Verisign reveals “dark” .com domains

Verisign has started publishing the daily count of .com and .net domain names that are registered but do not work.
On a new page on its site, the company is promising to break out how many domains are registered but do not currently show up in the zone files for its two main gTLDs.
These are sometimes referred to as “dark” domains.
As of yesterday, the number of registered and active .com domains stands at 103,960,994, and there are 145,980 more (about 0.14% of the total) that are registered but do not currently have DNS.
For .net, the numbers stand at 14,750,674 and 32,440 (0.22%).
Verisign CEO Jim Bidzos told analysts last night that the data is being released to “increase transparency” into the company’s performance.
Many tools available for tracking registration numbers in TLDs are skewed slightly by the fact that they rely on publicly available zone file data, which does not count dark domains.
Registry reports containing more accurate data are released monthly by ICANN, but they’re always three months old.

Verisign selected for 220 new gTLDs

Verisign is the appointed back-end registry operator for 220 new generic top-level domain applications, according to the company.
Verisign itself has applied to ICANN for 14 new gTLDs, 12 of which are transliterations — ie, internationalized domain names — of .com and .net.
During its first-quarter 2012 earnings conference call, ongoing right now, CEO Jim Bidzos disclosed the numbers, saying:

VeriSign applied directly for 14 new gTLDs. Twelve of these 14 are transliterations of .com and .net. Also, applicants for approximately 220 new gTLDs selected Verisign to provide back-end registry services.

Many of these are dot-brands, Bidzos said.
Neustar, which also reported earnings yesterday, did not disclose how many applications it is involved in, other than to say that it has not applied for any as a front-end operator.

Thick .com Whois policy delayed

ICANN’s GNSO Council has deferred a decision on whether Verisign should have to thicken up the Whois database for .com and its other gTLDs.
A motion to begin an official Policy Development Process on thick Whois was kicked down the road by councilors this afternoon at the request of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency.
It will now be discussed at the Council’s face-to-face meeting in Costa Rica in March. But there were also calls from registries to delay a decision for up to a year, calling the PDP a “distraction”.
Verisign’s .com registry contract and the standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement are currently being renegotiated by ICANN, both of which could address Whois in some way.
Today, all contracted gTLD registries have to operate a thick Whois, except Verisign with its .com, .net, .jobs, etc, where the registrars manage the bulk of the Whois data.

Fight brewing over thick .com Whois

This year is likely to see a new fight over whether Verisign should be forced to create a “thick” Whois database for .com and its other generic top-level domains.
While Verisign has taken a deliberately ambivalent position on whether ICANN policy talks should kick off, the community is otherwise split on whether a mandatory thick Whois is a good idea.
Currently, only .com, .net, .name and .jobs – which are all managed on Verisign’s registry back-end – use a thin Whois model, in which domain name registrars store their customers’ data.
Other gTLDs all store registrant data centrally. Some “sponsored” gTLD registries have an even closer relationship with Whois data — ICM Registry for example verifies .xxx registrants’ identities.
But in a Preliminary Issue Report published in November, ICANN asked whether it should kick off a formal Policy Development Process that could make thick Whois a requirement in all gTLDs.
In comments filed with ICANN last week, Verisign said:

As the only existing registry services provider impacted by any future PDP on Thick Whois, Verisign will neither advocate for nor against the initiation of a PDP.
…
Verisign believes the current Whois model for .com, .net, .name and .jobs is effective and that the proper repository of registrant data is with registrars — the entities with direct connection to their customers. However, if the community, including our customers, determines through a PDP that “going thick” is now the best approach, we will respect and implement the policy decision.

Thick Whois services make it easier to find out who owns domain names. Currently, a Whois look-up for a .com domain can require multiple queries at different web sites.
While Whois aggregation services such as DomainTools can simplify searches today, they still face the risk of being blocked by dominant registrars.
The thin Whois model can also make domain transfers trickier, as we witnessed just last week when NameCheap ran into problems processing inbound transfers from Go Daddy.
ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency supports the transition to a thick Whois. It said in its comments:

Simplifying access to this information through thick Whois will help prevent abuses of intellectual property, and will protect the public in many ways, including by reducing the level of consumer confusion and consumer fraud in the Internet marketplace. Thick Whois enables quicker response and resolution when domain names are used for illegal, fraudulent or malicious purposes.

However, Verisign noted that a thicker Whois does not mean a more accurate Whois database – registrars will still be responsible for collecting and filing customer contact records.
There are also concerns that a thick Whois could have implications for registrant privacy. Wendy Seltzer of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency told ICANN:

Moving all data to the registry could facilitate invasion of privacy and decrease the jurisdictional control registrants have through their choice of registrar. Individual registrants in particular may be concerned that the aggregation of data in a thick WHOIS makes it more attractive to data miners and harder to confirm compliance with their local privacy laws.

This concern was echoed to an extent by Verisign, which noted that transitioning to a thick Whois would mean the transfer of large amounts of data between legal jurisdictions.
European registrars, for example, could face a problem under EU data protection laws if they transfer their customer data in bulk to US-based Verisign.
Verisign also noted that a transition to a thick Whois would dilute the longstanding notion that registrars “own” their customer relationships. It said in its comments:

As recently as the June 2011 ICANN meeting in Singapore, Verisign heard from several registrars that they are still not comfortable with Verisign holding their customers’ data. Other registrars have noted no concern with such a transition

ICANN staff will now incorporate these and other comments into its final Issue Report, which will then be sent to the GNSO Council to decide whether a PDP is required.
If the Council votes in favor of a PDP, it would be many months, if at all, before a policy binding on Verisign was created.

VeriSign yanks domain seizure power request

That was quick.
VeriSign has withdrawn its request for new powers to delete domain names being used for abusive purposes, just a few days after filing it with ICANN.
The company had proposed a policy that would give law enforcement the ability to seize .com and .net names apparently without a court order, and a new malware scanning service.
The former came in for immediate criticism from groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, while the latter appeared to have unnerved some registrars.
But now both proposals have been yanked from ICANN’s Registry Services Evaluation Process queue.
This is not without precedent. Last year, VeriSign filed for and then withdrew requests to auction off one-letter .net names and a “Domain Name Exchange” service that looked a bit like domain tasting.
Both came in for criticism, and have not reappeared.
Whether the latest abuse proposals will make a reappearance after VeriSign has had time to work out some of the more controversial kinks remains to be seen.

Should .com get a thick Whois?

The ICANN community has taken another baby step towards pushing VeriSign into implementing a “thick” Whois database for .com and .net domain names.
The GNSO Council yesterday voted to ask ICANN to prepare an Issue Report exploring whether to require “all incumbent gTLDs” to operate a thick Whois. Basically, that means VeriSign.
The .com and .net registries currently run on a “thin” model, whereby each accredited registrar manages their own Whois databases.
Most other gTLDs today run thick registries, as will all registries approved by ICANN under its forthcoming new gTLDs program.
The thinness of .com can cause problems during inter-registrar transfers, when gaining and losing registrars have no central authoritative database of registrant contact details to rely upon.
In fact, yesterday’s GNSO vote followed the recommendations of a working group that decided after much deliberation that a thick .com registry may help reduce bogus or contested transfers.
Trusting registrars to manage their own Whois is also a frequent source of frustration for law enforcement, trademark interests and anti-spam firms.
Failure to maintain a functional web-based or port 43 Whois interface is an often-cited problem when ICANN’s compliance department terminates rogue registrars.
Now that an Issue Report has been requested by the GNSO, the idea of a thick .com moves closer to a possible Policy Development Process, which in turn can create binding ICANN consensus policies.
There’s already a clause in VeriSign’s .com registry agreement that gives ICANN the right to demand that it creates a centralized Whois database.
Switching to a thick model would presumably not only transfer responsibility to VeriSign, but also cost and liability, which is presumably why the company seems to be resisting the move.
Don’t expect the changes to come any time soon.
Writing the Issue Report is not expected to be a priority for ICANN staff, due to their ongoing chronic resource problems, and any subsequent PDP could take years.
The alternative – for ICANN and VeriSign to come to a bilateral agreement when the .com contract comes up for renewal next year – seems unlikely given that ICANN did not make a similar requirement when .net was renegotiated earlier this year.

VeriSign to raise .com and .net prices again

VeriSign has announced price increases for .com and .net domain name registrations.
From January 15, 2012, .com registry prices will increase from $7.34 to $7.85 and .net fees will go up from $4.65 to $5.11.
That’s a 10% increase for .net and a 7% increase for .com, the maximum allowable under its registry agreements with ICANN.
As ever, registrants have six months to lock down their domains at current pricing by renewing for periods of up to 10 years.
The last time VeriSign raised prices, also by 7% and 10%, the higher prices became effective a year ago, July 2010.
VeriSign’s contract for .net was renewed last month after it was approved by the ICANN board of directors.
Its .com contract comes up for renewal next year.

VeriSign’s .net contract renewed

VeriSign has been given the nod to continue to run the .net domain registry after a vote by ICANN’s board of directors today.
The vote was 14-0, with director Bertrand De La Chappelle abstaining without explanation.
The renewal is hardly surprising – nobody thought for a second that VeriSign would fail to retain the contract – but the deal was controversial anyway, due to a Boing-Boing misunderstanding.
The contract still allows VeriSign to carry on raising prices, by up to 10% in any given year, and it still calls for ICANN to receive $0.75 per domain, which currently adds up to over $10 million a year.
The money is still ostensibly earmarked for special projects including extending ICANN’s outreach into developing nations and DNS security, and the resolution passed by the board today says:

ICANN commits to provide annual reporting on the use of these funds from .NET transaction fees.

This is presumably designed to address criticisms that it basically ignored its commitment under the 2006 .net agreement to set up two “special restricted funds” to manage .net cash, as I reported on here.

Hot topics for ICANN Singapore

ICANN’s 41st public meeting kicks off in Singapore on Monday, and as usual there are a whole array of controversial topics set to be debated.
As is becoming customary, the US government has filed its eleventh-hour saber-rattling surprises, undermining ICANN’s authority before its delegates’ feet have even touched the tarmac.
Here’s a high-level overview of what’s going down.
The new gTLD program
ICANN and the Governmental Advisory Committee are meeting on Sunday to see if they can reach some kind of agreement on the stickiest parts of the Applicant Guidebook.
They will fail to do so, and ICANN’s board will be forced into discussing an unfinished Guidebook, which does not have full GAC backing, during its Monday-morning special meeting.
It’s Peter Dengate Thrush’s final meeting as chairman, and many observers believe he will push through some kind of new gTLDs resolution to act as his “legacy”, as well as to fulfill the promise he made in San Francisco of a big party in Singapore.
My guess is that the resolution will approve the program in general, lay down some kind of timetable for its launch, and acknowledge that the Guidebook needs more work before it is rubber-stamped.
I think it’s likely that the days of seemingly endless cycles of redrafting and comment are over for good, however, which will come as a relief to many.
Developing nations
A big sticking point for the GAC is the price that new gTLD applicants from developing nations will have to pay – it wants eligible, needy applicants to get a 76% discount, from $185,000 to $44,000.
The GAC has called this issue something that needs sorting out “as a matter of urgency”, but ICANN’s policy is currently a flimsy draft in desperate need of work.
The so-called JAS working group, tasked with creating the policy, currently wants governmental entities excluded from the support program, which has made the GAC, predictably, unhappy.
The JAS has proven controversial in other quarters too, particularly the GNSO Council.
Most recently, ICANN director Katim Touray, who’s from Gambia, said the Council had been “rather slow” to approve the JAS’s latest milestone report, which, he said:

might well be construed by many as an effort by the GNSO to scuttle the entire process of seeking ways and means to provide support to needy new gTLD applicants

This irked Council chair Stephane Van Gelder, who rattled off a response pointing out that the GNSO had painstakingly followed its procedures as required under the ICANN bylaws.
Watch out for friction there.
Simply, there’s no way this matter can be put to bed in Singapore, but it will be the topic of intense discussions because the new gTLD program cannot sensibly launch without it.
The IANA contract
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration wants to beef up the IANA contract to make ICANN more accountable to the NTIA and, implicitly, the GAC.
Basically, IANA is being leveraged as a way to make sure that .porn and .gay (and any other TLD not acceptable to the world’s most miserable regimes) never make it onto the internet.
If at least one person does not stand up during the public forum on Thursday to complain that ICANN is nothing more than a lackey of the United States, I’d be surprised. My money’s on Khaled Fattal.
Vertical integration
The eleventh hour surprise I referred to earlier.
The US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, informed ICANN this week that its plan to allow gTLD registries such as VeriSign, Neustar and Afilias to own affiliated registrars was “misguided”.
I found the letter (pdf) utterly baffling. It seems to say that the DoJ would not be able to advise ICANN on competition matters, despite the fact that the letter itself contains a whole bunch of such advice.
The letter has basically scuppered VeriSign’s chances of ever buying a registrar, but I don’t think anybody thought that would happen anyway.
Neustar is likely to be the most publicly annoyed by this, given how vocally it has pursued its vertical integration plans, but I expect Afilias and others will be bugged by this development too.
The DoJ’s position is likely to be backed up by Europe, now that the NTIA’s Larry Strickling and European Commissioner Neelie Kroes are BFFs.
Cybercrime
Cybercrime is huge at the moment, what with governments arming themselves with legions of hackers and groups such as LulzSec and Anonymous knocking down sites like dominoes.
The DNS abuse forum during ICANN meetings, slated for Monday, is usually populated by pissed-off cops demanding stricter enforcement of Whois accuracy.
They’ve been getting louder during recent meetings, a trend I expect to continue until somebody listens.
This is known as “engaging”.
Geek stuff
IPv6, DNSSEC and Internationalized Domain Names, in other words. There are sessions on all three of these important topics, but they rarely gather much attention from the policy wonks.
With IPv6 and DNSSEC, we’re basically looking at problems of adoption. With IDNs, there’s impenetrably technical stuff to discuss relating to code tables and variant strings.
The DNSSEC session is usually worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing.
The board meeting
Unusually, the board’s discussion of the Guidebook has been bounced to Monday, leading to a Friday board meeting with not very much to excite.
VeriSign will get its .net contract renewed, no doubt.
The report from the GAC-board joint working group, which may reveal how the two can work together less painfully in future, also could be interesting.
Anyway…
Enough of this blather, I’ve got a plane to catch.

What happened to ICANN’s .net millions?

Questions have been raised about how ICANN accounts for the millions of dollars it receives in fees from .net domain name registrations.
The current .net registry agreement between ICANN and VeriSign was signed in June 2005. It’s currently up for renewal.
Both the 2005 and 2011 versions of the deal call for VeriSign to pay ICANN $0.75 for every .net registration, renewal and transfer.
Unlike .com and other TLDs, the .net contract specifies three special uses for these fees (with my emphasis):

ICANN intends to apply this fee to purposes including:
(a) a special restricted fund for developing country Internet communities to enable further participation in the ICANN mission by developing country stakeholders,
(b) a special restricted fund to enhance and facilitate the security and stability of the DNS, and
(c) general operating funds to support ICANN’s mission to ensure the stable and secure operation of the DNS.

However, almost six years after the agreement was executed, it seems that these two “special restricted funds” have never actually been created.
ICANN’s senior vice president of stakeholder relations Kurt Pritz said:

To set up distinctive organizations or accounting schemes to track this would have been expensive, complex and would have served no real value. Rather — it was intended that the ICANN budget always include spending on these important areas — which it clearly does.

He said that ICANN has spent money on, for example, its Fellowships Program, which pays to fly in delegates from developing nations to its thrice-yearly policy meetings.
He added that ICANN has also paid out for security-related projects such as “signing the root zone and implementing DNSSEC, participating in cross-industry security exercises, growing the SSR organization, conducting studies for new gTLDs”.
These initiatives combined tally up to an expenditure “in excess of the amounts received” from .net, he said.
It seems that while ICANN has in fact been spending plenty of cash on the projects called for by these “special restricted funds”, the money has not been accounted for in that way.
Interestingly, when the .net contract was signed in 2005, ICANN seemed to anticipate that the developing world fund would not be used to pay for internal ICANN activities.
ICANN’s 2005-2006 budget, which was approved a month after the .net deal, reads, with my emphasis:

A portion of the fees paid by the operator of the .NET registry will become part of a special restricted fund for developing country Internet communities to enable further participation in the ICANN mission by developing country stakeholders. These monies are intended to fund outside entities as opposed to ICANN staff efforts.

That budget allocated $1.1 million to this “Developing Country Internet Community Project”, but the line item had disappeared by time the following year’s budget was prepared.
Phil Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association estimates that the $0.75 fees added up to $6.8 million in 2010 alone, and he’s wondering how the money was spent.
“We believe that ICANN should disclose to the community through a transparent accounting exactly how these restricted funds have actually been utilized in the past several years,” Corwin wrote.
He points out that the contract seems to clearly separate the two special projects from “general operating funds”, which strongly suggests they would be accounted for separately.
Given that .net fees have been lumped in with general working capital for the last six years, it seems strange that the current proposed .net registry agreement still calls for the two special restricted funds.
The oddity has come to the attention of the ICA and others recently because the new proposed .net contract would allow VeriSign for the first time to offer differential pricing to registrars in the developing world.
The agreement allows VeriSign to “provide training, technical support, marketing or incentive programs based on the unique needs of registrars located in such geographies to such registrars”, and specifically waives pricing controls for such programs.
It seems probable that this amendment was made possible due to the .net contract’s existing references to developing world projects.
Corwin said ICA has nothing against such programs, but is wary that existing .net registrants may wind up subsidizing registrants in the developing world.