ICANN hit with tinfoil-hat lawsuit

ICANN has been sued by a Louisiana woman who thinks the Org is surveilling her.

Wendy Renee’ Carlton (sic) filed a bizarre lawsuit last month claiming she “has experienced persistent and patterned interference affecting her cognitive processes, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy”.

Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and some John Does are also listed as defendants.

It’s difficult to describe the complaint (pdf), but here’s a chunk of it for flavor:

Plaintiff alleges that she has experienced persistent and patterned interference affecting her cognitive processes, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy, and that such interference is systemic in nature.

Plaintiff alleges that Defendants’ conduct resulted in the exploitation or misuse of her personal data and behavioral patterns, restricting her liberty interests and decision-making autonomy without notice, consent, or lawful authorization.

Plaintiff further alleges that Defendants collected, processed, analyzed, and/or derived her biometric, anatomical, and/or cognitive data through technological, commercial, and/or institutional frameworks without informed consent or procedural safeguards.

Plaintiff alleges that she experienced persistent surveillance, monitoring, and identity interference resulting in observable physical, cognitive, and biometric effects, including involuntary physiological responses and interference with normal bodily functions, consistent with assessment- or monitoring-based activity.

Carlton’s probably not far off — Google’s whole empire is based on mass surveillance after all — but it’s difficult to see what roles ICANN or Wal-Mart have in that enterprise.

The complaint doesn’t get into any factual specifics of what ICANN or any other defendant is supposed to have done, or what the effects on the complainant were.

ICANN has filed a motion to dismiss, claiming lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim.

ICANN boss: no plans to scrap Oman meeting

ICANN currently has no plans to cancel its 2026 Annual General Meeting, which is due to take place in Muscat, Oman, later this year, according to CEO Kurt Lindqvist.

Speaking at the public forum at ICANN 85 in Mumbai today, Lindqvist responded to a speaker who expressed concerns about the ongoing US-Israel war against Iran, which has seen Iran retaliate against neighbors including Oman.

“We’re obviously aware of the situation, and we’re monitoring it. The Oman meeting is 7 months out, so it’s still quite a long time to go, and a lot of things can change. So, at the moment, we are planning for this to go ahead,” he said.

The Muscat meeting was originally planned for October last year, but was called off due to Israel’s attacks on Iran in June, which affected flight corridors in the region.

Lindqvist added that ICANN always has contingency plans in case a venue becomes inappropriate. Last year, the Muscat meeting was rescheduled to Dublin, Ireland.

It seems likely that if the hostilities in the Middle East have not calmed down by June, ICANN could well pull the plug on Muscat for a second year, giving meeting participants about four months to plan their travel.

Previously, ICANN has relocated meetings due to be held in Puerto Rico and Panama due to hurricane damage and the Zika virus, and several were held entirely online during the Covid-19 pandemic.

ICANN maps out new gTLD timeline

ICANN’s 85th public meeting kicked off in Mumbai at the weekend, the last community face-to-face before the next round of new gTLDs kicks off, and the Org took the time to spell out exactly what is expected to happen and when.

Surprisingly, given ICANN’s track record, it will hit its target of April 2026 to open the doors to applications. Unsurprisingly, given ICANN’s track record, it’s picked April 30 — the last possible day of its promised window — to do so.

The application window will remain open for 104 days. Applicants will have until August 12 to file their paperwork. It doesn’t matter when they hit submit; it’s not first-come, first-served.

Then, the process goes into quiet mode for at least two months while ICANN filters through the applications. If there’s about the same number of applications at the 2012 round — about 2,000 — ICANN reckons Reveal Day could come before ICANN 87, which begins in Muscat October 17.

So far, the timeline closely follows the 2012 round, but this time there’s a new wrinkle — applicants can change their gTLD strings to preselected “replacement strings” if they want to.

From Reveal Day, they’ll have 14 days to swap their strings if, for example, they find themselves in a contention set they don’t like the look of or if they get the vibe that they’re probably face objections.

After those two weeks are up, its String Confirmation day, expected some time in November. From that moment, the applicants are locked into their string of choice.

That’s also the day when the timer starts on the objections period, 104 days in which companies and organizations can object to applications based on criteria such as intellectual property rights, the public interest, and community rights.

Governments can also object on essentially any basis, as long as it’s well-articulated. Unilateral GAC Early Warnings are available, but a full consensus of the Governmental Advisory Committee would be needed to stand a chance at nuking an application outright.

The objection period should end some time next February. While that’s going on, some time in December, ICANN will conduct the Prioritization Draw, a lottery to decide the order in which applications will be processed.

The 2012 draw was important because the gTLDs that were first out of the traps had a measurable first-mover advantage in terms of speculative registrations. With hundreds of gTLDs now on the market, I believe it will be less important this time around.

After the draw, applicants will have to wait half a year before they are finally notified which contention sets, if any, they fit into, after the results of the String Similarity Review have been published.

ICANN has yet to select the panel for this review or create its detailed guidelines, but it’s expect to name it chosen vendor some time in Q2.

War disrupts ICANN 85

It seems a bit tasteless to whine about disrupted flights when the Middle-East is erupting into war; nevertheless, that’s the immediate issue facing would-be attendees at this week’s public ICANN meeting.

ICANN 85 is taking place at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai, India from this coming weekend.

While Mumbai is over 2,000km from Tehran, Iran has been attacking many neighbouring nations in retaliation for the ongoing US-Israeli bombardment, which has resulted in the closure of several airports as missiles, drones and fighter planes invade their airspace.

Some ICANN travellers, mainly those traveling west-to-east, will find that hub airports in Dubai or Bahrain are in their connections itinerary. Those flying Emirates will be particularly affected.

ICANN said in a statement at the weekend that 85 “will proceed as planned” and that would-be attendees feeling uncomfortable traveling can take advantage of online participation if they prefer.

The Org and its travel agent are together responsible for funding and arranging the travel of hundreds of participants, and ICANN said they were working to route travellers around the affected airspace.

Namecheap abandons fight for .org price caps

Namecheap seems to have thrown in the towel in its long-running fight to get ICANN to cap the prices of .org and .info domain names.

The registrar terminated its Independent Review Process complaint against ICANN back in November, with the IRP panel formally closing the case December 16, according to documents ICANN published last week.

Namecheap said it “has decided to terminate these proceedings without prejudice”, meaning it would be free to re-file the IRP at a later date. The company and ICANN have agreed to pay their own costs.

It was the second Namecheap IRP related to ICANN’s decision to remove price caps from the .org and .info registry contracts when it renewed them in 2019, bringing the two gTLDs into line with almost all other registries.

Namecheap filed its first IRP in February 2020, and scored a stonking win in 2023, with the panel ruling that ICANN had breached its bylaws and behaved in an overly secretive manner when it approved the contract renewals.

But the panel offered up remedies that gave ICANN a lot of interpretative leeway and important did not mandate the reintroduction of price caps. The second, now-defunct IRP saw Namecheap trying to force ICANN to undo its price caps decision.

It also sued ICANN in Los Angeles two years ago for essentially the same purpose, but it lost the case last July.

Since the price caps were lifted, non-profit Public Interest Registry has not raised .org prices, while for-profit Identity Digital has raised .info prices from $10.84 in 2019 to $19 today.

Identity Digital acquires another gTLD

Identity Digital has bulked out its already substantial portfolio of gTLDs, taking over the ICANN registry contract for another 2012-round string earlier this month.

The company is now running .onl via a newish affiliate called Jolly Host, according to ICANN records. It had been managed by Germany-based iRegistry, the original applicant.

.onl — short for “online” but with substantially fewer registrations than .online — had just shy of 24,000 registered names in its zone file today, but has been experiencing fairly consistent growth over the last few years.

It had 19,787 domains under management at the end of October, a lifetime peak.

Some of the growth may be due to the sub-$4 first-year fees currently being charged by some registrars. I believe the registry annual renewal fee is around $10, but some registrars mark that up to $25-$35.

.onl appears in the storefronts of most major registrars already.

Seven dead registrars on the out

When a registrar stops paying its registry partners, they tend to be cut off relatively quickly. ICANN takes a bit longer.

That seems to be what’s happening to a collection of accredited registrars under the same ownership, which have been given just a few weeks to pay over a year’s worth of overdue ICANN fees or lose their ability to sell names.

ICANN Compliance is gunning for Haveaname, InstantNames, MisterNIC, NetEstate, Neudomain, OpenName, and TopSystem for non-payment of fees going back at least to September 2024.

Probably not coincidentally, that’s the same month that all seven registrars abruptly lost all of their domains under management — not much more than 1,000 per registrar — and apparently lost its .com accreditation.

According to the ICANN notice, Compliance spent the last few months of 2024 unsuccessfully attempting to get in touch with the registrars, before ignoring the case for the whole of 2025 and only returning to it this month.

The registrar web sites are all simple placeholders, with broken SSL certs, doing the bare minimum to stay in compliance with the ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement without actually attempting to sell any domains.

While almost all ICANN Compliance breach notices contain an allegation of unpaid fees, this is a rare instance where the allegations stop there; there’s no claim of any other breach.

Two former ICANN directors want back in

Gluttons for punishment? ICANN’s At-Large Community has named the first four candidates standing to join the Org’s board of directors, and two of them have form.

Sébastien Bachollet, Justine Chew, Maureen Hilyard and Lito Ibarra have all put themselves forward to replace term-limited León Sánchez, who is due to leave seat 15 of ICANN’s board in October after nine years’ service.

Bachollet and Ibarra are both former ICANN directors. Bachollet served as an At-Large appointee for four years from 2010. Ibarra served six years as a Nominating Committee appointee from 2015.

France-based Bachollet is the former chair of EURALO, the Regional At-Large Organization for Europe, and a former director of Afnic, the French ccTLD registry.

Malaysia-based lawyer Chew has extensive experience both on the At-Large Advisory Committee and the GNSO, as ALAC Liaison, and policy-making groups. She also has sat on the boards of Malaysian non-profits.

Hilyard, from the Cook Islands, is a former ALAC chair who has held senior board or advisory positions with Public Interest Registry and DotAsia and ISOC. The NGO she leads, the Cook Islands Internet Action Group, plans to apply for a new gTLD this year.

Ibarra has been in charge of the El Salvador ccTLD registry for over 30 years and has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. He has sat on the boards of LACNIC and LACTLD.

At-Large has a complex structure and its electoral system reflects that, but essentially the nominees were self-selected and confirmed by a committee. The ALAC will vote with a view to announcing the successful candidate before April 22.

“Lowest Price Guaranteed!” $48 .com registrar canned

ICANN has terminated its second registrar of the week, ending the accreditation of Hong Kong-based 0101 Internet for non-payment of fees and other infractions.

The registrar, not to be confused with the unrelated 101 Domain, will lose its ability to sell gTLD domains January 29, according to a public ICANN termination notice.

The company’s roughly 1,200 gTLD domains will be transferred to another registrar, a procedure complicated by the fact that ICANN also alleges that 0101 Internet has not been escrowing its customers’ registration data as required.

The Compliance notice spells out a timeline of alleged non-responsiveness to ICANN’s emails, phone calls, mail and faxes dating back to March 2003, almost three years ago.

0101 Internet’s web page proudly declares “Lowest Price Guaranteed!”, with .com, .net and .org priced at a measly $47.88 each, which might explain why the company’s DUM has been tumbling for over a decade.

No RDAP? No accreditation

ICANN has terminated its contract with another registrar after the company failed to implement RDAP, the Whois replacement protocol.

US-based Brennercom will be de-accredited January 28, according to a published ICANN Compliance notice.

The headline infraction is the fact that Brennercom failed to migrate to RDAP, but as is often the case the registrar owes ICANN money and has failed to publish some administrative details on its web site.

ICANN will now move Brennercom’s registered domains to a different registrar under its usual transition process.

That shouldn’t take long. While Brennercom’s web site claims to have handled customers with thousands of domains in their portfolios, my records show it has never had more than 133 domains under management. Right now, it has about 40.