February 2010 Archives

The IEDR, which runs the registry for the .ie ccTLD, has announced an upcoming change to its registration processes.

As of April 8th 2010 pending updates and registrations will be valid for 27 days instead of the previous 30.

What this means for registrants is that they will have 3 days less to provide the supporting documentation for a .ie registration.

In any case the change is not that significant, as even 27 days is more than enough time for most people to organise the paperwork

The only problem at present, however, is that the Irish companies' office is, in common with most of the civil service, involved in an industrial dispute. This may lead to delays in processing new company and business regisrations.

Nominet held an EGM yesterday.

The EGM was called to make changes to Nominet's constitution.

Members voted overwhelmingly in favour of the changes, so it will be now a matter of seeing what Nominet plans to do with these new powers.

One of the areas that would be of particular to both registrars and registrants involves pricing. While the cost per annum of a co.uk domain is not at issue, the previous version of the registry's constitution meant that it could not easily introduce multi-year registrations for terms from 1 year to 10.

From a registrar perspective it would make a lot of sense to be able to offer domain name registrations for the same period across multiple TLDs ie. if a registrant wanted the .com and the co.uk then they could choose to register both domains for the same registration period.

More information on the EGM is available on the Nominet site

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Sex and the internet.
Put the two together and you are bound to find an interesting story.
While the saga surrounding sex.com took a new twist in the last couple of days, with the current owners going dotbomb, the .xxx story also took an interesting turn.

ICM Registry LLC applied to ICANN to run the .xxx TLD. You don't need to be a genius to work out which sector .xxx was aimed at - adult entertainment / mature content.

For several years ICM and ICANN tangoed.

In the end the ICANN board voted during the Lisbon meeting (March 30th 2007) against .xxx and focus shifted to other events. The Lisbon meeting was the first ICANN meeting that I attended and I remember the tension in the hotel bar on the night before the board meeting. You could have cut the air with a knife. ICM and their supporters were literally in one camp, while those in opposition were in another. Westerdal's article (linked above) covers most of the salient points in the history of the .xxx bid to that date.

However the story of .xxx did not end in Lisbon.

But ICM weren't going to simply "roll over". They'd already had one application for the .xxx TLD rejected and so they then asked for an independent review. That was back in September of last year, with parts of the process taking place earlier in the year.

The independent review involved testimony from not only ICM executives, but also former ICANN CEO Dr Paul Twomey, Dr Vint Cerf and many many others.

For those involved with the new TLD process the outcome of any review of ICM's .xxx application will be examined very closely. The new TLD application guidebook, which is still being drafted, will obviously be influenced by any previous TLD applications. Any review process that takes place outside the "normal" ICANN process could be a source of concern not only for ICANN, as an organisation, but also for organisations wishing to launch a new domain extension. If the ICANN procedures and processes can be shown to be flawed then there may be a whole range of issues for both ICANN and the applicants to deal with prior to any forward movement in the new TLDs.

So earlier this evening ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom, tweeted that the independent review had found in ICM's favour - with a vote of 2 - 1.

Shortly afterwards the actual decision was published on the ICANN website.

If you have the time you can plough through the entire document (about 80 pages), but the key "takeaway" from this is that ICANN has lost.

The ICANN board's decision has been shown to be flawed.

The panel states:

...the Panel finds ground for questioning the neutral and objective performance of the Board, and the consistency of its so doing with its obligation not to single out ICM Registry for disparate treatment

Not good. That strongly suggests that ICANN's board may have been influenced by external forces - in all likelihood the US government.

The rest of their findings are worth quoting, as they are very important and shine a spotlight on the inconsistencies:

The Panel concludes, for the reasons stated above, that:
First, the holdings of the Independent Review Panel are advisory in
nature; they do not constitute a binding arbitral award.
Second, the actions and decisions of the ICANN Board are not entitled
to deference whether by application of the "business judgment" rule or
otherwise; they are to be appraised not deferentially but objectively.
Third, the provision of Article 4 of ICANN's Articles of Incorporation
prescribing that ICANN "shall operate for the benefit of the Internet
community as a whole, carrying out its activities in conformity with relevant
principles of international law and applicable international conventions and
local law," requires ICANN to operate in conformity with relevant general
principles of law (such as good faith) as well as relevant principles of
international law, applicable international conventions, and the law of the
State of California.
Fourth, the Board of ICANN in adopting its resolutions of June 1, 2005,
found that the application of ICM Registry for the .XXX sTLD met the required
sponsorship criteria.
Fifth, the Board's reconsideration of that finding was not consistent
with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy.
Sixth, in respect of the first foregoing holding, ICANN prevails; in
respect of the second foregoing holding, ICM Registry prevails; in respect of
the third foregoing holding, ICM Registry prevails; in respect of the fourth
foregoing holding, ICM Registry prevails; and in respect of the fifth foregoing
holding, ICM Registry prevails. Accordingly, the prevailing party is ICM
Registry. It follows that, in pursuance of Article IV, Section 3(12) of the
Bylaws, ICANN shall be responsible for bearing all costs of the IRP Provider.
Each party shall bear its own attorneys' fees. Therefore, the administrative
fees and expenses of the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, totaling
$4,500.00, shall be borne entirely by ICANN, and the compensation and
expenses of the Independent Review Panel, totaling $473,744.91, shall be
borne entirely by ICANN. ICANN shall accordingly reimburse ICM Registry
with the sum of $241,372.46, representing that portion of said fees and
expenses in excess of the apportioned costs previously incurred by ICM
Registry.

 
Note the financial portion of the judgement. ICANN, which has already had a budget overrun, gets hit again, this time for nearly half a million dollars.

You can download the full text of the review panel's decision from the ICANN website, although some sections have been redacted by ICM for reasons of confidentiality.

Since this was released on a Friday night it's unlikely that there will be much public reaction from either ICANN, ICM or any others until next week, but I suspect that there will be some very interesting discussions surrounding this decision.

Amazing how a single document can rock the boat, isn't it?

UPDATE: Since this story has attracted quite a bit of attention from ICANN observers some of their comments on Twitter and elsewhere have led to extra material worth citing. Former ICANN board member Susan Crawford made a very interesting statement about the Board's vote, which is worth reading. (Thanks to Antony Van Couvering for the link)

UPDATE 2: Milton Mueller who was one of the expert witnesses during the review of .xxx has posted on the subject as well.

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ICANN has published what it is calling "Non-Lawyers' Guide to the May 2009 Registrar Accreditation Agreement"

The document attempts to explain the registrar contract with ICANN in non-legal English.

The registrar contract (RAA) is one of the more important documents when it comes to domain names, so the more people who can understand it the better

If you register domain names then this is a "must read"

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SIDN, the registry operator for .nl, has announced the introduction of a new service for its registrars. The new phishing alert service harnesses data provided by Netcraft and will automatically email the registrar of record of any .nl domain name that is flagged as being used in a phishing attack.

Every five minutes or so, SIDN checks Netcraft's suspect URL database,
which is constantly being updated. Every time a .nl URL is added to the
database, an e-mail message is automatically sent to the relevant
registrar's administrative contact e-mail address. In other words, the
system does not rely on periodic reporting, but on almost immediate
individualised e-mail contact. It therefore provides a basis for very
rapid intervention. The service is due to enter use on February 15,
2010.

Message content
The e-mail sent to draw a registrar's attention to the fact that a
client is running a website that may be fraudulent will include the
following information:

- Suspected phishing site URL
- Host: the IP address of the system running the website
- Country: the country of origin of the IP address
- Date: the date and time that the suspect site was detected
- Target: the name of the company that seems to be targeted

SIDN are conscious of the danger of such a service and warn registrars that there may be false alarms.

It will be interesting to see how registrars and the wider internet community react to the introduction of this service.

Afilias, which runs .info and provides registry services to a lot of other domains, has acquired the .mobi registry operator - mTLD Ltd.

The acquisition was officially announced on February 11th 2010, with both Afilias and mTLD releasing press releases etc., as well as a message to pass on to any registrants who might be concerned by the acquisition.

Is this good news or bad news?

I'd suspect that it's good news. It's certainly not bad!

It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes Afilias will bring to the .mobi namespace.

You can read the official announcement here

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In what could best be described as a surprising move, ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom, tweeted his salary details (pdf) to the world yesterday afternoon.

Beckstrom has been using Twitter (and Facebook) to share quite a bit of information related to the organisation's inner-workings. While this has been met with a positive reaction by many members of the ICANN community, there are some people within ICANN itself who do not seem to be too happy with this degree of transparency.

In a document which Beckstrom has made available you can find details of the salaries of the top execs in ICANN. The document also includes details on the rationale behind the salaries. According to Beckstrom this is the first time that this much detail has been made available to the public so quickly. Under "normal" circumstances you would have to wait for the annual report ie. 12 months.

Beckstrom's salary is reported as $750k, with Doug Brent (COO) pulling in $270k.

Beckstrom's predecessor, Twomey, was paid the same amount, so the changing of the guard has not led to any change in salary levels.

While the news of Beckstrom's salary has led to  criticism from some quarters this is hardly the first time that the salaries of an organisation like ICANN have come under the microscope. In the UK, for example, the salaries of Nominet's management team has been discussed several times in the past.

The reality, whether you like it or not, is that if you want to attract quality personnel you cannot expect them to work for rates that are significantly lower than the market rate.

As Maria Farrell, formerly of ICANN staff, points out in the comments on DNN, UN staff don't pay any tax, while ICANN staffers do. She also points out that UN employees get plenty of side-benefits for them and their families.

Needless to say the revelation of the salaries shortly after the ICANN board's latest minutes mentioned a budget "overrun" have hit a nerve with ICANN's more vocal critics, such as George Kirikos.

Personally I think that we should be glad that someone like Rod Beckstrom is taking the initiative in sharing the more intimate details. People may not like them, but facts beat rumours every time.

The relaunch of Colombia's ccTLD got underway within the last couple of hours and the new registry operator is already reporting several hundred domains registered. According to a "tweet" from their official account 322 domains were registered in the first few minutes.

While the full launch of .co is still a few weeks away today's launch is probably a good "warm up" for the new registry operator.

You can currently register com.co via a limited number of registrars, while there will be only ten registrars offering the .co domain when it the launch takes place in March

In common with most launch phases, trademark holders will be able to register names prior to the general launch.

More information on the .co site

ICANN has terminated DNGlobe LLC's ICANN accreditation effective February 22 2010.

In a letter to DNGlobe ICANN outlined why the registrar's accreditation is being pulled. Apart from anything else they do not have a WHOIS server accessible on port 80 ie. via a browser. Their website is currently unreachable as well, which is not a good sign.

They also owe ICANN fees, though not as much as some registrars recently culled.

What's also interesting is the registrar in question obviously hadn't been paying their registry bills with Verisign, as the letter mentions that Verisign may begin suspending domains immediately.

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