- limited member and the ongoing challenges arising from the pandemic, including uncertainties about when the full Board may be next able to move from its current remote schedule to in-person meetings.
The long-serving member who left was presumably Chris Disspain, certainly one of the most active directors in recent years.
Later, Botterman’s letter contains an entirely new paragraph explaining what a time vampire ICANN directorship can be:
We underscore the significant time commitment required of Board members. Applicants must be able to devote weeks and long hours throughout the year to Board service, and even more because of the challenges caused by the pandemic. Among many other key initiatives, one focus in the upcoming year will be understanding and evaluating the expected recommendations from the policy development process on Subsequent Procedures regarding the next round of new gTLDs (as well as implementation of several Board-approved recommendations from community groups).
That, at least, should provide some comfort to those champing at the bit to get the next round of new gTLDs up and running — ICANN clearly expects it to happen at some point in the next four years.
So there’s a definite, newly emphasized focus on continuity at ICANN.
That’s good news for Lito Ibarra, Danko Jevtović and Tripti Sinha, the three NomCom appointees whose current terms end this coming October. Ibarra is on his second three-year term, the other two on their first. All are eligible for reselection.
The Botterman letter is less encouraging for Ibarra and Jevtović, who are men. ICANN is still seeking to increase gender diversity on its board, which only currently has five female voting members of 16 total directors.
While the wording is slightly different to the 2020 guidance, the essence is the same:
The ICANN community has also expressed strong support for efforts to increase diversity along several axes, especially including gender diversity, across the ICANN eco-system. Without compromising the fundamental requirement to have Board members with the necessary integrity, skills, experience, the Board would find it helpful to have greater gender diversity on the Board.
NomCom may find this pressure is relieved slightly by the fact that current ccNSO representative to the board, Nigel Roberts, is being replaced by Katrina Sataki of the Latvian ccTLD registry this October, following an election last month.
The Address Supporting Organization’s rep, Ron Da Silva, is also ending his current term this year. He’s up for reselection against nine other candidates, three of whom are female.
It’s Drazek vs Dammak for GNSO Council chair
The chair of ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization Council is contested this year, with a registry veep facing off against a software engineer.
The nomination from the contracted parties house is US-based Keith Drazek, Verisign’s VP of policy and government relations.
He’ll be opposed by non-contracted parties nominee and current vice-chair Rafik Dammak, a Tunisian working as a software engineer for NTT Communications (which is technically a contracted party due its dot-brand gTLD) in Japan.
Both men are long-time, active members of the ICANN community and GNSO.
The Council will pick its new chair about a month from now at the ICANN 63 meeting in Barcelona.
The winner will replace lawyer Heather Forrest, the non-contracted party who took the seat after an unopposed vote a year ago.
Empty Whois a threat to the US elections?
Could a lack of Whois records thwart the fight against attempts to interfere in this year’s US elections?
That’s the threat raised by DomainTools CEO Tim Chen in a blog post, and others, this week.
Chen points to recent research by Facebook, based on an investigation by security company FireEye, that linked a large network of bogus news sites and social media accounts to the Iranian state media.
FireEye’s investigation used “historical Whois records”, presumably provided by DomainTools, to connect the dots between various domains and registrants associated with “Liberty Front Press”, a purportedly independent media organization and prolific social media user.
Facebook subsequently found that 652 accounts, pages and groups associated with the network, and removed them from its platform.
The accounts and sites in question were several years old but had been focusing primarily on politics in the UK and US since last year, Facebook said.
Based on screenshots shared by Facebook, the accounts had been used to spread political messages bashing US president Donald Trump and supporting the UK’s staunchly pro-Palestinian opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Google’s research, also inspired by FireEye’s findings and Whois data, linked the network to the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
The actions by Google and Facebook come as part of their crackdown on fake news ahead of the US mid-term Congressional elections, this November, which are are largely being seen as a referendum on the Trump presidency.
Because the domains in question predate the General Data Protection Regulation and ICANN’s response to it, DomainTools was able to capture Whois records before they went dark in May.
While the records often use bogus data, registrant email addresses common to multiple domains could be used to establish common ownership.
Historical Whois data for domains registered after May 2018 is not available, which will likely degrade the utility of DomainTools’ service over time.
Chen concluded his blog post, which appeared to be written partly in response to data suggesting that GDPR has not led to a growth in spam, with this:
Domain name Whois data isn’t going to solve the world’s cyberattack problems all on its own, but these investigations, centering on an issue of global importance that threatens our very democracy, likely get severely impaired without it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, a few uniquely important investigations among the hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks going on all day every day all over the globe by people and organizations that can now hide behind the anonymity inherent in today’s internet. It’s reasonable that domain names used for certain commercial or functional purposes should require transparent registration information. Whois is not a crime.
DomainTools is one of the founders of the new Coalition for a Secure and Transparent Internet, a lobby group devoted to encouraging legislatures to keep Whois open.
Representatives of Facebook and Iran’s government are among the members of the Expedited Policy Development Process on Whois, an emergency ICANN working group that is currently trying to write a permanent GDPR-compliant Whois policy for ICANN.
A third of mayoral candidates using .london domains
Londoners are going to the polls today to select a new mayor so, as a Londoner, I thought I’d check out how many of the candidates are supporting the local domain name.
Turns out four of the 12 candidates have registered .london domains for their campaign sites.
The four are favorite Sadiq Khan (Labour), Sian Berry (Green), Peter Whittle (UK Independence Party) and Prince John Zylinski (damned if I know).
The remaining candidates, if they have dedicated sites at all, use a mixture of .com, .org and .net domains. Not a .uk to be seen.
Will this influence anybody’s vote? No. Has it raised the profile of .london domains? Probably.
Whoever wins the election will find themselves with a degree of control over the future of .london.
While the registry is basically managed by Minds + Machines, the ICANN contract is held by London & Partners, a not-for-profit promotional agency funded by the mayor’s office. The mayor is also a partner in the endeavor.
The M+M outsourcing contract was recently renegotiated in light of M+M’s financial woes, but details have not been made available.
Crocker picked to lead ICANN
Steve Crocker has been elected chairman of ICANN’s board of directors, following the departure of Peter Dengate Thrush, whose term on the board expired today.
Described earlier this week by CEO Rod Beckstrom as “one of the uncles of the internet”, Crocker is the creator of the Request For Comment format for internet standards.
Replacing Crocker as vice-chair is fellow geek Bruce Tonkin, chief strategy officer of Melbourne IT, the Australian domain name registrar.
Both men were selected by secret board poll.
The board revealed the unsuccessful candidates for the first time too: Cherine Chalaby and Sebastien Bachollet stood for chair, while Bachollet and Ray Plzak stood for vice-chair.
Because Crocker’s term on the board ends in October, his long-term future depends now on whether the ICANN Nominating Committee decides to renew his term for another three years.
I expect it will. Last year, NomCom kicked out all three of its appointees whose terms were up, irking some. Declining to re-appoint Crocker this year could look like regicide by committee.
This leaves NomCom with only one pick in 2011. It will almost certainly be a woman from a region currently under-represented on the board. My guess is Russia.
Also joining the board today was .au’s Chris Disspain, who replaces Dengate Thrush as ccNSO appointee, and Canadian consultant Bill Graham, who replaces Rita Rodin Johnston from the GNSO.
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