ICANN registrar’s domain listed for sale on Sedo

When selecting a domain name registrar there are often clues you can use to determine broadly whether a firm is entirely reliable, but this one is new to me.
Vivid Domains, a small-time, seven-year-old ICANN-accredited registrar, currently has its primary domain, vividdomains.com, listed for sale on Sedo.
It’s listed as a “domain without content” too, which looks even more peculiar.
According to DotAndCo, the company recently relocated from Florida to Grand Cayman.
WebHosting.info notes that, having chugged along for some time with only a few hundred domains under management, Vivid’s registration base has leapt from about 400 to over 1,900 in the last two weeks.
KnujOn’s registrar audit report (pdf), released at ICANN Brussels last week, notes that the anti-spam company was unable to locate a business registration for Vivid.
I’m not suggesting Vivid is dodgy, but these are the kind of clues I would use when deciding whether to give a registrar a wide berth.

ICANN chair says new TLD guidebook could be final by December

Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, thinks there’s a chance that the Applicant Guidebook for new top-level domains could be ready by ICANN’s next meeting, set for Cartagena in early December.
The board resolved in Brussels on Friday to turn its September two-day retreat into a special meeting focussed on knocking the DAG into shape.
Shortly after the vote, Peter Dengate Thrush spoke at a press conference (emphasis mine).

Soon after the closing of the [DAG v4] public comment period was a regularly scheduled retreat for the board to go and do what boards do at retreats, and what we’ve decided today to do is to use that two-day retreat to see if we can’t make decisions on all the outstanding issues in relation to the new TLD program.
That’s probably reasonably ambitious, there may still be a couple left, but we want to get as many of them out of the way as we can. That means that when we come to the next ICANN meeting in Cartagena in December we hope to be very close if not actually able to hand out the Applicant Guidebook for that new process.

I asked him what outstanding issues needed to be resolved before the DAG can be finalized. Instead of a comprehensive list, he named two: IP protection and the Governmental Advisory Committee’s “morality and public order” concerns.
The IP issue is “close” to being resolved, he said, but “there may still be issues”.
On MOPO, he said there is “a potential conflict emerging” between GAC members who value free speech and those who are more concerned with their own religious and cultural sensitivities.
When I followed up to ask whether it was possible to reconcile these two positions, this is what he said:

What we’ve done is ask the GAC is how they would reconcile it… now they are saying that they can’t see how it can be done. We see that very much as a problem either for the GAC to change its advice, or to provide us with a mechanism whereby that can be reconciled.

The Brussels GAC Communique (pdf), has little to say on MOPO, delaying its advice until its official DAG v4 public comment filing.
MOPO has already created tensions between the GAC and the board. The conversation at their joint meeting on Tuesday went a little like this:

GAC: We don’t like this MOPO stuff. Please get rid of it.
BOARD: Okay. What shall we replace it with?
GAC: Erm…
BOARD: Well?
GAC: It’s not our problem. You think of something.
BOARD: Can you give us a hint?
GAC: No.
BOARD: Please? A little one?
GAC: We’ll think about it.

So can we expect the GAC to get its act together in time for Cartagena? That, too, seems ambitious.

Bulgaria to file ICANN reconsideration appeal over rejected IDN ccTLD

Bulgaria is to appeal ICANN’s rejection of .бг, the Cyrillic version of its existing country code top-level domain, .bg.
Technology minister Alexander Tsvetkov said that the Bulgarian government will file a reconsideration request with ICANN, according to a DarikNews.bg interview.
The requested IDN ccTLD .бг was rejected because it looks quite a bit like Brazil’s existing ASCII ccTLD, .br, which could create confusion for Brazilians.
ICANN/IANA does not talk openly about ccTLD delegation issues. As far as I know, .бг is the only IDN ccTLD on the current fast-track program to be rejected on string-similarity grounds.
The Darik News interview, via Google Translate, reports Tsvetkov saying he “believes that this domain is the best way for Bulgaria” and that the government “will ask for reconsideration”.
Asked about the clash with Brazil, he said Bulgaria “will not quit” in its pursuit of its first-choice ccTLD.
Brazil has not been silent on the issue.
During the meeting on Tuesday between the ICANN board and its Governmental Advisory Committee, Brazil’s representative praised ICANN for rejecting .бг:

Brazil would like to express its support to the recent board’s decision about avoiding graphic similitude between new country codes and current country codes in Latin. This is particularly important inasmuch as any graphic confusion might facilitate phishing practices and all the problems related to it.

Many thanks to the Bulgarian reader who referred me to this Darik News interview.
For any other Bulgarians reading this, the interview also appears to contain lots of other really juicy information not related to domain names. Check it out.

ICANN Brussels – .xxx approved but not approved

The controversy over the .xxx top-level domain has for the last few years, at least from one point of view, centered on opposing views of whether it was already “approved”.
ICM Registry has long claimed that ICANN “approved” it in 2005, and believes the Independent Review Panel agreed with that position. ICANN said the opposite.
Regardless of what happened in Brussels yesterday, when the board grudgingly voted to reopen talks on .xxx (to a surprisingly muted audience response), the question of whether .xxx is “approved” is definitely not over yet.
ICM tweeted shortly after the ICANN’s board’s decision:

@ICMRegistry: We are delighted to announce that the #ICANN Board has approved the .xxx top-level domain.

But a couple of hours later, ICANN chair Peter Dengate Thrush told us at a press conference that it categorically was not “approved”.
In terms of getting its point across to the media, ICM’s message trumped ICANN’s, judging by the headlines currently scrolling past me on Google News.
I guess this boils down to a question of definitions.
From the ICANN perspective, a TLD is presumably not “approved” until a contract has been signed and the board has resolved to add it to the root.
The board’s decision yesterday merely sets out the track towards that eventuality, with a few hurdles scattered along the way. In conversation with ICM people, I get the impression they believe the hurdles are low and easily surmountable.
Crucially for ICM, the issue of community support, the stick with which ICANN nearly killed .xxx back in 2007, is now off the table. There will be a quick review of ICM’s books and technical capabilities, but the views of the porn industry now seem pretty much irrelevant.
The only real way I can see .xxx being derailed again now is if the Governmental Advisory Committee issues future advice that unequivocally opposes the TLD.
As Kieren McCarthy noted in some detail over on CircleID, the GAC has never had a hell of a lot of substantial advice to impart about .xxx in its official communiques, so it’s difficult to see where a clash could arise based on its previous missives.
But with the GAC currently using bogus “morality and public order” arguments to jerk everybody around with regards the next new TLD round, it’s not entirely impossible that it could lob one final grenade in ICM’s direction.
This story ain’t over yet.

ICANN Brussels – some of my coverage

As you may have noticed from my relatively light posting week, it really is a lot easier to cover ICANN meetings remotely.
The only drawback is, of course, that you don’t get to meet, greet, debate, argue and inevitably get into drunken fist-fights with any of the lovely people who show up to these things.
So, on balance, I think I prefer to be on-site rather than off.
I was not entirely lazy in Brussels this week, however. Here are links to a few pieces I filed with The Register.
Cyber cops want stronger domain rules

International police have called for stricter rules on domain name registration, to help them track down online crooks, warning the industry that if it does not self-regulate, governments could legislate.

.XXX to get ICANN nod

ICANN plans to give conditional approval to .xxx, the controversial top-level internet domain just for porn, 10 years after it was first proposed.

Governments mull net censorship grab

Governments working within ICANN are pondering asking for a right of veto on new internet top-level domains, a move that would almost certainly spell doom for politically or sexually controversial TLDs.

New TLD guidebook could be finalized at ICANN retreat

ICANN’s Draft Applicant Guidebook for new TLDs could become the Final Applicant Guidebook at an ICANN retreat before the next ICANN meeting.
Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said at a press conference here in Brussels earlier that a private two-day board retreat this year, focused entirely on new TLDs, could “clear up any remaining issues” with the DAG.
I believe he was referring to the ICANN board’s scheduled September 24-25 retreat, although he may have had something else in mind.
Dengate Thrush said that we should not expect the board to pass as many resolutions relating to the DAG at the end of the Brussels meeting as it did at the end of Nairobi three months ago.
But he still expects DAG v4 will be the final draft published before the guidebook is finalized.
“The reality is that there are a number of overarching issues where the community has to reach consensus, and it’s difficult for us to put time limits on the community,” he said.
A few minutes ago, during an open mic session on new TLDs, Jon Nevett of Domain Dimensions questioned whether there should be a special ICANN meeting, before the retreat, to give the community a chance to help with the finalization process.

The ICANN Brussels schwag bag – full details

I’ve just landed at ICANN 38, in the really rather lovely setting of the Mont des Arts in Brussels.
Either I’m lost, or it’s a bit quiet at the moment, so I thought I’d get the most important news out of the way first – what’s in the schwag bag?
A heck of a lot more than the last ICANN meeting I attended, in Mar Del Plata, Argentina three five years ago.
Consider this a disclosure statement – I am now forever beholden to all of these companies, in no particular order:

• T-shirt (Hanes) from ICANN.
• T-shirt (Fruit of the Loom) from RegistryPro.
• Empty Belgian chocolate bag from Iron Mountain (visit the booth for the choccie, presumably).
• Fan with party invite printed on it from GMO (dotShop).
• Pen from .CO Internet.
• Keyring (foam) from dns.be.
• Pen from Nic.ru.
• Belgian chocolate box (full) from Centr.
• Keyring (metal) from PIR (slogan: “PracticeSafeDNS.org”)
• Badge/button (small) from .quebec.
• Badge/button (huge) from ICM Registry (slogan: “Yes to .XXX”)
• Bumper sticker from .quebec.
• Notebook from PIR (.org “Celebrating 25 years”)
• Playing cards (one-way backs) from Ausregistry.
• “Multi-purpose retractable lock” from SIDN.
• USB Flash drive (4GB) from Afnic.
• Notebook from .eu.
• A good-sized tree’s worth of flyers, booklets and sales pitches from the meeting’s sponsors – very strong contingent of new TLD players and consultancies.
• The bag itself is sponsored by Afilias.

I heard a rumor that ICM was giving away .xxx vuvuzelas, but if they were they appear to have already run out.

Register.com sold at a $65 million loss

Register.com has been acquired by web hosting company Web.com for $135 million, substantially less than the $200 million Vector Capital paid for it five years ago.
Web.com said the acquisition will help it access new small business customers for lead generation, to cross-sell its existing products.
The company’s customer base will increase by over 400% to more than one million customers, Web.com said. The combined firm will have annual revenue of $180 million.
Register.com was one of the first five ICANN-accredited registrars. It failed as a public company, and after years of financial wrangling was finally taken private by Vector in 2005.
Vector specializes in buying up troubled companies and turning them around, but it doesn’t appear to have increased the value of this particular asset over the last five years.

Will ICANN punt .xxx in Brussels?

Is ICANN set to delay approval of the proposed .xxx top-level domain – again – in Brussels?
That’s my reading of ICANN’s latest document concerning ICM Registry’s long-running and controversial battle for a porn-only TLD.
This week, ICANN submitted its summary of the public comment period that ran to May 10. It’s a fair bit shorter than the one Kieren McCarthy compiled for ICM last month.
As usual, it’s written in a fairly neutral tone. But, if you’re feeling conspiratorial, the mask does slip on occasion, perhaps giving a sense of where the .xxx application could head next.
The ICANN summary occasionally breaks from reporting what a commenter actually said in order to highlight a potential problem they did not address.
Example (my emphasis):

Only two commenters directly addressed the question of further interaction with the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) on the .XXX sTLD Application. Both of those commenters were against seeking any further input from the GAC outside of any public comment period. Neither of these commenters – nor any other – addressed the potential violation of the ICANN Bylaws that could result from the Board’s failure to properly consider the advice of the GAC

This suggests, to me, that the ICANN board will be receiving advice to the effect that further GAC input needs to be forthcoming before it can move forward with .xxx.
If this is the case, the GAC might have to produce some advice before next Friday’s board meeting if ICM has any hope of getting back around the negotiating table prior to Cartagena in December.
That’s not the only reason to believe ICANN may punt .xxx again, however. Elsewhere in the report, we read (my emphasis again):

For those in favor of proceeding with the .XXX sTLD Application, many created an alternative option – that ICM and ICANN should proceed to a contract right away. There was substantial discussion on this point in the ICM submissions. Few commenters addressed the technical realities identified within the Process Report ‐ that prompt execution of the agreement negotiated in 2007 is not feasible.

The Process Report referenced says that it is not possible to go straight into contract talks because ICM first applied for .xxx more than six years ago.
This has been a bone of contention. ICM points to .post, which was applied for at the same time as .xxx and only approved late last year, as proof that the passage of time should be no barrier.
But ICANN president Rod Beckstrom doesn’t buy that comparison. He wrote to ICM (pdf) at the end of March noting that .post was backed by the International Postal Union, whereas .xxx is “sponsored” by IFFOR, an organization created by ICM purely to act as its sponsor.
In that letter, Beckstrom talks about due diligence to make sure ICM and IFFOR still satisfy financial and technical criteria, and a review of whether .xxx “can still satisfy the requisite sponsorship criteria”.
I’ll admit that I’m breaking out the crystal ball a bit here, and I’ve been wrong before, but I don’t think it’s looking great for ICM in Brussels.

ICANN creates DNSSEC root keys

ICANN took the penultimate step towards adding DNSSEC to the root of the domain name system, during in a lengthy ceremony in Virginia yesterday.
The move means we’re still on track to have the DNSSEC “trust anchor” go live in the root on July 15, which will make end-to-end validation of DNS answers feasible for the first time.
DNSSEC is an extension to the DNS protocol that enables resolvers to validate that the DNS answers they receive come from the true owner of the domain.
Yesterday, ICANN generated the Key Signing Key for the root zone. That’s one of two keys required when adding DNSSEC to a zone.
The KSK is used to sign the DNSKey record, the public half of a key pair used to validate DNS responses. It has a longer expiration date than the Zone Signing Key used to sign other records in the zone, so its security is more important.
The videotaped ceremony, held at a facility in Culpeper, Virginia, was expected to take six hours, due to a lengthy check-list of precautions designed to instil confidence in the security of the KSK.
ICANN said:

During the ceremony, participants were present within a secure facility and witnessed the preparations required to ensure that the so-called key-signing-key (KSK) was not only generated correctly, but that almost every aspect of the equipment, software and procedures associated with its generation were also verified to be correct and trustworthy.

Ten hand-picked independent observers were present to bear witness.
ICANN expects to perform the ceremony four times a year. The second will be held at a backup facility in California next month.