Verisign will kill off 37 Kevins (and 22,000 others), complaint claims

Verisign’s plans to shut down a bunch of legacy services in the .name gTLD has been challenged by a registrant who believes he will lose his domains and email addresses if the registry goes ahead.

Doytchin Spiridonov, who works for Bulgarian registrar Dom.bg, has filed a Request for Reconsideration with ICANN, asking it to reverse its approval of Verisign’s Registry Service Evaluation Process requests that would enable it to turn off services that have been running for over 20 years.

As I reported in May, Verisign wants to stop selling third-level domains and related email services in .name, bringing the zone into line with virtually ever other gTLD, and delete existing names and emails in the process.

Spiridonov, who owns at least three third-level names, did the legwork on the .name zone file and discovered 22,288 domains would be affected. That includes 37 of my fellow Kevins!

His RfR (pdf) makes the case that ICANN’s approval of Verisign’s request was pretty opaque, involving private meetings between company and Org over several months.

“The approvals may adversely affect my ability to continue holding these registrations, may require migration to alternative services, may result in financial loss associated with prepaid registration periods, and may cause operational disruption and loss of continuity of internet identity associated with the affected registrations,” he wrote.

He further claims that Verisign misrepresented the impact of the changes in its RSEP, in which it stated that “There will not be any effect on the life cycle of domain names”.

Spiridonov says that the deletion of 22,000 domains makes this claim plainly untrue.

His RfR will be handled by ICANN’s board of directors.

ICANN to review reviews after review review request fails

An effort by ICANN’s At-Large community to force the Org to stick to its bylaws commitments to periodically review its accountability and transparency has failed after nobody else supported it.

As I reported last month, ALAC petitioned its Empowered Community co-members to get ICANN to overturn its decision to delay Accountability and Transparency Review Team 4, which is already more than a year late.

The other EC members — Government Advisory Committee, the Address Supporting Organization, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization and the Generic Names Supporting Organization — had until July 10 to file their letters of support or objection.

But it received no support and the ccNSO actively objected. The threshold for the petition to go ahead was three votes in favor and no more than one vote against.

The ccNSO pointed out that the current cycle of constantly reviewing itself is broken and getting worse over time. It instead called for a fundamental change in how ICANN reviews itself:

We strongly believe that breaking this vicious cycle can only be achieved if the community pauses and critically assesses the current review system. Specifically, the community should evaluate the breadth and number of reviews by looking at purpose, scope, frequency and associated workload of all ICANN Bylaw mandated reviews (a review of reviews), before embarking again on an Accountability and Transparency Review, or any other Bylaw mandated review.

The GNSO Council had a motion on its table last week that would have expressed non-support for the ALAC’s petition, but a vote was deferred until August, by which point it will be moot anyway.

The ASO and GAC do not appear to have publicly expressed an opinion.

It was the first time any community group has attempted to get the Empowered Community to flex its powers over ICANN. Since Org’s split from the US government nine years ago, the EC has been essentially ICANN’s sovereign body.

The petition being thrown out enables either, depending on your point of view: a) a horrifying, bylaws-defying power grab by Org that threatens transparency and accountability or b) a common-sense step away from an interminable, soul-crushing, resource-sapping cycle of endless navel-gazing.

What it means is that ICANN is going to conduct a meta-review, reviewing how it conducts reviews, and then will fiddle with its bylaws to implement a new renew regime.

Facebook cybersquatter asks ICANN to overturn UDRP ruling

A registrant who lost a slam-dunk cybersquatting complaint to Facebook owner Meta has asked ICANN to overturn the ruling, accusing WIPO of of breaching the UDRP rules by not publishing its decision fast enough.

The registrant apparently registered meta-platforms-inc.com earlier this year out of “frustration”, and in a state of some distress, after her social media accounts were closed by Meta. Meta’s full name is Meta Platforms Inc.

The registrant then asked Meta, when contacted by its lawyers, for financial compensation in exchange for the domain, according to WIPO’s findings (pdf).

It’s pretty much a clear-cut case of cybersquatting under the UDRP, and Meta prevailed. The domain was transferred to its ownership.

But the registrant has now complained to ICANN, using its Request for Reconsideration accountability procedure, saying WIPO broke its rules and behaved “fraudulently”.

The RfR is somewhat confusingly written, but the main thrust appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the UDRP rules, which require panels to submit their rulings to WIPO within 14 days of the complaint being submitted.

The registrant takes this to mean that the decisions also need to be published online within 14 days, which doesn’t appear to be the case. She wants the decision overturned on this basis.

Regardless of the merits, the RfR has zero chance of success. UDRP losers have tried and failed to invoke the Reconsideration policy to have their decisions reversed in the past.

Most notably, in 2022 Indian Covid-19 vaccine maker Zydus Lifesciences got miffed about the Reverse Domain Name Hijacking ruling it was given and filed two RfRs with ICANN.

The first was dismissed because RfR is used to challenge ICANN’s decisions and WIPO is not ICANN. In the second case, the Ombuds made a rare intervention to confirm that ICANN has no responsibility for UDRP rulings.

Some Guy wants to take over .com and .net

Some Guy has noticed that domain name prices keep going up and has offered to take over the .com and .net registries from Verisign.

The Some Guy recently filed a formal Request for Reconsideration with ICANN, asking it to overturn its recent decision to renew Verisign’s .com contract and award it to him instead. The RfR reads:

I seek to become a registry operator committed to making .COM domains more affordable and accessible to students, startups, and developers. The decision to renew Verisign’s contract hinders competition, limiting opportunities for more innovative registry operators like Asxit LLC to contribute to the digital ecosystem.

The request is accompanied by a 25-page, ChatGPT-odored analysis of why Asxit LLC would be a better .com registry than Verisign, which concludes:

The introduction of Asxit LLC as a .COM registry operator would bring significant improvements in pricing, innovation, support, and accessibility compared to Verisign’s current management. By focusing on affordable and flexible solutions, Asxit LLC aims to create a more inclusive and competitive environment for all users. This change would enhance the value of the .COM domain and support the growth of a diverse and innovative digital community.

In August, Some Guy with the same last name, who said he is a student at Liberty University in Virginia, said Asxit LLC should take over .net as well.

They’re not the funniest or craziest submissions ICANN has received over the years, but they might be worth a chuckle if you’re clock-watching on a Friday afternoon.

The sad part is of course that ICANN is now duty-bound to commit legal and board resources preparing a response to this request before throwing it out entirely.

You can’t appeal a UDRP appeal, ICANN Ombudsman says

ICANN’s independent Ombudsman has called an Indian vaccine maker’s second Request for Reconsideration over a failed UDRP case a “misuse” of the Org’s appeals process.

Zydus Lifesciences lost its UDRP over the domain zydus.com earlier this year, with a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking, then used the RfR process to try to get ICANN’s board of directors to overturn the WIPO decision.

The Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee dismissed the complaint because Reconsideration is designed for challenging ICANN’s actions and WIPO is not ICANN.

Zydus immediately filed a second RfR, calling WIPO “an extension of ICANN itself” and that BAMC’s inaction on the first RfR meant the case was now subject to the board’s jurisdiction.

In a rare intervention, Ombudsman Herb Waye poo-poos that notion, writing: “Decisions by the WIPO Panel in a domain name dispute are not sufficient basis for an RfR (hence the BAMC had no ‘jurisdiction’ other than the jurisdiction necessary to dismiss the Request).”

I feel that [the second RfR] has placed the BAMC in the awkward position of policing itself; hence perhaps, its hesitancy to summarily dismiss a Request concerning its own actions. A clear attempt by the requestor to appeal the decision in [the first RfR]. An unfortunate situation that, to me, amounts to misuse of this accountability mechanism.

He concluded that for the BAMC to consider the complaint would be a “waste of resources” and that it should be dismissed.

Zydus will still be able to appeal the UDRP in court, but that of course will be much more expensive.

ICANN throws out prostitution complaint

ICANN has rejected a complaint from a man about a web site apparently offering prostitution services.

As I reported last month, the American had filed a Request for Reconsideration with ICANN’s board of directors after his complaints to Compliance about Namecheap were rejected.

He’s unhappy that US-based Namecheap won’t take down the domain adultsearch.com, which operates as a marketplace for sex workers, many of whom are offering services that may well be illegal in most parts of the US.

But ICANN’s Board Governance Committee rejected the complaint (pdf) for lack of standing.

While the ruling is procedural, rather than substantive, the BGC does spend quite a lot of time tying itself in knots to show that while the complainant may well believe prostitution is harmful to society in general, he failed to state how he, specifically, had been harmed.

The decision also directly references the part of the request the requester has specifically asked to be redacted (but was not).

RDNH loser files second appeal

A big drug company has appealed to ICANN for a second time over a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking ruling against it, claiming ICANN should be responsible for the decisions of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

India-based Zydus Lifesciences, which among other things makes Covid-19 vaccines, lost a UDRP complaint against the owner of zydus.com in June. To add insult to injury, WIPO made a RDNH finding against it.

Rather that go to court, Zydus filed a Request for Reconsideration with ICANN in July, but this was summarily dismissed because the Reconsideration mechanism only applies to the actions or inactions of the ICANN board or staff.

Now Zydus has filed a second RfR, in which its lawyers claim ICANN is responsible for WIPO’s UDRP decisions and failure to address the first RfR amounts to board inaction. The latest claim states:

when a dispute resolution service provider is accredited by ICANN to conduct mandatory administrative policy, as prescribed by the UDRP adopted by ICANN, such service providers are extension of ICANN itself

Zydus claims the WIPO panel erred by relying on what it claims were false and misleading statements by the zydus.com registrant. It wants the decision reversed and the three panelists forever barred.

I doubt the RfR will get anywhere. ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee is not about to make itself the de facto court of appeals for every UDRP party who thinks they got stiffed.

Covid vaccine maker takes RDNH loss to ICANN board

An Indian pharmaceuticals firm with a $2 billion turnover has complained at the highest level of ICANN after it was handed a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking decision over the .com matching its company name.

Zydus Lifesciences, which produces mainly generic drugs but last year earned government approval to manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine, says a UDRP panel “exhibited extreme bias” when it threw out its UDRP complaint against the owner of zydus.com last month.

The company had claimed the anonymous registrant was cybersquatting, but the WIPO panel instead found RDNH.

The panel was not convinced that the registrant should have been aware of Zydus’ existence when he registered the name in 2004, and said his use of the name — which it characterized as a fanciful five-letter generic — to redirect to various affiliate marketing sites was not “bad faith”.

But now Zydus is claiming that the panel ignored evidence that it was already a very large company, with a $110 million turnover, at the time of registration, and says the UDRP decision shows evidence of bias against developing-world companies. The latter card is played pretty hard.

I believe this is only the second time that a UDRP decision has been challenged with a formal Request for Reconsideration with the ICANN board of directors, and there’s a pretty good chance it will be summarily dismissed like the first one.

Zydus will probably have to sue, or pay up.

Another new gTLD applicant lawyers up on ICANN

Another rejected new gTLD applicant has filed an Independent Review Process complaint against ICANN, claiming the org failed to follow proper procedures on fairness and transparency.

And I think it’s got a pretty good chance of winning.

A Bahrain company called GCCXI has filed the IRP, eight years after its application for .gcc was thrown out by ICANN on the vague advice of its Governmental Advisory Community.

.gcc is for Gulf Cooperation Council, the short-hand English name for the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Persian Gulf, a proto-union of six states on the east coast of the Arabian peninsula.

The applicant’s problem is that it’s not affiliated with, nor supported by, the GCC or its member states.

The GAC, in its controversial Beijing communique of April 2013 objected to GCCXI’s application in the same breath and under the same power as it objected to DotConnectAfrica’s .africa bid.

Back then, the GAC was much more secretive than it is today, and did not have to provide a rationale for its advice. Its powers to object to gTLD applications pretty much amounted to a veto.

ICANN dutifully followed the GAC’s advice, throwing out the .gcc application later that year.

The applicant has evidently been trying to get ICANN to change its mind, using the Request for Reconsideration and then Cooperative Engagement Processes, since early 2014. That CEP concluded in May, and GCCXI filed for IRP in June.

Why did the CEP — a form of arbitration designed to avoid expensive IRP complaints and lawsuits — take so long and ultimately fail?

Don’t look to the IRP complaint published by ICANN (pdf) for answers — it’s redacted the whole ruddy lot, a few pages of text, without explanation.

That’s ironic given that a lack of transparency is one of GCCXI’s beefs against the org, along with an alleged failure to follow its bylaws on neutrality and fairness.

ICANN has ignored all of its carefully developed and documented policies, and instead has kowtowed to unspecified government concerns — devising a secret process to kill Claimant’s investment and opportunity, and completely disregarding the public interest in delegating the TLD for use.

The continued fight for a gTLD it surely has no hope of ever operating is a ballsy move by the applicant.

It’s roughly equivalent to some random European company applying to run .eu to represent the geographic region of EU member states without the consent of the EU institutions themselves and then complaining when it’s told to take a walk.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it will lose the IRP. In fact, I think it has a pretty good chance of winning.

GCCXI does not deserve to prove it should be given .gcc, it only needs to show that ICANN broke its own bylaws.

DotConnectAfrica, which was rejected by the GAC and then ICANN for pretty much the same unsubstantiated reasons — the GAC “veto” — won its IRP in 2015, with the panel finding that ICANN accepted the GAC’s unexplained advice without even rudimentary due diligence, violating its commitment to fairness.

It was particularly embarrassing for the GAC, whose then-chair admitted that the committee deliberately kept its advice vague and open to interpretation

While .africa is not exactly the same as .gcc (the former is officially a geographic string, the latter is not), GCCXI had DCA had their applications rejected based on the exact same piece of GAC advice.

It’s also similar to Amazon’s IRP fight for .amazon, which it won. That bid was also kicked out as a result of ICANN’s adoption of opaque GAC advice from the Beijing communique.

You’ve got to think GCCXI has a decent shot at a victory here, though if recent IRPs and general ICANN foot-dragging on accountability are any guide we won’t know for a couple years.

ICANN throws out another challenge to the Donuts-Afilias deal

ICANN is set to reject a plea for it to reconsider its decision to allow Donuts to buy Afilias last December.

Its Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee recently threw out a Request for Reconsideration filed by Dot Hotel and Domain Venture Partners, part of a multi-pronged assault on the outcome of the .hotel gTLD contention set.

The RfR was “summarily dismissed”, an infrequently used way of disposing of such requests without considering their merits. BAMC concluded that the requestors had failed to sufficiently state how they’d been harmed by ICANN’s decision, and therefore lacked standing.

The requestors, both applicants for .hotel, had said that they were harmed by the fact that Donuts now owns two applications for .hotel — its own open, commercial one and Afilias’ successful community-based one.

It also said that ICANN’s seemingly deliberate opacity when it came to approving the deal broke its bylaws and sowed confusion and risk in the registry industry.

At some point before the December 17 board meeting that approved the acquisition, ICANN staff briefed the board on its decision to approve the deal, but no formal resolution was passed.

By exploiting this loophole, it’s not clear whether the board actually voted on the deal, and ICANN was not obliged by its bylaws to publish a rationale for the decision.

But BAMC, acting on the advice of ICANN’s lawyers, decided (pdf) that the statements of alleged harm were too vague or seemed to rely on potential future harms.

DVP and Dot Hotel are also party to a lawsuit and an Independent Review Process case against ICANN related to .hotel.

A Documentary Information Disclosure Request related to the Afilias acquisition was also thrown out in March.

BAMC’s dismissal will be rubber-stamped by ICANN’s full board at a later date.