ICANN comes in for a lot of criticism. That's because people care very deeply about it. The multi-stakeholder model, of which ICANN is the exemplar, is such a radical and revolutionary departure from how global affairs have been managed in the past that many of us are constantly on guard lest ICANN degrade into the command-and-control structure that characterizes other global regulatory bodies. At ICANN, it's the volunteers, those who care (as well as, yes, those who are paid to pretend to care) who set policy more
As the launch of the first of the new gTLDs draws ever closer, more and more applicants are beginning to publicise their business models and ideas for putting the Domain Name System (DNS) to good use. By doing so, they are also shedding light on what promises to be a far less uniform Top Level for the Internet than might have previously been feared. A schism is appearing in the type of applicant/TLD model being enacted. Up until now, Donuts, Google et al have tended to hold the spotlight, and for good reason. more
After three days of intensive discussion the UNCSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC) ended its second meeting last week in Geneva. It discussed the results of a questionnaire, which was send out after the 1st meeting of the WGEC (May 2013) and agreed on procedures how to move forward. The WGEC has to report to the forthcoming UNCSTD meeting in May 2014 in Geneva. more
If a hired philosopher graced ICANN, the work would get down to brass tacks. "What is it?", she would ask, that drives ICANN beyond the mysterious dot that apparently represents the root. One can picture subsequent appeals from senior management to its navels, for clues as to what in the end game the root truly represents. I surmise that contemplating bred-in-the-bone values does not resonate easily or often at ICANN. Its like that unreachable itch that evades our scratch; we can't get at the source. more
Hot on the heels of other ICANN Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Top-Level Domain (TLD) launch errors, we now have another example of ICANN's failure to comprehend the differences between IDN and ASCII names, this time to the detriment of potential IDN registrants and the new IDN generic TLD (gTLD) Registries. This gaff really makes you wonder whether the SSAC and Multilinguism departments at ICANN have ever met. more
The first Sunrise Period for trademark owners under ICANN's new gTLD program has begun. The gTLD is the Arabic IDN '????, or "dot-Shabaka". The term roughly means "web" in Arabic and eligibility for registrations is unrestricted. The Dot-Shabaka Registry has made it clear for months that they wanted to be the first TLD to launch this year. more
In the midst of the overseeing the biggest change in the history of the Internet's global addressing system, ICANN President Fadi Chehade has inexplicably embarked on a high-stakes battle over the very future of his organization and its relationship to world governments -- at the expense of the private sector's historical role in Internet governance. Worse, Fadi's global government gambit could have serious repercussions for the future of the Internet. more
Word to the wise: Fadi Chehadé's ICANN isn't going to take criticism lying down! In the past, the organisation has tended to react to criticism with a silence that was probably considered a way to avoid aggravating critics any further, but instead tended to infuriate people that were expecting answers. No longer. Since Chehadé came in as CEO, they get answers! more
Many law firms and Intellectual Property departments in charge of managing brands and domain names for their customers or businesses must have had that same question: "how do I protect a brand online under the ICANN new gTLD program?" The first potential answer that is usually offered up to an enquirer is: "the Trademark Clearinghouse does that". As time goes by, and the rules under which the Trademark Clearinghouse operates are better defined and understood this answer becomes clearly fallacious. more
Milton Mueller from Internet Governance Project writes: "In Montevideo, Uruguay [last week], the Directors of all the major Internet organizations -- ICANN, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society, all five of the regional Internet address registries -- turned their back on the US government. With striking unanimity, the organizations that actually develop and administer Internet standards and resources initiated a break with 3 decades of U.S. dominance of Internet governance..." more
DotGreen announced on Friday that it has withdrawn its application for .green from ICANN's new gTLD program. We were surprised to hear the news, particularly after all of the effort that DotGreen has put into building a community and a movement around its application. While we at Innovative Auctions agree with Annalisa that the ICANN Last Resort auction would have been a poor choice for the DotGreen Community, we believe that the Applicant Auction is a great tool for single-string applicants who want to see their TLD used for a community purpose. more
In a very casual and low-key footnote over the weekend, ICANN announced it would be further bypassing the Affirmation of Commitments and ignoring the WHOIS Review Team Report. There will be no enhanced validation or verification of WHOIS because unidentified people citing unknown statistics have said it would be too expensive... As a topic which has burned untold hours of community debate and development, the vague minimalist statement dismisses every ounce of work put in by stakeholders. more
In spite of the material we were presented with in Durban something has gone very wrong inside of ICANN Compliance. KnujOn has published a report which demonstrates that ICANN Compliance appears to completely collapse between September 2012 and December 2012. Following December 2012, ICANN seems to stop responding to or processing any complaints. It is around this time certain compliance employees start disappearing. This was not limited to the Sydney office as some would have us believe... more
ICANN has opened the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Whois study on privacy/proxy abuse for public comment. Performed by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), this study is one of many commissioned by the GNSO to examine the current, disparate, and often maligned registration directory service, and aims to measure the hypothesis that "a significant percentage of the domain names used to conduct illegal or harmful Internet activities are registered via privacy and proxy services to obscure the perpetrator's identity." more
In a story ran by the New York Times over the weekend, the viability of introducing hundreds of new top-level domains in the market has been criticized by individuals including Esther Dyson, a technology investor who served as the founding chairwoman of ICANN. Dyson likens ICANN's plan for the introduction of new gTLDs to creating derivative-like businesses on Wall Street that have no value. "You can charge people for it, but you are contributing nothing to the happiness of humanity." more
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