Big twist as ICANN bans new gTLD auctions

ICANN is to ban new gTLD applicants from paying each other off if they apply for the same strings, removing a business model that saw tens of millions of dollars change hands in the 2012 application round.

But, in a twist, applicants will be able to submit second-choice strings along with their main application, allowing them to switch if they find themselves in contention.

While ICANN’s board of directors has yet to pass a resolution on private resolution in forthcoming application rounds, chair Tripti Sinha said in a letter to the GNSO Council (pdf) and blog post that there’s agreement on three principles.

“Private resolution of contention sets will not be permitted during the Next Round,” Sinha told the Council. The idea of permitting joint-venture resolution was also ruled out as impractical and open to gaming.

This of course means that where contention sets do occur, they’ll be resolved with a “last resort” auction where ICANN gets all the cash from the winning bidder.

Funds raised this way in the last round, along with a decade’s worth of investment interest, have been used to replenish ICANN’s reserve fund, to fund the current Grant Program, and may be shortly used to subsidize the Applicant Support Program.

Second, applicants will be able to submit at least one alternate string with their applications, allowing them to avoid a contention set and last resort auction.

This potentially makes the cost of acquiring a gTLD cheaper for the applicant while increasing the number of gTLDs that go live. ICANN might also have to issue fewer refunds for withdrawn applications.

ICANN thinks this measure might make gTLDs more affordable for less well-resourced applicants from the Global South, where ICANN is keen to diversify the industry, although the applicants may not get their first-choice strings.

Applicants would only be able to switch to an alternate string, which they will have to have pre-selected, if doing so would not create a new contention set or make the applicant join a different existing contention set.

They’d also only be able avoid a contention set of exact-match strings, and not sets subsequently created by the String Similarity Review or String Confusion Objection results.

So, to take an example from 2012, any of the seven .hotels applicants would have been able to switch to a second-choice string immediately after Reveal Day, but not after the similarity review placed them in contention with .hoteis.

The third point of agreement from the board is that the last resort auctions should keep the ascending-clock second-price method used for the 2012 round, deciding against lotteries or the Vickrey auction method.

The ascending clock method sees bids filed in rounds until all bidders but one had dropped out. The last applicant standing then pays ICANN the last price offered by the runner-up.

A Vickrey auction would have seen applicants submit their maximum bids at the time of application, not knowing who they were bidding against. Lotteries are legally problematic under California gambling law.

Sinha said the board intends to pass a resolution embodying these three principles “in the coming weeks”.

This is going to create some extra work for the GNSO, as ruling out joint ventures as a means to private resolution goes against community policy recommendations (and the board’s adoption of those recommendations).

The GNSO Council is set to discuss Sinha’s letter at its regular monthly meeting this Thursday.

ICANN to “strengthen” harassment rules as it picks another homophobic meeting host

ICANN has revealed it is to “strengthen” its anti-harassment policy, but the announcement came the same day as it picked another public meeting host country where being gay can lead to jail time.

“The Board Anti-Harassment Working Group has recently worked to evaluate and strengthen the ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy,” chair Tripti Sinha posted over the weekend. “We do not accept any form of harassment, and we must continually seek opportunities to improve.”

The draft revisions shortly follow the revelations of a sexual harassment legal action by a veteran former staffer, at least the third such instance in the last five years I’m aware of.

The current Community Anti-Harassment Policy is already pretty broad, covering a wide range of protected characteristics (from race to marital status) and behaviors (from groping to dirty jokes).

The proposed revisions will be posted for public comment before ICANN’s Annual General Meeting in Istanbul this November, Sinha wrote.

It’s not illegal to be gay in Türkiye, but it is in Muscat, Oman, where ICANN announced just hours before the anti-harassment post it plans to hold its 2025 AGM.

Men and women can get three years imprisonment for gay sex or “cross-dressing” there, according to the Human Dignity Trust. It’s also technically illegal for unmarried straight couples to share a hotel room, according to the UK government.

While the law in Oman might not be rabidly enforced, it’s understandable that some LGBT members of the ICANN community could be made to feel nervous and adjust their travel plans accordingly — things like traveling with a same-sex partner, hooking up with someone, or having Grindr on your phone might carry additional risk.

Oman is just one of many countries with homophobic laws on the books that ICANN has invited its community members to attend over the years.

Looking back over just the last 10 years of meetings, ICANN has been to Malaysia (in 2022), the UAE, and Morocco (twice), where gay sex acts get you prison time. It’s also been to Singapore (twice) and India, which have since decriminalized homosexuality.

It’s baffling to me that ICANN can lecture its community about “microagressions” and yet also routinely invites its not-insignificant contingent of gay community members to return to the closet for a week, under pain of arrest.

The new gTLD next, next and next round

“The goal is for the next application round to begin within one year of the close of the application submission period for the initial round.”

Believe it or not, that sentence appears in the new gTLD program’s Applicant Guidebook that ICANN published in June 2012, 12 years of seemingly interminable review and revision ago.

Ah, 2012…

Obama was reelected for his second term. The final of the Euros took place in Kyiv. Gangnam Style topped the charts. Harvey Weinstein won an Emmy. Microsoft released Windows 8. Jedward sang for Ireland in Eurovision. Everyone had an opinion on Joseph Kony and Grumpy Cat.

Naturally enough, a lot of people aren’t very happy about the massive delay between the close of the last application window and the opening of the next one, currently penciled in for the second quarter of 2026.

So the community has done something about it, placing language in the draft of the next AGB that commits ICANN to open subsequent, post-2026 rounds without all the mindless navel-gazing and fannying around.

The intent is pretty clear — make application rounds more frequent and more predictable — but there’s still plenty of wiggle-room for ICANN to exploit if it wants to delay things yet again.

Here’s what the proposed AGB language (pdf) says:

ICANN works towards future rounds of new gTLDs taking place at regular and predictable intervals without indeterminable periods of review and, absent extraordinary circumstances, application procedures will take place without pause. A new round may be initiated even if steps related to application processing and delegation from previous application rounds have not been fully completed.

The ICANN Board will determine the timing of the initiation of a subsequent application round of the New gTLD Program as soon as feasible, but preferably not later than the second Board meeting after all the following conditions have been met:

1. The list of applied-for strings for the ongoing round has been confirmed and the window for string change requests has closed. This will provide applicants in a subsequent round with an understanding of which strings can be applied for.

2. ICANN org has not encountered significant barriers to its ability to receive and process a new batch of applications.

Absent extraordinary circumstances, future reviews and/or policy development processes, including the next Competition, Consumer Choice & Consumer Trust (CCT) Review, should take place independent of subsequent application rounds. In other words, future reviews and/or policy development processes must not stop or delay subsequent new gTLD rounds.

If the outputs of any reviews and/or policy development processes has, or could reasonably have, a material impact on the manner in which application procedures are conducted, such changes will apply to the opening of the application round subsequent to the adoption of the relevant recommendations by the ICANN Board. Once adopted by the Board, the implementation of that policy or review recommendation(s) will then become a dependency for the timing of that subsequent round of applications.

The language is among several draft sections of the 2026 AGB that ICANN this week opened for public comment.

An intriguing question now arises: will this commitment on subsequent round timing have any impact on the number of applications submitted in 2026?

People in the know tell us that there’s a decade-long backlog of wannabe applicants, particularly in the dot-brand world, but will any of them decide to slow down their ambitions if they know they only have an extra year or two to wait for another round?

Or will they trust ICANN’s record of delay over the somewhat flexible promises of the AGB?

It’s not just an academic question. How much applicants will ultimately pay ICANN in application fees, after rebates, will depend on how may applications are filed.

ICANN hit by DDoS attack

If you noticed ICANN’s web site acting sluggishly or failing to respond at all last week, now you know why.

The site at icann.org was hit by a distributed denial of service attack on September 3 through September 4, according to a brief statement on the Org’s now-functional site.

ICANN identified a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) event that occurred on www.icann.org on 3 Sept. 2024. The situation was mitigated and service to ICANN’s website was restored on 4 Sept. 2024.

No additional information has yet been released on the size, duration or possible motivations behind the attack.

It’s the first security incident ICANN has judged significant enough to publicly disclose in over two years.

Russia calls for ICANN to split from US

The Russian government has called on ICANN to further distance itself from US legal jurisdiction, complaining that the current war-related sanctions could prevent its companies from applying for new gTLDs.

In recent comments, Russia said that “no single state or group of states should have the right to interfere in the operation of critical Internet infrastructure and/or the activities of ICANN, including the mechanisms for legal regulation of ICANN’s operations”.

It added that it is “necessary… to prepare by the ICANN community and stakeholders proposals for measures or mechanisms that can make ICANN less dependent on one state”.

The call came in comments filed in ICANN’s public comment period on the terms and conditions of the new gTLD program’s Applicant Support Program and Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program.

The Ts&Cs contain a clause requiring applicants to abide by all US economic sanctions, such as those overseen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which has sanctioned Russian entities since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s comment was filed late and has not been published or analysed by ICANN in the usual way. Instead, it was appended to the summary report (pdf) prepared by ICANN staff.

It’s not the only war-related beef Russia has with ICANN right now. The government has also complained (pdf) that about 400 domains registered by Russian entities, including airports and airlines, in the .aero gTLD have been suspended.

The .aero registry, aerospace industry IT service provider SITA, is headquartered in Switzerland but the contracting entity is a US-based subsidiary.

According to OFAC, domain registration services are exempt from the US sanctions. That has not stopped several domain registries and registrars ceasing business with Russians on moral grounds.

ICANN told Russia to file a complaint about SITA with its Compliance department. SITA has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Calls for ICANN to distance itself from the US have been coming for over two decades, usually from America’s opponents, and did not stop when the Org severed its formal ties with the 2016 IANA transition.

ICANN to be director light for months

ICANN’s board of directors will be down one person for six months or more after last month’s unexpected resignation of Katrina Sataki.

The ccNSO, which selected Sataki and is charged with picking her successor, does not expect to be able to name a new director until well into next year, and the vacant seat will stay vacant until then.

The ccNSO Council said it will open nominations for three weeks beginning September 10, but does not expect to hold the election until February 2025, “following the completion of due diligence on the nominee(s) by a professional firm”.

If the election is hotly contested, a second ballot could take place in March.

After the result is confirmed, it will need to be approved by ICANN’s sovereign Empowered Community before the new director can take their seat. Sataki’s seat could be empty for six or seven months.

The Council said that nominations from the Latin America and Caribbean region will not be accepted because the ccNSO’s other appointed director, Patricio Poblete, a Chilean, is from that region.

Sataki resigned with immediate effect August 23 citing personal reasons. Technically, her successor is to carry out her remaining term, which ends in November, but practically that is of course not possible.

Chinese registrars back in trouble after porn UDRP suspension

A collection of six registrars in the XZ.com stable are back on the ICANN naughty step, facing more Compliance action just a couple of years after a sister company was suspended over UDRP failures.

ICANN has published breach notices against DotMedia and five other registrars under common ownership, claiming that they are failing to send their registration data to the correct escrow provider.

Since last year, registrars have been obliged to escrow their data to DENIC, which replaced NCC Group as ICANN’s sole provider. Escrow is important as it helps make sure registrants keep their domains if a registrar goes out of business.

The six DotMedia registrars have failed to make this transition despite months of hand-holding from ICANN, according to the breach notices. Compliance has been on their case since at least April.

The registrars are among 20 that appear to be under common management, almost all based in Hong Kong and using xz.com as their primary storefront, and it’s not clear why only six accreditations have been found in breach.

The whole group appears to be on the skids in terms of registration volume. The main accreditation, US-registered MAFF Inc, once had around 600,000 gTLD names under management, but that’s down to around 60,000 in the latest registry reports. The others have a few thousand each, having suffered similar percentage declines.

Another member of the group, ThreadAgent.com, was actually suspended for months in 2022 after it failed to transfer two domains lost in cybersquatting complaints under the UDRP to BMW and Lockheed Martin.

The six registrars have until September 25 to come back in compliance or face further action.

Sataki quits ICANN board

Katrina Sataki has abruptly resigned from the ICANN board of directors.

In a letter last week to the ICANN brass and to the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, which elected her to the post three years ago, Sataki wrote:

I am writing to hand in my resignation as a member of the Board of Directors at ICANN, effective immediately for personal reasons. After careful consideration I regretfully see no other option and need to step down to allow another nominee from the ccNSO to fully commit to this work.

She apologized to the ccNSO for the suddenness of her departure.

Sataki, the CEO of Latvia’s .lv ccTLD registry, had served almost one full three-year term on the board, but had been reelected by the ccNSO for a second term due to begin this November.

The ccNSO is expected to open a call for nominations for her replacement this week.

The replacement would serve out Sataki’s remaining term, which has just over two months left on the clock, though it seems likely they would be appointed simultaneously also to serve a full term of their own.

For those keeping score on this kind of thing, the ICANN board now comprises five women and fourteen men (or 10 men if you only count the voting members), with CEO/director Sally Costerton also due to be replaced by a man in December.

ICANN homes in on new gTLD application fee

ICANN has narrowed down the expected application fee for the next round of new gTLDs, and while it’s towards the lower end of previous guidelines, it’s still much higher than in 2012.

The bog-standard base application fee is now expected to be $220,000, according to a draft document circulated by ICANN.

That’s up on the $185,000 applicants paid in 2012, but it’s at the less-pricey end of the $208,000 to $293,000 range ICANN outlined at its meeting in Rwanda this June.

But the base fee is simply to get your foot in the door. It’s accompanied by an à la carte menu of additional services incurring additional fees, some of which were part of the base fee in 2012.

Because the new gTLD program is being run on a cost-recovery basis, the fee is set according to how many applications ICANN expects to receive, which is rather speculative and based largely on anecdotal evidence.

That predicted number is now 1,500, down on the 1,930 actual applications received in 2012.

The $220,000 fee is the lowest up-front fee that applicants would have to pay, and does not include extra payments they would have to make in the event of contention, additional evaluations or objections.

There are 10 different additional fees that could be incurred by applicants, including one that’s new to me — an “Occupancy fee” which the document says is “for lingering applications”.

I can’t help but think that this is an attempt to avoid a repeat of Nameshop, which applied for the banned string .idn in 2012 and continues to refuse to admit defeat, withdraw its application, and get its refund.

The new ICANN document notes that this proposed squatters’ rent is still open to discussion, but other fees, while not given a price tag yet, appear more likely to become a reality.

It seems dot-brand applicants will have to pay extra fees for their Spec9 and Spec13 exemptions, which allow them to work outside the usual registrar channel and allocate names only to themselves.

Applicants for community gTLDs and geographic strings would also pay extra fees.

There’s also the chance that the base fee could go up before the application window opens, depending on the outcome of some still-unconfirmed parts of the application process, such as the mechanism to address name collision risk. This alone could add thousands to each applicant’s bill.

The good news is that if the next round is significantly over-subscribed and ICANN makes back the $70 million it reckons the program cost, it plans to offer rebates to applicants dependent on how much extra cash it has received.

The draft document also includes estimates for the cost of the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program, which enables RSPs to get the ICANN seal of approval before pitching their services to new gTLD applicants.

Also priced on a cost-recovery basis, this program is still expected to cost a maximum of $92,000 per RSP, with the costs potentially falling if more than 50 RSPs apply to be accredited.

ICANN has a pretty good idea that the roughly 45 companies currently providing back-end registry services for gTLDs will probably use the RSP program. If a large number of startups or ccTLD registries want to get involved too, that would bring the price down.

Uzbekistan gets its first ICANN registrar

A registrar in Uzbekistan has become the first in the country to receive its official ICANN accreditation, according to the latest records.

Tashkent-based Suvan.net, which does business as @host.uz (ahost.uz), currently specializes in the local .uz ccTLD, where it appears to be the leading registrar by some margin.

The company already sells gTLD domains too, albeit as a reseller. It claims to have over 30,000 customers.