ICANN

It’s Time to Put a Bow on the URS: Our Work is Almost Done

For years our community has struggled with the rules of the URS - the Uniform Rapid Suspension - aimed at taking down the "worst of the worst" domain name registrations in a manner faster and cheaper than its predecessor, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy - the UDRP. On June 27, in Prague, a diverse group met to discuss the fate of the URS. To my surprise, it was a rare "kumbaya" moment, and that makes it worthy of comment. more

Rewiring Internet Governance: Choice and Control (Part 2)

It is tempting to write off ICANN as a U.S. foreign policy lackey and that's all there is to say about ICANN. However, if the mantra for rewiring governance means "lets get ICANN" we risk missing forest for trees. ICANN is merely the symptom of a dysfunctional governance predicament that somehow (despite best efforts) skews oversight. Shapiro, for example, regards oversight as a "game" (1994). His "delegation dilemma" or "agency problem" stems from two options, neither of which are attractive vis-á-vis governance. more

Domain Registrar Hide and Seek

In the past year ICANN has been putting a lot more effort into its compliance activities, which is a good thing, since the previous level was, ah, exiguous. That's the good news. The bad news is that while they're paying more attention to misbehaving registrants, the registrars, gatekeepers to the world of domains, have serious issues that ICANN has yet to address. more

Data, DNS Abuse and What to Do Next

To the annoyance of some, surely, the issue of abuse in the domain name system (DNS) has been high on the list of critical issues in internet governance circles. Personally, in my more than 20 years of internet governance experience, tackling DNS abuse is one of the more important issues I've participated in and seen debated. Despite this intense scrutiny, common-sense solutions (such as contract improvements) have been so far elusive, even as they fall squarely within its ICANN's remit. more

Online Critics and Unlawful Harassment from Trademark Holders

The following is based on my experience and interpretation of the UDRP and the relevant laws of the United Kingdom and European Union. This is not legal advice but just my own experience and interpretation. How does a UK citizen create a non-commercial trademark.tld parody criticism website and avoid harassment from the trademark holder? Here are the steps... more

American University Washington College of Law to Hold Open Discussion on the .ORG Sale Controversy

The American University Washington College of Law announced it will be hosting a fireside chat on the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to the private equity firm Ethos Capital. more

ICANN’s San Francisco Meeting

I was sitting around on a Sunday afternoon catching up with a backlog of work watching the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants in an unbelievable comeback, when I visited the ICANN website and noticed the new logo for the upcoming 40th ICANN regional. ...I personally thought the original choice of the San Francisco logo looked confusingly similar to Cisco's registered trademark. more

ICANN Board Selects 2014 Nominating Committee Leadership Team

The ICANN Board has just announced its selections for the next Nominating Committee's leadership. As a reminder, the Nominating Committee (NomCom) is designed to ensure skilled individuals go into key ICANN leadership position. Every year, its recruitment and selection process leads to appointments for positions on the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organisation - ICANN's policy-making body for generic domains), the ccNSO (country code Names Supporting Organisation) and ALAC (At Large Advisory Committee). more

Innovation, Launches and Email: New gTLDs Deliver in Q3 2020

As the third quarter of 2020 winds down, the domain industry continues to show development and progression amid uncertain global economic conditions. From improvements in products and additional TLD launches to growth in .brand email usage and upcoming virtual meetings, the Q3 2020: New gTLD Quarterly Report from our MarkMonitor team has a little something for everyone. more

Name Collision: Why ICANN Is Looking at It the Wrong Way (Part 1)

ICANN has, once again opened up a veritable can of worms, with their latest decision on the 'horrors' of Name Collision. While we are sure that ICANN and the Interisle Consulting Group have very good reason to make the decision that they have - delaying the delegation of several TLDs - we believe that the findings contained in Interisle's report do not give sufficient cause to delay the new gTLD program in the manner proposed by ICANN staff. more

Last Minute Tips for a Solid gTLD Application

With the new top-level domain (gTLD) application process down to the last two months, here are three last minute tips on how to submit a successful gTLD application to ICANN... Sometimes the most obvious information is also the most important. In ICANN's supplemental notes under the "Best Practices" section, the first best practice ends with the parenthetical statement (i.e., show your work). For an applicant, these may be the three most important words in all the ICANN guidance. more

Can Plural and Singular New gTLDs Both Be Successful?

Now that ICANN has stuck to its guns and only placed 4 new gTLD's strings that look confusingly similar into contention sets, rather than those that sound identical, such as .inc and .ink or those that have the same meaning like .Law and .Lawyer or those that are singular and plurals of the same word, like .deal and .deals, we now that many new gTLD's are going to have a very a tough marketing road and face a lot of consumer confusion. more

A Visualized gTLd Sequencing Proposal

As a follow-up to our previous CircleID article "Strong Support for IDNs, GEOs and/or Communities to Go First" we have developed a flow chart which visualizes how the applications may be processed in a fair and transparent manner. The chart also shows that at the end of the day only about 1,200 new gTLDs may go online, that means that we will likely see about 730 drop outs. more

ICANN Publishes Its Annual Report and Reports $100 Million in Assets

ICANN just published its annual report for 2011 and god bless, in the worst economy of our lifetimes they managed to get up to just short of $100 Million in assets; cash, investments and accounts receivable for the year ending June 30, 2011. According to the report as of June 30, 2011, ICANN has over $29 Million in Cash, $51 Million in investments and over $15 Million in accounts receivable, and with some other assets all totalled, just short of $100 Million dollars. more

Commerce Department: Headed Toward ICANN 3.0?

The NTIA has published a Notice of Inquiry, Assessment of the Transition of the Technical Coordination and Management of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System, in advance of the expiration of the Joint Project Agreement in September 2009. The document outlines the history and evolution of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Department of Commerce (DoC) and ICANN, and the questions posed cover fairly standard territory. However, the following might be worth paying attention to... more