dotShabaka Diary — Day 22, Sunrise has gone live!

In this penultimate entry in the dotShabaka Diary series, dotShabaka general manager Yasmin Omer officially announces the launch of the Sunrise period for شبكة., the first new gTLD to enter this phase.

Saturday 2 November 2013
It’s with great pleasure that I can finally say that we are the first new gTLD Registry Operator to commence its Sunrise Period! I’m truly excited about taking this TLD to the Arabic speaking world and revolutionising their Internet experience. So what’s happened since the last entry?
We received, and responded to, the TLD on-boarding Information Request from ICANN. New gTLD Registry Operators (and their Registry Services Providers) should be prepared to promptly provide ICANN with technical information regarding:

• The Registry Operator’s provision of the zone file access service;
• Bulk thin registration data access to ICANN;
• Data Escrow – Registry Reporting Interface;
• Implementation of the URS system;
• EPP extensions for the TLD; and
• EPP SLA Monitoring.

We requested the registration of our IDN Table on the IANA Repository of IDN Practices.
We obtained approval of our TLD Startup Information from ICANN. It’s certainly clear from our interactions with ICANN that the process of, and the requirements for, obtaining IBM’s acceptance of Sunrise dates and ICANN’s approval of TLD Startup Information, is yet to be defined. As a result, there was a delay in obtaining ICANN’s approval of our TLD Startup Information.
If you’re a new gTLD Registry Operator and you want your TLD Startup Information approved quickly, here are some tips:

• Once you have a fair idea of when your Sunrise will commence (could be before you’re delegated), reach out to IBM independently and request a number of potential dates. The team at IBM has been very responsive by promptly accepting our Sunrise dates.
• Include your eligibility policy for general registration with your TLD Startup Information. Yes, ICANN has explicitly stated that this is not a requirement they have imposed but it seems that they need it.
• Remember that ICANN’s review is a legal review. Ensure that your policies very clearly demonstrate your compliance with the relevant requirements. Use diagrams.
• Be prepared to respond to ICANN or IBM at any time – they’re both on opposite sides of the world to each other. ICANN thankfully ensure that the process is interactive, so be prepared to interact.

Good luck to everyone. We look forward to being joined by many more New gTLD Registry Operators in Sunrise.

Read previous and future diary entries here.

Two dot-brands pass Extended Evaluation

ICANN did not have much to report in this week’s batch of new gTLD evaluation results, as that stage of the program gradually winds down.
Two dot-brands — Shaw Cablesystems and TUI — passed Extended Evaluation for their .shaw and .tui applications.
TUI had to secure permission from Burkina Faso for .tui, which matches the protected name of one of its provinces, while Shaw had to provide better financial statements to pass.
Only four applications remain in Initial Evaluation — .pwc, .bbb, .kosher and .search. Eight applications are currently in Extended Evaluation.

Four more new gTLD contracts signed, including .email

Four new gTLD registries signed their contracts with ICANN yesterday.
Donuts added Registry Agreements for .email and .codes to its portfolio, bringing its total up to 43.
CORE Association signed for بازار., which means “bazaar”. It’s CORE’s third and final RA as an applicant and its only Arabic application. It’s already live with two Cyrillic strings.
Finally, DotBerlin signed its contract for the city TLD .berlin, apparently confirming the rumor that the one it signed on stage alongside .wien at the newdomains.org conference earlier this week was in fact a prop.
According to the DI PRO database, ICANN now has contracts with 80 new gTLDs and 18 legacy gTLDs.

Famous Four vows to fight .sport objection loss

Famous Four Media has promised to pursue “all available legal avenues” after losing a Community Objection over the .sport gTLD to its Olympic-backed rival.
The portfolio applicant lost out to SportAccord in an October 23 decision by International Chamber of Commerce panelist Guido Santiago Tawil, meaning its .sport application should be rejected by ICANN.
But Famous Four says it’s not over yet. In a statement today, the company said:

Famous Four Media shall pursue rigorously all available legal avenues available to it to have the decision independently reviewed by ICANN and/or others as the case may be, and reversed.

The logical first step of such a threat would be a Reconsideration Request, a relatively cheap way to challenge an ICANN decision with a virtually zero chance of succeeding.
That could be followed by a demand for an Independent Review Panel procedure, which would take much longer and cost significantly more. When ICM Registry won an IRP, the bill ran to millions.
Or Famous Four could try its luck in the courtroom, which could be flustered by the fact that all new gTLD applicants had to sign fairly one-sided legal waivers when they applied.
So what’s the company so worked up about?
It’s lost the chance to run .sport, because the ICC panelist ruled that SportAccord, which is backed by the International Olympic Committee and dozens of official sporting associations, represents the “sport” community and would be harmed if Famous Four were to run the TLD.
Famous Four had argued in its defense that SportAccord can only purport to represent a “subset” of this community — its sporting organization members — rather than everyone who has an interest in sport.
Rather amusingly, in its statement today, FFM linked to the IOC’s own marketing, which bears the slogan “Sport Belongs to All”, to prove its point:

it is Famous Four Media’s unshakable belief that this statement is true and just and that is why Famous Four Media applied for an open TLD – a top level domain that is open to everyone and offered to everyone on a level and equitable basis. Trying to claim ownership and representation of sport is akin to claiming representation for the human race.

An alternative reading would be to state that the IOC’s marketing slogan is, like all marketing slogans, bullshit.
But it actually cuts to the heart of the case itself, which Guido Santiago Tawil found in favor of SportAccord, writing:

The ICANN Guidebook does not require that an “entire” community agree on an objection to an application. In fact, it would be almost impossible for an institution to represent any community as a whole. If such was the requirement, there would be no reason to provide for the possibility of community objections.
It is difficult to imagine which other association may claim representation of the Sport Community besides an institution that represents, as Objector does, more than a hundred well-known sports federations and institutions related to sports.

Another key, and related, factor Community Objection panelists have to consider is whether a community is “clearly delineated”.
It’s here where the arguments that an applicant can use to win a Legal Rights Objection seem to fail under Community Objection scrutiny.
Famous Four said that “sport” is not clearly delineated along the lines defined by SportAccord — ie, members of its federations — because it doesn’t allow, say, hobbyists or the media to get involved.
Similar arguments were made in LROs.
Applicants regularly defended themselves against LROs — where the objector owns a trademark rather than purporting to represent a community — by pointing out all the non-infringing uses of the string.
That defense apparently doesn’t work in Community Objections, with the .sport ICC panelist ruling:

The fact that the media (which may constitute a different community) or viewers are unable to be part of this association is irrelevant to consider Objector as a delineated community. Otherwise, no community could be recognized under the ICANN gTLD proceedings since it would be easy for any Applicant to find secondary or not closed-related members outside of it.

In its response to the ruling today, FFM called this a “non sequitur”, adding:

It is not difficult to conceive of communities which are exclusive, and in all cases these do not consist of generic words like “sport.” One example already given by other commentators might be “.yorkuniversity.”

Another key pivot point in the .sport decision is “detriment”.
Objectors have to prove the “likelihood of material detriment to the rights or legitimate interests of a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted.”
The panelist in this case chose to interpret this as “future ‘possible’ damage”, which he said was quite a low bar.
His reasoning, in finding that detriment to SportAccord was likely, seems to hinge quite a bit on the fact that SportAccord has also applied for the same gTLD.
While seemingly discarding “hypothetical” arguments about cybersquatting and such in an open-registration .sport gTLD, he said he “shares Objector’s argument that all domain registrations in a community-based ‘.sport’ gTLD will assure sports acceptable use policies.”
That thinking only works, I think, if you also have a community-based .sport application on the table.
As FFM characterized it today: “What he is in effect saying is that the .SPORT gTLD should be delegated: just not to dot Sport Limited. This was not his decision to make.”
This week at the newdomains.org conference in Munich I spoke to several people who believe some of the highly contested, super-premium new gTLDs will take years to resolve.
It seems that .sport is going to be one of those.
Under the ICANN rules, FFM is supposed to withdrawn its application now. That’s clearly not going to happen.

Search all new gTLD collision block lists

DI PRO subscribers can now see which strings appear most often in new gTLD registries’ block-lists and search for strings — such as trademarks or premium strings — that interest them.
We’ve just launched the New gTLD Collisions Database.
Currently, it indexes all 14,493 unique strings that ICANN has told the first 13 new gTLD registries to block — due to the risk of collisions with internal networks — when they launch.
By default the strings are ranked by how many gTLDs have been told to block them.
You’ll see immediately that “www” is currently blocked in all 13 registries, suggesting that it’s likely to be blocked in the vast majority of new gTLDs.
Users can also search for a string in order to see how many, and which, new gTLDs are going to have to block it.
We’re hoping that the service will prove useful to trademark owners that want to see which “freebie” blocked strings they stand to benefit from, and in which gTLDs.
For example, we can already see that 10 meaningful strings containing “nike” are to be blocked. For “facebook”, it’s four registries. For “google”, it’s currently three strings across six gTLDs.
The service will also hopefully be useful to registries that want to predict which strings ICANN may tell them to block. We’re seeing a lot of gambling terms showing up in non-gambling TLDs, for example.
Here’s a screenshot of sample output for the search “cars”.

As ICANN publishes lists for more gTLDs, the database will grow and become more useful and time-saving.
Comments, suggestions and bug reports as always to kevin@domainincite.com

Three gTLD Community Objections rejected

International Chamber of Commerce panelists have recently rejected three Community Objections against new gTLD applications.
The dismissals include objections to the controversial Turkey-based bids for .islam and .halal, filed by Asia Green IT System, which had raised the ire of the United Arab Emirates’ telecommunications regulator.
The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority — also the operator of its ccTLDs — said it was representing the wider Islamic community under orders from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
But ICC panelist Bernardo Cremades ruled, based on a close reading of the OIC’s letter to the TRA and other member states, that the OIC had not formally backed the objection.
While there were over 100 public comments objecting to .islam and over 70 to .halal, because the TRA merely referred to them rather than submitting copies as evidence, the panelist chose to ignore them completely.
He also noted that only the UAE has chosen to file a formal objection.
So Cremades ruled that there was no “substantial opposition” to the applications, which is one of the things objectors need to prove in order to win an objection.
The TRA also failed to persuade the panelist that there was “a likelihood of any material detriment” to the Muslim community if Asia Green’s gTLDs were to be delegated, writing:

The Objector has certainly not provided any evidence that the Respondent is not acting or does not intend to act in accordance with the interests of the Muslim community.

So the TRA’s objections were dismissed and the applicant can proceed to the next phase of the new gTLD program.
Also dismissed recently was Bundesverband der Deutschen Tourismuswirtschaft’s objection to Donuts’ application for .reisen (“travel” in German).
BTW, a German travel industry association, is associated with a competing bid for .reise. Weirdly, it did not file a String Confusion Objection against Donuts’ .reisen.
It had argued among other things that German speakers would expect .reisen to conform to German and European consumer protection laws, while Donuts is planning an open and unrestricted gTLD.
The ICC panelist didn’t buy that argument, noting that a hotel in Argentina could market itself as German-speaking without having to abide by, say, European data protection law.
He also ruled that BTW showed substantial opposition from the commercial sector of German-language travel agents, but not from other sections of the community such as individual travelers.
Finally, he ruled that Donuts had promised to put enough protection mechanisms in place to mean there was unlikely to be a detriment to the .reisen community.
The objection was dismissed.

ICANN compliance not broken, Ombudsman rules

Ombudsman Chris LaHatte has rejected a complaint from spam research firm KnujOn — and 173 of its supporters — claiming that ICANN’s compliance department is failing consumers.
In a ruling posted online today, LaHatte said there was “no substance” to complaints that a small number of “bad” registrars, notably BizCN, have been allowed to run wild.
KnujOn’s Garth Bruen is a regular and vocal critic of ICANN compliance, often claiming that it ignores complaints about bad Whois data and fails to enforce the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, enabling fake pharma spamming operations to run from domains sponsored by ICANN-accredited registrars.
This CircleID blog post should give you a flavor.
The gist of the complaint was that ICANN regularly fails to enforce the RAA when registrars allow bad actors to own domain names using plainly fake contact data.
But LaHatte ruled, based on a close reading of the contracts, that the Bruen and KnujOn’s supporters have overestimated registrars’ responsibilities under the RAA. He wrote:

the problem is that the complainants have overstated the duties of the registrar, the registrant and the role of compliance in this matrix.

He further decided that allegations about ICANN compliance staff being fired for raising similar issues were unfounded.
It’s a detailed decision. Read the whole thing here.

Chehade talks up split from US oversight

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade used his keynote address at the newdomains.org conference this morning to discuss his plans to divorce the organization from US governmental oversight.
With a split from the US recurring theme in his recent speeches, Chehade nevertheless warned that there were risks that such a move could create a dangerous governance vacuum.
“The current ICANN contract that gives the US government a unique role in the root management function is not sustainable,” he said. “It’s just not sustainable.”
That seems to be a reference to the IANA contract, in which the US has essentially a veto on ICANN’s decisions regarding root zone changes such as new gTLD delegations.
“I think we need to think together how we grow from that and how we globalize that contract,” he said. “But we need to be very careful about creating a vacuum or uninteded consequences that would destabilize the root of the internet.”
While Chehade noted that a split from the US has always been envisaged, he said that the revelations about US internet surveillance made by NSA defector Edward Snowden has provided a catalyst to speed it up.
When Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff recently called for a “multilateral” (read: inter-governmental, (read: ITU)) approach to internet governance, Chehade and an ICANN team traveled to Brazil to persuade her to instead focus on the creation of a “multistakeholder” model instead.
There’s now a “coalition” of the “I*” groups (ICANN, IETF, etc), big-name companies such as Disney, and governments such as Brazil, focused on creating multistakeholder solutions to problems — such as spam and cyber-bullying — that are not in ICANN’s purview Chehade said.
There’s a multistakeholder meeting planned for April or May next year (I’ve heard both dates), to be hosted by Brazil, that will look at internet governance post-Snowden.
This meeting is about “allowing ICANN to not expand its remit”, according to Chehade. He said: “We don’t want to expand our remit.”
What we seem to be looking at here is the creation for a new organization, of which ICANN could be a member, that will allow stakeholders to coordinate responses to tricky cross-border internet problems.
While ICANN seems to be taking the leading role in its creation, it doesn’t sound like ICANN is trying to get into issues beyond naming and addressing, judging by Chehade’s speech this morning
Chehade also talked up ICANN’s support for the domain name industry.
He admitted that ICANN has caused a lot of problems for new gTLD applicants over the course of the gTLD program, but promised that this will change, with ICANN taking a more “background” role.
“You need less risk and more stability from the ICANN side,” he said. “You have suffered for a long time from a lot of instability, a lot of unknowns.”
Increased automation, internationlization and professionalism from ICANN will serve this goal, he said.
ICANN’s compliance department, he added, should “not be the policeman for the industry but be customer service for the registrants”, he said.

Six more gTLD contracts signed

ICANN signed six more new gTLD Registry Agreements on Friday, bringing the week’s total to eight.
Donuts added .cab, .computer and .support to its rapidly expanding portfolio of generics, while its partner United TLD (Demand Media) added .dance.
GMO Registry, which had teething troubles during Initial Evaluation before switching back-end providers, signed a contract for the Japanese geographic .nagoya.
Finally, Spanish clothing company Punto Fa, S.L., trading as MANGO, got the dot-brand .mango.
ICANN now has 72 new gTLD RAs, the first four of which have gone live.

ICANN signs contracts for .wang and .democrat

The new gTLD applicants behind .wang and .democract are the latest to sign Registry Agreements with ICANN.
Demand Media’s United TLD is behind .democrat, while .wang was applied for by small Chinese portfolio applicant Zodiac Holdings. Both were uncontested applications.
Both are to be open gTLDs.
For .democrat, Demand expects names to be registered by anyone who identifies themselves as a democrat. There were no objections, and to the best of my knowledge no explicit support, from “Democrat” parties
.wang is a weird one.
It’s the Latin-script transliteration of the Chinese character 网, which means “net”. Zodiac couldn’t apply for the Chinese because it’s a single character, which are not yet allowed under ICANN rules.
I understand that 网 is often used by Chinese speakers to mean “network” or “website”, but I don’t know how commonly the ASCII “wang” is used instead. Seems like a stretch.
It also of course is a common Chinese surname and a juvenile euphemism for “penis”.