ICANN

EPDP Team Marches Toward Major Milestone

If it feels like the work of the latest group addressing registration data within ICANN has been going on forever, try participating in it! Since the summer of 2018, the team has regularly been meeting for several hours each week, participating in numerous face-to-face meetings and exchanging thousands of emails. Last week in Los Angeles, the team got together once again to continue our Phase 2 work creating policy that will (among other issues) govern the disclosure of non-public registration data to third parties.

Call for Participation – ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN67, Cancun, Mexico

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) and the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme are planning a DNSSEC and Security Workshop during the ICANN67 meeting held from 07-12 March 2020 in Cancun, Mexico. The original DNSSEC Workshop has been a part of ICANN meetings for many years and has provided a forum for both experienced and new people to meet, present, and discuss current and future DNSSEC deployments.

What Should the ICANN Board Do About the .org Registry Sale?

Two and a half months ago, shortly after the ICANN66 meetings in Montreal, the ICANN stakeholder community was jolted by the announcement that the Internet Society (ISOC) had entered into an agreement to sell the wholly owned PIR non-profit that holds the .org registry contract. The sale was to be for $1.13B USD to the hastily assembled venture capital company Ethos Capital. The sale was presented as a done deal awaiting approval by the ICANN Board.

.Org: ICANN’s Betrayals and its Opportunity to Act Now in the Public Interest

ICANN's repeated betrayals of the public interest have created the conditions for Ethos Capital's proposed purchase of .Org. The growing outrage directed at ICANN is raising questions about ICANN's legitimacy and the wisdom of having entrusted ICANN with oversight over the domain name system ("DNS"). ICANN has shown itself to be out of touch with and unresponsive to the public interest. ICANN now has an opportunity to remember its mission...

GNSO Council: Attend the .ORG Protest!

Tomorrow EFF, NTEN, Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and other organizations will hold a rally outside of ICANN HQ from 9-11 am. You know about the rally, and you should all attend this event! Whatever your feelings about the sale of .ORG, you are leaders of the GNSO, the body that makes gTLD policy. This is a gTLD event, and registrants are trying to talk with ICANN, and they are trying to talk with YOU.

How the Sale of .ORG Could Hurt Non-Profits IRL

Private equity firm Ethos Capital's attempt to take control of .org, the Internet domain that's home to most of the world's non-profit and public-benefit organizations, has triggered an interesting crisis in Internet governance. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is the body responsible for regulating the global domain name industry. For the first time since oversight responsibility over ICANN was passed from the United States National Telecommunications and Information Administration...

Who Pays When .Org Prices Rise?

When .org prices rise, who suffers – nonprofits or speculators? Will Ethos Capital raise prices more aggressively than ISOC would? Vint Cerf attributed concerns about higher prices to speculators: "Of course, companies that hold domain names in the tens of thousands for speculative purposes might find such increases more troubling, but I don't have much sympathy for that business model in the context of the organizations the .org brand is intended to serve."

Vint Cerf’s Comments on the ISOC Sale of PIR and the .ORG Registry

Vint Cerf has posted comments in support of the pending sale of PIR and the .org registry to Ethos Capital. Vint's Comments . Vint is a respected member of the Internet community, and his comments need close attention and careful assessment. Some of his comments have been discussed here earlier. Other comments, posted here and elsewhere, have either supported the sale or raised questions.

So Many Nonprofits Have Trusted Dot Org for So Long

ICANN's Board will meet soon, perhaps even tomorrow, to discuss the dot-org domain sale. It is a pivotal inflection point in the history of Internet governance. When Internet Society (ISOC) was awarded the dot-org domain over ten other bids in 2002, evaluators voiced concerns about their ability to steward it. The report explains: Some on the Committee expressed concern, however, that ISOC's associations extend only to the networking/connectivity community and not to a broader base...

Here’s How We Can Truly #SaveDotOrg

Many of my friends in the civil-liberties and Internet-law communities have been criticizing the Internet Society's agreement to sell the Public Interest Registry, which administers the .ORG top-level domain. I'm a free-speech guy, so I support their right to raise all these criticisms. But they often ask me directly – knowing that my track record as an Internet civil-libertarian is longer than most – why as a member of the Internet Society (a.k.a. ISOC) board I decided to join the board's unanimous approval of the deal.