Architelos makes $1 million in first year

The new gTLD consultancy Architelos took in revenue of over $1 million in its just-concluded first year of operations, according to the company.
That impressive sum came from a combination of consulting fees and software licenses for its Business Case Builder, which helps new gTLD applicants model their financial outlook.
Named clients include Verisign, Nominet, .music applicant Far Further and the Canadian Internet Registry Authority, according to Architelos.
Company founder and CEO Alexa Raad earned her chops leading the .mobi and .org registries before going independent.

Olympics warming to new gTLD bid?

ICANN’s new generic top-level domains Applicant Guidebook may be modified to make it clear that the International Olympic Committee can apply for .olympic if it wants to.
That’s judging by the current state of negotiations in an ICANN working group set up to give special protection to Olympic and Red Cross/Red Crescent trademarks.
Currently, the Guidebook contains a multilingual list of strings related to the Olympic and Red Cross brands that are completely banned from delegation as gTLDs.
But a GNSO working group seems to be rapidly veering towards a recommendation that the ban should be waived if the IOC and Red Cross decide to apply.
The IOC and Red Cross would therefore be able to get their hands on .olympic and .redcross.
Both organizations are closely involved in these talks, which suggests that they may not be entirely hostile to the idea of running their own dot-brand gTLDs after all.
The GNSO working group is also considering the idea that the Olympic and Red Cross trademarks should be protected by string similarity reviews, which is not the case currently.
This could mean, for example, that non-identical gTLDs such as .olympus might have to get IOC backing if they want their applications approved.
The GNSO Council is expected to vote to approve or reject the recommendations at its meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica next month.
It’s not clear whether this would give ICANN enough time to rubber-stamp the decision before the new gTLD application window closes to new applicants March 29.
The decision would not be non-controversial, however. Some ICANN community members are not in favor of granting special trademark protections to anyone.
The GNSO working group has also been tasked by the Governmental Advisory Committee with coming up with second-level protections for the Olympics and Red Cross, but this policy work is unlikely to bear fruit until after the new gTLD application window closes.

ICANN avoids bogus time-zone lawsuit

The company alleging that the critical internet time-zone database infringes its copyright has dropped its lawsuit, admitting that you can’t copyright historical facts.
ICANN took over maintenance of the TZ in October, after astrology software maker Astrolabe sued Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert, who had managed it for nearly 30 years.
The database is used by countless applications and ubiquitous programming platforms, and ICANN considers it a “an essential service on the Internet” and therefore within its remit.
Astrolabe sued in the belief that the database stole copyrighted information from its own software. ICANN was not named in the complaint, even after it took over the TZ.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation helped in the defense of the case, and yesterday announced that Astrolabe has dropped the suit, apologized, and promised not to sue again.
According to the EFF, Astrolabe said:

Astrolabe’s lawsuit against Mr. Olson and Mr. Eggert was based on a flawed understanding of the law. We now recognize that historical facts are no one’s property and, accordingly, are withdrawing our Complaint. We deeply regret the disruption that our lawsuit caused for the volunteers who maintain the TZ database, and for Internet users.

In a statement on its web site today, Astrolabe says:

Moon void in Pisces. Feelings shape the trends; settings and environments shape feelings. True sacrifice succeeds; passive/aggressive behavior fails.

Indeed.

Strickling says ICANN needs a stronger bottom

National Telecommunications & Information Administration chief Larry Strickling has called for ICANN to strengthen its decision-making processes.
In a speech at the University of Colorado earlier this month, Strickling called out ICANN’s board of directors in particular, for its habit of choosing between competing views when the ICANN community fails to reach consensus via the multi-stakeholder process.
The speech went over ground covered in other recent addresses – namely, how ICANN fits into the wider international political picture.
The US is worried about moves by some nations within the Internet Governance Forum and the International Telecommunications Union that threaten to make the internet an exclusively government-run enterprise.
Developing nations in particular are likely to support such moves, as the internet is causing them to lose the revenue they make by terminating international phone calls.
An ICANN that makes decisions without true bottom-up stakeholder consensus plays into the hands of those who would replace it with a new treaty organization, Strickling suggested.
According to his prepared remarks, he said:

Organizations that convene or manage multistakeholder processes have to be vigilant to make sure they do not inadvertently interfere with the effort to reach consensus.
…
the ICANN Board increasingly finds itself forced to pick winners and losers because its policy development process does not always yield true consensus-based policy making. This is not healthy for the organization.
…
If stakeholders understand that they can appeal directly to the Board to advocate for their particular policy position, they have less incentive to engage in the tough discussions to reach true consensus with all stakeholders during the policy-development process.

Ironically, ICANN’s current public comment period into defensive new gTLD applications – which could lead to changes to its trademark protection mechanisms – was opened precisely because Strickling himself, under pressure from Congress, appealed directly to the board.
But I suspect he was actually referring to the Association of National Advertisers, which scarcely participated in the development of the new gTLD program before it was finalized but has been loudly threatening ICANN about it ever since.
As well as calling for more participation from industry, Strickling also stressed the need for more governments to get involved in ICANN, “finding a way to bring them willingly, if not enthusiastically, into the tent of multistakeholder policy-making”.
But what would an ICANN that waits for true stakeholder consensus before the board makes a decision look like?
Strickling did not offer a solution in his address, but he did refer to the Governmental Advisory Committee’s new formal definition of consensus.
Without explicitly endorsing the model, he described it like this:

if the group reaches a position to which members do not object, it becomes the consensus view even though some members may not affirmatively support the position.

I’m finding it difficult to imagine ICANN continuing to function if its board of directors also had to observe this kind of “consensus” among stakeholders before making a decision.
Trademark owners and registrars not objecting to each other’s stuff?
What would I write about?

ICANN gets 100 applicants for CEO job

Over 100 people have applied to be ICANN’s next CEO, according to the organization.
ICANN revealed last night that it was provided with a shortlist of 27 potential candidates by its headhunter, Odgers Berndtson, and that its board has interviewed 16 of them by phone.
The list has now been whittled down further for face-to-face interviews with the board of directors, and ICANN expects to select a winner by mid-April.
Watch out for unfamiliar faces in expensive suits during the Costa Rica meeting in March – I’m guessing this might be where some of the interviews take place.
Current CEO Rod Beckstrom plans to leave the organization when his contract expires in July. He’s on a starting salary of $750,000, which may explain why there’s been so much interest in the job.

M+M registers for another 20 gTLD applications

Minds + Machines parent Top Level Domain Holdings has registered for another 20 new gTLD application slots with ICANN, bringing its total to date to 40.
The TLD Application System slots are for filing gTLD applications for itself and on behalf of M+M clients, the company said this morning.
A week ago, ICANN said that 100 registrations had been made with TAS.
TLDH is known to be involved in applications for .gay and .eco, among others. It registered its first 20 application slots during the first week of the application window, mid-January.

Rogue registrar suspended over “stolen” domain

ICANN has told Turkish domain name registrar Alantron that its accreditation will be suspended for a month due to its shoddy record-keeping.
The suspension, which will become effective March 8, follows an investigation into allegations of double-selling.
ICANN issued the suspension last Thursday after trying unsuccessfully for almost three months to get its hands on Alantron’s registration records.
The company now has until March 28 to sort out its compliance problems or face losing its accreditation entirely.
I understand the investigation was prompted by complaints filed by an American named Roger Rainwater over the potentially valuable domain name pricewire.com.
Pricewire.com spent a couple of years under Whois privacy but was grabbed last August by Turkish registrant Altan Tanriverdi, according to historical Whois records.
Rainwater, who says he had been monitoring it for three or four years, subsequently paid Tanriverdi an undisclosed sum for the domain, signing up for an Alantron account so it could be pushed.
Rainwater showed up in the Whois for pricewire.com on September 7 last year. But he says he was unable to change his name servers and 48 hours later the name disappeared from his account.
He says he was told by Alantron that it had put the domain in Tanriverdi’s account “by mistake” and that it was sold to SnapNames as part of a batch of dropping domains.
According to emails sent to Rainwater, seen by DI, Alantron said that pricewire.com was “registered via a partner company called Directi for a company called Snapnames”.
SnapNames had already auctioned the name – apparently there were more than 40 bidders – and the name has since been transferred to one Sammy Katz of Philadelphia.
However, given that Whois reliability is at question here, it’s not entirely clear who owns it. It’s currently parked at InternetTraffic.com.
Tanriverdi, who appears to be equally aggrieved, has published an extensive history of the dispute, along with screenshots, here (in Turkish).
In short: Alantron stands accused of double-selling pricewire.com.
ICANN’s compliance team has been unable to get its hands on the underlying transaction data despite repeated attempts because Alantron apparently doesn’t have it.
Its suspension notice alleges that Alantron was running two registration systems in parallel and that they weren’t talking to each other, resulting in the same name being sold to two parties.
Read ICANN’s suspension notice in PDF format here.

Watch ICANN approve some new gTLDs

In ICANN’s world, the current new top-level domains application period is actually the fourth, not the first.
As well as the 2000 “proof of concept” round, there was the sponsored gTLD round that kicked off at the end of 2003, and the ongoing IDN ccTLD Fast Track round from 2009.
I’ve finally got around to uploading to YouTube the video of the November 16, 2000 ICANN board meeting at which .info, .biz, .name, .pro, .museum, .coop and .aero were approved.
It was a pivotal moment in the history of the domain name system, particularly starting at the 5:46 mark, when the tide turned against Afilias’ application for .web, in favor of the less attractive four-character .info.
The main reason for the switch was Image Online Design’s competing application. IOD had been running .web in an alternate root for a few years before applying to ICANN.
If the internet had had a .web for the last decade, I believe conversations we’re having about new gTLDs would be very different today.
With .web expected to be a contested gTLD this time around — perhaps by some of the same companies that applied last time — expect this 11-year-old ICANN board meeting to be cited regularly in the near future.

The video was recorded by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and encoded in RealPlayer format, which in 2000 meant pretty poor-quality audio and video.

Tucows co-founder takes hard line on .club gTLD

.CLUB Domains LLC says it has secured funding for its .club generic top-level domain application, and says it is ready to go to an ICANN auction if necessary.
CEO Colin Campbell, a Tucows co-founder, blogged today that the funding deal comes along with “contingent financing… to ensure the company wins the top level domain in an auction.”
Apparently a few other companies have privately revealed that they are also applying for .club, but .CLUB Domains claims that it has no intention of negotiating with them. Campbell wrote:

Unfortunately ICANN’s process has encouraged some speculators to apply for the gTLD with no intention of actually running the top level domain but simply negotiating with legitimate operators. We have been approached by a number of companies who are applying for .Club. Our belief is that is best not to negotiate with these companies or individuals but win the name through an open and fair auction process.

This is a prime example of why revealing new gTLD plans before April 12 may not be the best business strategy — they invite competition from insiders who want a piece of your action.
Whether .CLUB Domains’s hard-line stance on competing applications will help reduce the field for .club — or whether rivals will try to call its bluff — remains to be seen.

CentralNic working with .mls new gTLD bidder

MLS Domains has contracted with CentralNic to provide the back-end registry for its .mls new top-level domain application, which it expects to be contested.
MLS in this context stands for Multiple Listing Service, a form of real estate listing aggregation service common in the US.
MLS Domains is already selling .mls preregistrations, at $800 a pop, to qualifying MLS companies, which will partially fund its application.
Company president Bob Bemis said in a press release that CentralNic was selected due to its experience with “novel TLDs”:

we expect no more than two or three thousand second-level domains ever to be registered on .MLS, so we need a registry partner who can provide a high level of service for a relatively small market of customers.

CentralNic sells sub-domains in alternative suffixes such as uk.com, gb.com and us.org. It manages these domains as if they were regular gTLDs, offering a Whois service, UDRP, etc.
The registry will also provide an integrated, affiliated registrar for the .mls project, MLS Domains said.
That’s if the company’s application is successful, of course.
.mls is expected to be contested by the Chinese owner of mls.com – Nanning Billin Network Ltd has applied for a US trademark on the gTLD.