Unstoppable wants to be a registry back-end

Unstoppable Domains has applied to ICANN to become a back-end registry services provider, according to the company’s CEO.

Matt Gould told DI that the company is currently going through the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program, which pre-approves RSPs prior to next year’s next round of applications.

There are 27 companies with applications submitted to the program, according to ICANN’s latest stats, but Unstoppable is the first confirmed market newcomer.

The company is a recently accredited registrar, but is best-known for selling names on non-DNS blockchain naming systems.

Gould said Unstoppable plans to use its RSP accreditation for its own gTLD applications and those of its crypto-company clients. It doesn’t sound like it will be aggressively competing for customers in the traditional DNS space.

The accreditation is necessary because Unstoppable intends to vertically integrate, marrying traditional DNS with on-chain names in its gTLDs, so extra technical work is needed, Gould said.

Unstoppable is building its registry infrastructure using Google’s open-source Nomulus software, he said.

Sixteen new gTLD bids could face the firing squad

ICANN’s board of directors has an unusually bumper crop of non-trivial resolutions on its agenda for next week, including the fate of the .ly TLD, new anti-harassment rules, and killing off as many as 16 applications from the 2012 new gTLD application round.

Of the nine items on the agenda, published overnight, four stand out as noteworthy:

Termination Procedure for Remaining 2012 Round Applications that were not Successful

With ICANN spooling up to start accepting new gTLD applications in the second quarter next year, it appears to be ready to clear the decks of the last application round by killing off lingering applications.

While details of the proposed procedure are not yet available, it could apply to as many as 15 applications that are currently marked as “Will Not Proceed” or other failure states in ICANN’s application database.

Perhaps the most obviously affected application is Nameshop’s bid for .idn, which was rejected because the string matches a protected country-code for Indonesia. ICANN has been begging Nameshop to withdraw its application for many years, but the requests have fallen on deaf ears.

If ICANN’s search engine is to be believed, major companies such as Tata (.tata, blocked on geographic grounds) and L’Oréal (.salon, lost at last-resort auction to Identity Digital) still have failed, unwithdrawn applications.

Applications for contested, legally challenged, as-yet-undelegated gTLDs, including .web and .hotel, are also apparently still live in the system.

Transfer of the .LY (Libya) top-level domain to the General Authority of Communications and Informatics

Libya’s .ly ccTLD is notable because it’s somewhat popular as a domain hack for words that end in “ly”. It’s been delegated to Libyan state-owned General Post and Telecommunication Company for 20 years.

While the transition from GPTC to GACI, the government regulator, may just be a formality, there’s an added wrinkle that Libya, tormented by civil unrest since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, currently has two governments and GACI is reportedly aligned with just one of them.

Community Anti-Harassment Policy and Retirement of Board Working Group on Anti-Harassment

ICANN has been sitting on this one for longer than expected. The Org proposed revisions to its Community Anti-Harassment Policy a year ago and quickly putting them to public comment, but there’s been scant movement on the issue since January.

The proposed changes would further regulate personal and professional interactions between ICANN community members.

Some commenters complained that the changes do not go far enough, suggesting that situations where no offence was intended and none was taken should also be disciplinary infractions.

Others said that the changes would have a chilling effect and fail to sufficiently take into account cultural differences among ICANN’s global community.

The proposals came shortly after the latest in a series of sexual harassment lawsuits against the Org was revealed. That suit was settled after ICANN failed to get it thrown out of court.

Some relevant developments over the last eight months include the appointment of a new Ombuds and CEO, allegations (denied by ICANN) that it retaliated against friends of the latest harassment plaintiff by firing them, and ICANN’s capitulation to the Trump administration by easing itself away from public commitments to diversity, inclusion and equity.

New ICANN funding rules will cost smaller ccTLDs more

The way ccTLDs fund ICANN is being reformed, with some registries set to pay thousands of dollars more to the Org’s annual budget.

The new rules, adopted by the ccNSO late last week, won’t affect the largest ccTLDs like .de and .uk, but they could drag mid-tier and the smallest registries into higher tax bands.

The funding model, last adjusted in 2013, is based on each registry’s number of domains under management. The suggested contribution is fixed, rather than per-domain, and depends on which DUM range a ccTLD falls into.

The newly approved bands see the top two tiers unchanged — with over five million names the due is $225,000, and over 2.5 million it’s $150,000.

The third tier, which captures at least 14 ccTLDs from the likes of Denmark, Japan and Mexico, starts at 1.2 million names (a change from one million in the 2013 guidelines) and continues to suggest a $75,000 donation.

Moving the threshold from a million to 1.2 million doesn’t seem to affect many registries. Of the ccTLDs I have up-to-date stats for, only South Korea and possibly Montenegro appear to benefit from the change.

Band D, which affects about a dozen ccTLDs from the likes of Malaysia, Norway and New Zealand, is seeing its contributions go up from $25,000 to $35,000, but the threshold is rising from 500,000 domains to 600,000.

This means that .ai would have to pay the higher rate, but historically Anguilla has not contributed to ICANN at all.

As the ccNSO is at pains to point out, ccTLD contributions are all voluntary, and the bands are suggestions rather than binding.

Fees for the smaller ccTLDs seem to have seen the most rejiggering, with three new low-end tax bands being introduced for registries with the lowest DUM counts. There are now 10 bands in total rather than seven.

Under the 2013 guidelines, any ccTLD with under 50,000 names was only asked to pay $500 a year. That lowest threshold has now been reduced to 10,000 names, raising dozens of registries into higher bands.

Countries such as Ecuador, Azerbaijan and Algeria, and the French department of Réunion, will now be asked to asked to pay $2,500, up two grand a year.

The contributions are designed to pay for the services ICANN provides ccTLDs, but the overall amount is pretty small compared to the Org’s overall budget.

The ccNSO has calculated that the 2013 model affected 255 ccTLDs and would raise as much as $4 million for ICANN a year. That would change to $4.7 million from 306 ccTLDs under the 2025 model.

But that’s only if everyone plays ball. In reality, only 109 ccTLDs gave ICANN anything at all in its last-reported year, and the total take was $2.1 million. Some registries, from the UK, Israel and Russia, cut or eliminated their funding.

Since its start of the voluntary contribution model, fewer than half of all ccTLD registries have ever given ICANN any money.

.ai rival lines up gTLD bid

The increasingly popular .ai top-level domain looks like it could have its first full competitor before long.

An organization called 0G Foundation, which says it has made a “decentralized AI operating system”, has announced plans to apply to ICANN for the new gTLD .agi next year.

AGI stands for “artificial general intelligence”, considered by many to be the end goal of AI technology development, where software possesses intelligence equivalent to or better than a human.

0G made the announcement via Unstoppable Domains, its application partner.

The organization plans to make .agi names available on its own proprietary blockchain first, with a “limited-time pre-sale” before launch “in the coming months”.

Unstoppable is selling .agi “reservations”, with prices starting at $5 for gibberish and potentially valuable dictionary words carrying premium price tags.

Sixteen more orgs vie for cheap gTLDs, but…

Africa and Latin America are still under-represented in applications for ICANN’s new gTLD Applicant Support Program, according to the latest stats.

The program now has a whopping 76 organizations at some stage of the application process, which is 31 more than ICANN originally budgeted for. That’s up from 60 a month ago.

The program offers successful applicants a discount of 75% to 85% off the expected $227,000 application fee, among other perks such as access to pro bono service providers.

But the geographic breakdown shows that, as of the August 19 compilation date, only one more applicant hails from Africa and there’s only one more from Latin America and the Caribbean, compared to a month earlier.

Two influential ICANN advisory committees, including the governments, told ICANN earlier this month that they are “deeply concerned” that the ASP doesn’t seem to be reaching potential applicants in these two regions.

Hardly any applications have actually been submitted to be formally evaluated yet. There are 37 open applications that have yet to even submit the names of their organizations. Another 36 have done so, but not yet completed the application form.

I wonder if the top-line count may include a certain number of tire-kickers. The barriers to starting an application are pretty low, requiring just an account on the ICANN web site and a one-time password app on your phone.

Only three applications so far have been conditionally approved — one from Europe and two from Asia-Pacific — and three others from Asia-Pac have submitted their applications for review.

Of the 37 that have opened an application, the geographic region of 19 is still not known, so it’s possible the regional mix could change a lot as applications are actually submitted.

The program is open to charities and other non-profits, with participation from commercial entities limited to small businesses based in poorer regions.

Cloud gTLD gets launch dates

Another long-dormant gTLD from the 2012 round is set to launch soon.

Documents filed with ICANN show that the Chinese software company Qihoo 360 is set to launch .yun, the Pinyin transliteration of the Chinese word and Mandarin character meaning “cloud”.

The ICANN web site states that .yun will enter a one-month sunrise period September 24, with general availability likely coming around October 28.

Qihoo stated in its 2012 application that the domain would be marketed via its existing cloud storage services.

The company also is contacted to run .xihuan (“like”), .anquan (“security”) and .shouji (“cellphone”), but it hasn’t launched any of them yet.

Qihoo has been sanctioned by the US government for the last five years due to its alleged links to the Chinese military.

Governments say new gTLD program “credibility” at stake

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee is “deeply concerned” about the credibility of the new gTLD program’s Next Round, after a scheme to broaden the geographic spread of applicants has started to look like a failure.

The GAC and ALAC are calling for ICANN to address urgently what is seen as flaws in its Applicant Support Program, which offers deep discounts on application fees to small businesses in non-developed countries and to non-profit applicants.

GAC chair Nicolas Caballero and ALAC chair Jonathan Zuck said governments are “deeply concerned about the program’s current trajectory, particularly given the limited time remaining in the application window and the disproportionately low representation from underserved regions”.

ICANN said last week that it has approved the first three ASP applicants. One applicant is from Europe and two are from the Asia-Pacific region.

The latest monthly stats, dated July 23, show that only five applications were classified as “Submitted & in Review”, while 25 were “Initiated” and 26 were “In Draft”. By geography, 10 potential applications come from Africa, 16 from Asia-Pacific, four from Europe, 19 from North America and just two from Latin America.

Caballero and Zuck wrote (pdf):

we also identified a geographic imbalance from ICANN’s data… despite seven months of outreach, potential applications from North America (33%) vastly outnumber those from the LAC region (3%), raising questions about the inclusivity of the program.

…

we really think that the ASP is not merely a procedural requirement but a cornerstone of the Next Round’s credibility. At minimum, failure to address its structural challenges risks perpetuating the dominance of well-resourced entities, undermining ICANN’s multistakeholder principles. We kindly request the Board to treat this matter with the urgency it demands

They want ICANN to conduct a fast review of why the geographic balance is tilted towards North America at the expense of Latin America, Asia and Africa.

As I’ve previously noted, the North America region by ICANN’s definition is small. It doesn’t even include Mexico. Small businesses from the USA and Canada don’t qualify for the ASP and the only other places in the region are US island territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam.

The GAC and ALAC want to know whether the low uptake elsewhere is due to ICANN’s lack of local outreach, complexities in the application process, or costs. Why are draft applications not being submitted?

With the clock ticking down to the November 19 closure of the application window, The August 15 letter calls for ICANN to figure out what’s going wrong and let it know by August 22 — this coming Friday.

Even if it wasn’t August, and we weren’t talking about ICANN, that’s a pretty tight deadline.

NIXI planning doomed new gTLD bids

Indian national ccTLD registry NIXI is reportedly planning to branch out into new gTLDs, unfortunately it’s picked two strings that are strictly banned under ICANN rules.

According to an Economic Times interview with CEO Devesh Tyagi today, NIXI has eyes on applications for .india and .bharat in next year’s application round. “Bharat” is the Latin transliteration of the Hindi endonym for India.

Unfortunately for NIXI, applications for both strings would be doomed to failure under ICANN rules, according to the current draft of the new gTLD program’s Applicant Guidebook.

The AGB says: “Applications for strings that are country or territory names will not be approved”.

Such names are defined as, among other things: “It is a short-form name listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard, or a translation of the short-form name in any language.”

Both “india” and “bharat” fall into those categories. India is in the ISO 3166-1 standard and Bharat is its translation.

There are no carve-outs or exceptions for national ccTLD registries, even with local governmental approval. The prohibition is based on government advice and pretty much welded into the AGB at this point.

Should NIXI apply for these strings regardless, it would be able to request a partial refund but would still potentially lose tens of thousands of dollars in unrecoverable expenses.

NIXI already runs .भारत (.bharat in the Devanagari script used in Hindi), but that was applied for and won under ICANN’s entirely separate IDN ccTLD Fast Track program, which allows ccTLD operators to apply for internationalized domain name versions of their existing ccTLDs.

AI experts replace Chapman on ICANN board

ICANN’s Nominating Committee has announced its annual picks for the Org’s board of directors, with two new fresh faces, both of whom have notable AI policy experience, joining.

Constance Bommelaer de Leusse and Raúl Echeberría, respectively French and Uruguayan internet policy experts, are the newcomers. Australian former regulator Chris Chapman is leaving after just one three-year term.

Echeberría is perhaps the more-familiar name, having been involved with ICANN since its early days. He’s a founder and former long-time CEO of LACNIC, and has held roles in ISOC, WSIS, and the IGF. He’s also former chair of ICANN’s Number Resource Organization.

De Leusse is a French academic, raised in the US, currently employed by the Sciences Po and Ecole normale supérieure (ENS-PLS) universities in Paris. She is a former ISOC VP.

Both have AI policy experience. Echeberría earlier this year sat on the steering committee of the AI Action Summit, hosted in Paris by President Macron, while de Leusse works for the AI & Society Institute at ENS-PLS.

On social media, de Leusse describes herself as a winemaker, which may or may not prove interesting.

NomCom also reappointed Sajid Rahman for a second three-year term. One of the two new appointees replaces former board chair Maarten Botterman, who is term-limited after nine years’ service. The other replaces Chapman.

In terms of geographic balance, it means a director from the Asia-Pacific region has been replaced by one from Latin America. I don’t believe this causes any significant issues in terms of limiting other groups’ election options.

NomCom, which also selected seven other people for non-board roles, said 37% of its candidates were from Africa, with 25% from Asia-Pac, 16% from Latin America, and 8% from Europe.

Only 2% were from North America, perhaps due to the fact that NomCom was unable to pick anyone from that region for a directorship due to its geographic diversity quotas.

NomCom said that 27% of its candidates were female, 73% male, which is broadly in line with previous years and historical stats for general ICANN participation.

The new appointees take their seats at the conclusion of ICANN’s AGM in October.

RDRS may not be dead

ICANN’s pilot Registration Data Request Service could live on beyond its original shelf life, if new recommendations are approved.

The GNSO’s RDRS Standing Committee has reached consensus on six proposals concerning the service’s future, the first of which is that it should carry on operating beyond its original November 2025 cut-off date.

RDRS is the system ICANN put in place to connect people who want access to unredacted Whois records with the registrars holding that data. It hasn’t been a spectacular success, and some large registrars have recently opted out of participation.

But the volunteer Standing Committee, which has been meeting every two weeks to monitor RDRS since it launched in November 2023, says that the service is useful and recommends that the pilot should carry on. Its report states:

The SC recommends maintaining the RDRS pilot service and continuing to promote voluntary registrar participation beyond its initial two-year term until a long-term permanent solution or a successor system is agreed upon.

The draft also recommends upgrading the service to improve the user interface, enable API access for both requestors and registrars, and enabling authentication for users starting with law enforcement.

ccTLD registries should also be allowed to opt in, the report says. Currently, the voluntary service is limited to ICANN-accredited gTLD registrars. At the last count, 78 registrars were participating, covering 47% of all registered gTLD domains.

Five of the committee’s recommendations reached “Full Consensus”, the highest degree of agreement, while one recommendation, discussing future policy work, had some objections and only received “Consensus”.

The report will now be put to the GNSO Council before going to the ICANN board of directors for possible final approval.

Apart from the ongoing running costs, some of the recommendations would require software development work, which costs money.

At the last count, there were 11,360 registered RDRS users and since launch they had submitted 3,344 data requests. That works out to a mean average of 167 per month.