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The ICANN meeting in Nairobi starts officially next Monday. However, as is normally the case, by the time Monday rolls around people will already have been working since Saturday morning (if not earlier).

All ICANN meetings seem to be surrounded by some bit of controversy and excitement, but the Nairobi meeting is possibly more dramatic than many others. The last attempt to hold a meeting in Nairobi failed, with ICANN opting to hold the meeting near LA's airport, LAX, instead. This time round there was quite a bit of controversy and tension surrounding the meeting's location.

The end result of the tension, security worries and everything else is that quite a large number of people who would normally attend the meeting will be staying at home.

Others will be travelling to Reston, VA, where Neustar has organised a US offsite location. Though with the time difference between VA and Nairobi anyone in attendance will end up working through the night!

So what's on the agenda?

New TLDs - this time round the focus will be on "EOI" - the concept of "expressions of interest" that was mooted at the last meeting in Seoul.

DNS SEC will be on the agenda again, but getting excited about it is far from easy - sorry!

IPv4 depletion will probably get a look in, but it's still a "hard sell". Until ISPs "buy in" and start deploying v6 on their public networks it's going to be nigh on impossible to make any tangible or meaningful movement in this area.

IDN ccTLDs. You can expect updates from the various countries that have applied using the "fast track". There might be more applications from other countries, as the meeting will have attracted its usual media circus.

But the real "hot potato" for ICANN is going to be .xxx

Following on from the recent decision which found that ICANN had "dropped the ball", the ICANN board will be voting on the Friday of the public meeting.

In reality you can expect to see board members being canvassed / briefed / harassed by interested parties pretty much all week. How will they vote?

Will the US government try to intervene?

If ICANN do move ahead with .xxx, will that have any impact on new TLDs?

If ICANN's board doesn't move ahead with .xxx this time round there is little or no chance that Stuart Lawley and ICM Registry are going to throw in the towel.

To start with they've no reason to. They have just won a legal battle that shows that ICANN was in the wrong. Sure, it may not be "binding", but any decision that so much as casts a doubt on ICANN's processes and procedures is a "win" for ICM - and rightly so.

So how would ICANN fare if ICM were to pursue this through to the next level?

ICANN stakeholders probably don't want to see their money being poured down a legal drain .. I know I don't ..

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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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.

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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Again on the subject of new TLDs ....

One of the "issues" that concerned a number of people is the concept of "vertical separation".

The basic idea is that registries and registrars should be kept separate.

While that is a wonderful Utopian ideal, the reality is that in the real world companies own other companies, people trade in stocks and shares etc., etc. So it's far from being a simple "cut and dried" situation.

It's also a situation that I personally think has been blown out of all proportion. And of course the people who are pushing it hard are the current registry operators. Can you say "monopoly"?
Or how about "fear"?

Be that as it may, the debate has been going on for months. During the Seoul meeting there was a public debate where both sides of the argument were able to "have it out", but while that may have helped clarify things for some people it didn't resolve it.

Fast forward to January 2010.

The GNSO council has now voted that the only way to resolve this issue once and for all is via  a PDP - which is ICANN speak for a quite drawn out policy development process:

A set of formal steps, as defined in the ICANN bylaws, to guide the initiation, internal and external review, timing and approval of policies needed to coordinate the global Internet's system of unique identifiers.

In many cases a PDP can take years to go through the full process, though there have been some exceptions in the recent past (think "tasting").

The motion that the GNSO council approved sets very clear limits on the PDP, but whether or not it will be possible for a policy debate as contentious (for some people) as this to be resolved in the 16 weeks mentioned or not is a different matter.

IDNs might be a slightly "hot" topic at the moment following on from ICANN's launch of the IDN cctld program recently.

However, IDNs are NOT a new topic.

Far from it.

They've been around for quite some time.

Unfortunately neither The Times Online or Mashable seem to have done any homework. Considering the amount of content available on IDNs that has been researched and actually proven - you know, factual information, it's pretty amazing that not one, but two respected online publications manage to get something so completely wrong.

Andrew from Domain Name Wire explains very succinctly why both Mashable and The Times are wrong.

As anyone who actually bothers doing a bit of research into IDNs could tell you, the IDN projects have been discussed at length and from every imaginable angle.

Do the authors of those two articles honestly think that the DNS community hadn't thought about potential phishing problems?

Do they think we're all idiots?

It's not as if we ever have to deal with phishing or any other DNS related attacks is it?

We're just misinformed observers, like them, aren't we?

And here I was thinking that The Times was a quality publication ..

Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess.

The Digital Britain report and the legislation which is now before the UK parliament (Digital Economy Bill) makes for very scary reading.

The implications of the legislation are far reaching - and not just within the UK

What about the sections of the legislation that refer to domain registries? Note the plural

There is an entire section of the legislation dedicated to "internet domain registries", which is "nicely" divided into sub-sections:

• Powers in relation to internet domain registries
  
• Appointment of manager of internet domain registry
• Application to court to alter constitution of internet domain registry
  
  

What is worrying is how they "plan" to enact their powers in the case of "registry failure":

"3)  There is a relevant failure in relation to an internet domain registry if --

(a)  the registry, or any of its registrars or end-users, engages in prescribed practices that are unfair or involve the misuse of internet domain names,
or
(b) the arrangements made by the registry for dealing with complaints in connection with internet domain names do not comply with prescribed requirements."

Note the choice of language. Not only is failure deemed to have happened if the registry messes up, but it also gets triggered if a registrar OR a registrant does something that they don't like.

Now if you examine some of the supporting documents that they used while preparing the legislation you are going to be in for a shock.

In common with other pieces of legislation, this one was not drafted overnight. It comes after a long period of supposed planning and research. I say "supposed", as the document covering the "impact assessment" is horrendously misinformed.

Taking just one or two choice paragraphs from that document as examples:

Cyber-squatting - members apply to register domain names which are of economic value to other people and then charge then high prices to buy them.
Drop-catching - members wait until the expiry date for an existing registered domain name has just passed and the exploit the few seconds between the expiry of the registration and the effecting of the original owner's automatic registration in order to snatch the name and then charge for them to buy it back
Phishing - a member uses the domain name that is confusingly similar to another one (usually of a well known brand) in order to dupe members of the public to enter the site.

Why are they referring to "members"? Only Nominet and its members would ever refer to themselves using such terminology.
Does this mean that the British government views all Nominet members as being phishers?
I'd certainly hope not, but their choice of that term is interesting to say the least. I won't even bother addressing their definitions. Suffice to say, the definitions are flawed to the extreme.

If they are basing the concept of failure around those sorts of concepts then it may be time for Nominet registrars to look more closely at .eu!

So let's return to the "registries" once more.

As things stand at present there is more than one "registry" in the UK.
While the biggest and best known of them is obviously Nominet, there is also both Telnic and Centralnic.
While Centralnic's may be best known for domain extensions such as gb.com, it also handles the registry services for .la - Laos or Los Angeles (depending on who you ask!)
Telnic has already expressed its concern at the permutations of such legislation

And what of those organisations that were planning on getting new TLDs? What of the likes of .scot or .cym? Or any other company that was interested in applying for a new TLD with ICANN.
Has the UK government overlooked the fact that ICANN already exists?
Did they consult with ICANN prior to this?

Other parts of the bill, which deal with copyright protection (they're hailing it as progress - any normal person would view it as a denial of their right to fair process.. ) and plenty of other things that will render the UK the most internet unfriendly country in Europe.

Is this the swan song for the failing Labour government in Britain?

Do they want to be remembered for introducing draconian legislation that will effectively force internet companies in the UK to move?

I for one am scared

In an interesting move several members of the ICANN community formed an "informal" Working Group to discuss the concept of "expressions of interest" in new TLDs. This all happened very quickly, which is more or less the opposite to how most ICANN related activities progress.

Earlier this evening the group submitted its report / paper to ICANN

The report, which runs to about 11 pages, is concise and seems to have covered most of the areas of interest. What's also interesting to note is that the people involved came from a variety of areas and probably give a reasonably good cross-section of the ICANN community.

If you have a few minutes the document is definitely worth reading and is a nice example of how a group of people can get things done quickly and efficiently when needed.

Now if only the rest of the ICANN processes were this quick to reach consensus!

(Maybe pigs flying is more likely!)

During the ICANN meeting in Seoul it became very clear that new TLDs were not going to progress on schedule (which schedule doesn't matter).

It also became clear that:

• ICANN still wants them to go ahead
• ICANN wants to make everyone happy

There's an obvious flaw there.

You cannot appease all interest groups AND move forward with new TLDs.

The "overarching issues" need to be addressed before the "community" can move towards a workable solution.

For a lot of new TLD applicants the delays with new TLDs are a source of worry, concern and possibly financial strain. While a big corporate may have ample funds to "wait out" the process, this probably wouldn't be the case with some of the smaller TLD projects.

During the week in Seoul some of the applicants tried to come up with a workable "halfway house" style solution.

The concept of garnering information on "interest levels" was put forward in various forms. While the idea has been welcomed in some quarters there are others who are not as comfortable with it.

The logic behind it is quite simple.

At present ICANN does not know how many applicants there will be for new TLDs, nor does it know how many contenders there will be for the same strings. A lot of the "problems" and "issues" are based on guesswork and wild assumptions.

While there may indeed be a basis for concerns it would be significantly easier to address an issue that is clearly presented and identified than by simply "imagining' or "guessing" about its existence.

The Board made reference to this community driven concept during their meeting in Seoul and referenced their experience with planning for the introduction of IDN ccTLDs.

Of course waiting for ICANN to "make a move" can be a frustrating experience, so it's hardly surprising that a group of new TLD applicants got together to form their own, informal, working group to push things forward.

It's also hardly surprising that this move has been met with some criticism from within ICANN circles (drawing parallels with the IRT).

And now ICANN has launched its own initiative to cover the same ground. (Or will the two be working to the same goal? Sorry - I'm getting quite confused by all the back and forth)

Meanwhile the RAA is coming under review again and there's a silly number of other working groups trying to deal with other aspects of ICANN policy...

Oh the fun and games!