Buckridge to replace Shears on ICANN board

Chris Buckridge will replace Matthew Shears on ICANN’s board of directors next month.

The Non-Contracted Parties House of ICANN, their arses burned by an August 18 finger-wagging from ICANN chair Tripti Sinha, somehow managed to narrow down a slate of four candidates to just one by Sinha’s end-of-month deadline, despite seeming to be at a very early stage of the election process just last week.

Buckridge will fill seat 14, reserved for a member of the NCPH and one of two GNSO-picked seats.

He was one of the preferred candidates of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, which along with the Commercial Stakeholders Group makes up the NCPH.

The CSG had rejected the NCSG’s original preference to reappoint Shears, who joined the board in 2017, for a third and final term.

Buckridge comes from the Regional Internet Registry world. He was with RIPE NCC from 2006 until this June in a variety of external relations roles, dealing with European governments and regulators, which seems like a pretty good qualification for an ICANN directorship.

Sinha had written to the NCPH leaders last month to complain that they had failed to pick a director, missing an April deadline, and demanded they name a name before the end of August.

Another six dot-brands self-terminate (two are very strange)

Three companies have asked ICANN to turn off a total of six dot-brand gTLDs. Two each.

Lifestyle Domain Holdings no longer wants to run .cityeats and .frontdoor, Paramount-owned CBS Domains wants out of .cbs and .showtime, and chocolate maker Ferrero wants rid of .kinder and .rocher.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Lifestyle Domains is done with .cityeats and .frontdoor, given that they were never used. What is surprising is that the brands themselves have been defunct for many, many years.

The registry was a part of Scripps Networks, an American cable TV company that owned HGTV and the Food Network. It’s now part of Warner Bros Discovery. CityEats.com and FrontDoor.com were part of its online empire.

But both sites were sold off to third parties in 2015 — the same year Lifestyle signed its two registry agreements with ICANN. In the case of .cityeats, the brand seems to have been sold off months before the contract was signed.

The registry appears to have been paying ICANN $50,000 a year for two TLDs is has absolutely no need for — it owned the dot-brands but not the matching brands. Very weird.

The case of CBS is little more typical. The company has three active domains in .cbs — one just a redirect to a privacy policy — and none in .showtime. It’s a case of not knowing what to do with the TLDs.

The Ferrero case is similar — the domains were not used and the company doesn’t want them any more.

I’ll give the chocolatier honesty points for the message on both nic. sites, which basically admits they were defensive registrations: “This domain is registered and protected by BARBERO & Associates Ltd”.

As both of these strings are non-English dictionary words, they could come up for grabs in the next round. “Kinder” is German for “children”, so it’s not impossible someone might want it as kid-focused generic.

ICANN might be a director light after election stalemate

Months of internecine bickering have led to ICANN facing the possibility that it might enter its 25th anniversary meeting this October without a properly elected director in one seat of the board.

Chair Tripti Sinha has written to (pdf) the heads of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group and Commercial Stakeholder Group — and then published the letter, no doubt to light a fire under their arses — to demand they name their candidate for Seat 14 on the board.

The name was due under ICANN’s bylaws by April 26, which is six months before the Hamburg AGM, she said.

Without an appointment, any newly picked director won’t be able to participate in training and meetings to help them hit the ground running at the conclusion of ICANN 78’s AGM, she said.

Seat 14 is selected by the Non-Contracted Parties House. That’s every participant in the GNSO that is not a registry or registrar. It comprises the NCSG and CSG. The incumbent director is Matthew Shears, first picked in 2017.

The CSG has made it clear that it does not want Shears, the NCSG’s initially preferred candidate, reappointed for a third term. It seems the group is unhappy with his performance. It has also rejected alternate Rafik Dammak.

The NCSG meanwhile rejected CSG preference Mark Datysgeld, saying he lacks ICANN experience.

The problem seems to be election rules (pdf) agreed to by the two SGs in 2018 that requires them to reach a “consensus” on a candidate, which can be difficult when by definition they have two fundamentally opposing policy goals.

There may also be confusion about whose “turn” it is to pick a candidate. As the names of the SGs suggests, the two groups represent diametrically opposed interests, so there’s been an informal agreement to rotate nominations between the SGs. The question is whether NCSG/Shears’ turn has ended, or whether he gets the full nine years.

Eight months after the NCPH leaders started to discuss Seat 14, there appears to be four candidates currently under consideration, albeit only at the very early interview phase of the process.

The CSG has put forward Khaled Koubaa and Ihab Osman as candidates. The names are notable as they’re both previous ICANN directors who each served a single term as Nominating Committee appointees (until 2019 and 2022 respectively).

The NCSG has picked “ICANN Policy Ninja” Amr Elsadr and Chris Buckridge, a policy guy from the Regional Internet Registry world, as its two nominees.

With three Africans in the mix, there’s a possibility that next year’s NomCom may have more freedom than usual when trying to fill its geographic diversity quota. None of the slate are female.

Right now, with voting not yet underway, it seems the chances of the two SGs settling on a consensus candidate before Sinha’s end-of-August deadline are close to zero.

ICANN’s general counsel John Jeffrey wrote to (pdf) the NCPH heads back in May to remind them that their nomination was a month late and that any failure to pick a new director before the AGM would lead to Shears retaining the role while his successor is picked (assuming he wants the gig).

There seems to be some concern among ICANN’s top brass that the deadlock within the NCPH — caused, as so many ICANN conflicts are, by a failure to compromise — might reflect badly on ICANN and the multistakeholder model in general.

Yup.

ICANN turns down money from blockchain alt-root

It seems ICANN is turning down free money from blockchain alt-root providers, apparently as a matter of principle.

We hear one such alt-root, Freename.io, tried to sponsor the upcoming ICANN 78 meeting in Hamburg, but was rebuffed.

“At this time, ICANN is not interested in having Freename serve as a sponsor and will not be moving forward with a sponsorship agreement,” the Org told the company in an unsigned email.

Freename had offered to be a general sponsor, and not at the cheapest tier, I’m told.

ICANN sponsorship offers typically start in the low thousands but can get up to six figures at the higher tiers. Sponsorship is overall a very small part of ICANN’s revenue.

Org has become increasingly rattled in recent years with the proliferation of alt-roots, which have been gradually gaining market acceptance while ICANN’s own efforts to expand the domain universe languish in interminable policy knots.

ICANN delayed the sale of the UNR portfolio of gTLDs until buyers renounced their ownership rights to blockchain versions of their authoritative root strings.

Clearly, splashing an alt-root’s branding all over an ICANN stage would be seen as problematic.

Freename.io plans to attend the Hamburg meeting anyway.

CentralNic chief calls on industry to tackle climate change

CentralNic CEO Michael Riedl is calling on his counterparts at other large domain name registries and registrars to meet up to coordinate the industry’s response to climate change.

During a broad keynote at the London Domain Summit this morning, Riedl said that each domain company is too small to make an impact on the industry’s carbon footprint individually, and that coordination is needed.

He said the industry’s carbon footprint is currently “relatively reasonable” but said “we need to get it down to zero… together I’m pretty sure we can make an impact”.

Speaking to DI shortly after his speech, Riedl said he will soon invite industry leaders to a climate change “summit” in Hamburg, Germany, to coincide with ICANN’s 78th public meeting.

He said the domain industry needs to coordinate and standardize its approach to emissions, following the leads of other industries such as automotive.

He said he hoped he could get the CEOs of the big domain companies — he named Verisign and GoDaddy, who rarely send their CEOs to ICANN meetings — to show up.

Planning for the meeting is in the very early stages and Riedl said he has not spoken publicly about the initiative until today’s speech.

Closed generics ban likely to remain after another policy group failure

Closed generic gTLDs are likely off the table for ICANN’s next application round, after a secretive policy development working group failed to reach a consensus on how they could be permitted.

The chairs of the ALAC-GAC-GNSO Facilitated Dialogue on Closed Generic gTLDs have put their names to a draft letter that essentially throws in the towel and recommends ICANN sticks to the status quo in which closed generics are not permitted.

The chairs of the three committees write that they “believe that it is not necessary to resolve the question of closed generic gTLDs as a dependency for the next round of new gTLDs, and we plan to inform the ICANN Board accordingly.”

In other words, whatever latency related to needing a closed generics policy that was built in to ICANN’s recent April 2026 target for opening the next application round could be eliminated from the timeline.

The three chairs added (emphasis in original PDF):

We agree with the ICANN Board (in its original invitation to the GAC and the GNSO to engage in a facilitated dialogue) that this topic is one for community policy work, rather than a decision for the Board. As such and based on our collective belief that there is neither the need nor the community bandwidth to conduct additional work at this stage, we also plan to ask that, for the next round, the Board maintain the position that, unless and until there is a community-developed consensus policy in place, any applications seeking to impose exclusive registry access for “generic strings” to a single person or entity and/or that person’s or entity’s Affiliates (as defined in Section 2.9(c) of the Registry Agreement) should not proceed. Finally, we also plan to inform the Board that any future community policy work on this topic should be based on the good work that has been done to date in this facilitated dialogue.

But that position — still a draft — is already facing some push-back from community members who disagree about what the current status quo actually is.

The 2012 application round opened up with the assumption that closed generics were A-okay, and it received hundreds of such applications.

But the governments of the GAC, no doubt stirred by competition concerns, balked when they saw big companies had applied for gTLD strings that could enable them to dominate their markets.

The GAC demanded that closed generics must service the public interest if they were to be permitted, so ICANN Org — in what would turn out to be an Original Sin injected into the destiny of future rounds — retroactively changed the rules, essentially banning closed generics but allowing applicants to withdraw for a refund or open up their proposed registration policies.

The third option was to defer their applications to a future application round, by which point it was assumed the community would have established a closed generics policy. No applicant took that option.

But making that policy was the job of a committee called SubPro, but when turned its attention to the issue, entrenched positions among volunteers took hold and no consensus could be found. It couldn’t even agree what the status quo was. The group wound up punting the issue to the ICANN board.

The discussion moved on last year when ICANN decided to launch the “Facilitated Dialogue”, forcing the GAC and the GNSO to the negotiating table in last-ditch attempt to put the issue to bed for good.

Ironically, it was the 2013 GAC advice — made at time when the governments drafted their advice in secret and were deliberately ambiguous in their output — that killed off closed generics for a decade that ICANN used to reopen the issue. The GAC hadn’t wanted a blanket ban, after all, it just wanted to mandate a “public interest” benefit.

The assumption was that the Facilitated Dialogue would come up with something in-between a ban and a free-for-all, but what it actually seems to have come up with is a return to the status quo and disagreement about what the status quo even is.

It really is one of those situations where ICANN, in its broadest definition, can’t see to find its ass with two hands and a flashlight (and — if you’ll indulge me — a map, GPS coordinates, and a Sherpa).

Epik had worst month ever in April

The fallout from Epik’s financial mismanagement scandal continued to wreak havoc on the company’s registration numbers in April, the latest ICANN registry transaction reports show.

The company had its worse month ever for transfers, with 34,698 domains being moved to rival registrars and only 206 being transferred in.

Epik sold just 411 gTLD domains in April — its worst month for adds in over a decade — having regularly added five figures worth in pre-scandal months.

The registrar’s domains under management number for all gTLDs was 557,652 at the end of the month, down 50,239 compared to the end of March and down 234,902 compared to September, when the scandal began to emerge.

For context, April was the month when news of a customer lawsuit (now settled) seeking $300,000 redress over a botched domain sale first emerged and stories of Epik’s woes started receiving broader attention.

Epik now has a new owner and is awaiting ICANN approval to transfer its accreditation.

Huge telco dumps gTLDs after rebrand

e&, a major telecoms company in the Middle East, has told ICANN to scrap its two dot-brand gTLDs following a partial corporate rebrand last year.

The Abu Dhabi-based company, which operates in 16 countries and has turnover of over $7 billion, said it no longer wishes to operate .etisalat and its Arabic equivalent, اتصالات. (.xn--mgbaakc7dvf). It’s never used the domains.

The company last year said it was rebranding as e&, the ampersand perhaps demonstrating that its marketing folk have little interest in intuitive domain names. “Etisalat by e&” is still used in some territories.

The firm uses eand.com as its primary web site domain.

As dot-brands with no domains and no customers, ICANN will quietly drop them from the root in due course.

April 2026 is the date for the next new gTLD round

ICANN has given itself an April 2026 target for accepting the next round of new gTLD applications.

Board chair Tripti Sinha wrote yesterday that ICANN expects the next Applicant Guidebook — the Book of Mormon for the program — to be completed in May 2025 “which enables the application round to open in Q2 2026 (with the goal of April 2026)”.

She noted, as if it needed note, that there could be delays.

Back in May, ICANN had indicated May 2026 as the likely date. That was in a fairly obscure Inside Baseball document. The newly revealed date is an official ICANN announcement.

Other key dates come in the fourth quarter 2025, when ICANN will start accepting applications for its Applicant Support Program and registry service provider pre-evaluation program.

Sinha said the board last week approved an Implementation Plan that lays out the work — and costs — for the next three years.

ICANN expects the program to cost it $70 million between Q2 2023 and Q2 2026. It’s assuming it gets roughly 2,000 applications, in with its experience in 2012. It will hire 29 new staff.

Doria leaving ICANN board a loss for new gTLD program

ICANN’s Nominating Committee has announced its 2023 selections for many of the Org’s leadership positions, and the big shocker is that director Avri Doria is not among the picks.

NomCom said it has reappointed lawyer Sarah Deutsch for a third three-year term, but Doria’s seat is being taken by Catherine Adeya, a Kenyan tech policy expert who describes herself as a “Senior Digital Transformation & Governance Specialist”.

Adeya holds various directorships and was director of research at the World Wide Web Foundation for a couple of years until layoffs in late 2022, according to her socials.

While Adeya seems incredibly well-qualified for the role, I can’t help but lament the loss of Doria’s institutional expertise. She, along with fellow ICANN lifer Becky Burr, have recently been doing a pretty good job working with the GNSO to help oil the wheels of implementation and get the new gTLD program up and running again.

The NomCom picks mean that the number of voting Africans on the 20-person board doubles from one to two and the number of North Americans is reduced by one. The gender mix of course remains the same, with six out of the 16 voting seats filled by women.

There’s been a lot of talk this year, particularly from chair Tripti Sinha, about a goal to achieve “gender parity” in ICANN’s leadership positions, and NomCom’s 2023 appointments certainly seem to reflect that.

Despite as few as 27% of the 155 applicants ticking the female box on the application form, versus 59% male, only two of the nine open positions were filled by men.

Two of the nine hail from Asia-Pacific, with three from Africa, two from North America, and one each from Europe and Latin America.

ICANN’s bylaws require at least one director from each of the five geographic regions and the board every year encourages NomCom to keep gender and geographical diversity in mind when making their picks.

All the NomCom picks take their seats at the end of ICANN’s public meeting this October.