Recently in policy Category

Nominet, the registry operator that manages *.uk, is planning on releasing both single and two character domain names.

In common with a lot of other ccTLD registry operators, Nominet had blocked single and two character domain names from being registered. However they are now planning on releasing them to the public in a phased plan.

The exact details of "how" the domains will become available have not been decided, which is why the registry is now conducting a consultation period with the public.

The current proposal is not drastically different to the kind of methodology used by several of the gTLD registry operators to handle similar scenarios, although there are a few extra twists. To start with Nominet is speaking of the entire project in terms of "cost recovery", whereas other registries have used this kind of release as a revenue generator. The other thing which is quite interesting is how they plan to differentiate based on the second level ie. org.uk domains, according to their proposal, should be given to charities and not for profits, while co.uk should go to business users. While this is very logical it's still interesting to note that they've "gone back to basics" in some respects.

You can view full details of what Nominet are planning on their site and share your thoughts.

It will be interesting to see how the Nominet registrars and the public react to this news.

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sex.com goes titsup (go.theregister.com)
• Sex.com at Foreclosure Auction? (domainmacher.com)

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.

One of the topics that keeps coming up in ICANN policy discussions and as part of the new TLD application process is "transparency".

ICANN, and the internet community in general, has had plenty of issues in the past with "bad actors" who have caused a lot of issues for everyone (think of many of the registrars who have lost accreditation in the last couple of years for example).

On more than one conference call or policy discussion the issue of a company or a person's track record has come up.

Now while I personally think that anyone who has been knowingly involved in criminal activity OR who has knowingly been involved with a serious breach of ICANN policy (or any of the contracts) should be barred from any further involvement with the DNS, a blanket ban is not without its own set of issues.

The larger the company the more likely it will have been involved with litigation or criminal law suits at some point or other in the past.

And who is pushing for all these "checks and balances" within the ICANN processes? In many cases it's the big brand owners, who live in fear of "squatters" and other "evil doers".

So why do I raise this?

Well George Kirikos has, yet again, managed to dig up some quite revealing data about some of the companies that likely to be involved in new TLDs in the future and who have been very vocal in the ICANN "space" over the last few years.

You can read the full text of what George uncovered here, but suffice to say that a lot of the big brands and companies aren't as "clean" as they'd like us all to be (and no that wasn't a typo).

Unilever, Disney, Coca-Cola, Time Warner, Yahoo! and Telstra are all named and, if you'll excuse the cliche, shamed...

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

AFNIC, which runs the .fr registry, has published its Action Plan for 2010.

While the "old chestnut" of DNSSEC is on the agenda (no surprise there!), there's also reference to a change in the registration rules.

Under the current registration rules registrants need to supply an address in France.
The proposed change is intended to open up registration to all French nationals regardless of their place of residence.

So does this leave the door open for a wider change?

Are we likely to see non-French nationals being able to register .fr domains without having to "jump through hoops"?

The current situation is more than a little frustrating. If a non-French company or individual wants to register a .fr domain, regardless of their motives, the registry rules render the registration incredibly difficult. While other ccTLD registries may have restrictive rules, in most instances there are relatively "sane" ways to navigate them.

It's not clear from the document that has been published what the registry's exact plans are in this area, but any change and progress in this area should be welcomed.

According to the document the plan would need to be voted on by the board in November.

The original text is available via the AFNIC site.

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom has signed the new "Affirmation of Commitments" which replaces the JPA.

More details here including full text and some reactions

Further updates to follow ...

ICANN has opened a public comment period on the "Inter Registrar Transfer Policy" (IRTP)

You can read more about the announcement here

What makes this comment period a bit different is that the request for comments has been published in the 6 UN languages ie. English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Russian.

The new TLD process is occupying a lot of people in the domain name industry at present.

While some people are obviously very much against the entire concept of new TLDs, there are plenty of people and organisations who support the project.

But what happens when you have more than one organisation vying for the same namespace?

While the ICANN new TLD application process itself has its own way of dealing with competing bids there's nothing to stop the interested parties in "duking it out" in public.

Seemingly the competition between two rival bids for .eco (doteco) has been getting more than a little dirty in the past few weeks.

Earlier this evening Dot Eco LLC, which is backed by Al Gore, the Sierra Club, the Alliance for Climate Protection and Surfrider Foundation, issued what they called an "open examination" of the competing bids. Anyone reading it would be excused for seeing it as a gauntlet being thrown by Dot Eco LLC in the face of Big Room's competing bid - and its partner Afilias.

The document, which runs to 17 pages, makes for interesting reading and examines the credentials of both bids, while also questioning the viability and chances of success of the rival bid.

For example, the economic analysis draws on the financials of PIR, which runs .org. PIR uses Afilias to run their backend, so it would not be unreasonable to assume that any arrangements Afilias has made with that registry would be emulated with others.

Of course this is a theory - not fact, but it is one that has been logically argued and demonstrated using data based on existing TLDs.

Having said that, Dot Eco LLC have been very open about the costs they will face from their chosen backend provider - Minds and Machines.

Minds and Machines have, in turn, also made a public commitment to "going green" and will also be incentivising their registrar partners to adopt "green" policies.

Have Afilias done anything similar?

While the public catfight between the two competing bids may be interesting to watch as it plays out it does, from an observer's perspective, raise a couple of interesting issues.

Presuming that other strings are going to be as attractive as .eco is for the two rivals mentioned (and without even mentioning the potential bid for .green),  can expect to see a certain degree of this sort of mudslinging between future rival bids?

If some of the new TLD bids are going to have "agendas" attached to them, will they be viable or will we end up with a bunch of tiny namespaces that nobody uses or really cares about?

While it is clear that not all TLD projects are motivated purely by economics a lot of them will have taken on outside investors. If the investors do not get some form of return, will they walk away?

In many respects this kind of public catfight could act as just the first sign of worse to come.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rival Green Groups Bid To Snatch .eco Domain (news.slashdot.org)
• Rivals bid to snatch green domain (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Al Gore Vs Mikhail Gorbachev? The Latest on the .eco Domain Battle (treehugger.com)
• .Eco: The Domain Extension for Treehuggers (mashable.com)
• Groups battle to rule dot-eco registry (thestar.com)
• Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev battle over green domain name (telegraph.co.uk)
• Bits: Do We Need .More .Top .Level .Domains? (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• ICANN't Believe It's .butter (marketingpilgrim.com)

ICANN has announced that three more registrars have lost their accreditation due to non-compliance with the RAA.

The three registrars have been informed that their agreements with ICANN will not be renewed.

South American Domains (NameFrog), Simply Named and Tahoe Domains have been sent letters by ICANN outlining the decision and the reasons for it.

So what now?

On the plus side, as ICANN's compliance team is becoming more active in pursuing non-compliant registrars the processes for handling the domains held by de-accredited registrars is becoming more finely tuned.

Expect to see an announcement very shortly asking for other registrars to takeover the various portfolios, though this time round they are incredibly small.

According to the latest figures I was able to access the breakdown would be as follows:

• Namefrog appears to have less than 300 gTLD domains
• Simply Named about the same number
• Tahoe less than 250

So why did they lose their accreditations?

• Namefrog did not have a whois server
• Simply Named wasn't escrowing registrant data and hadn't paid their ICANN fees
• Tahoe no data escrow and owed fees to ICANN
  

In related news, Lead Networks are now seeking arbitration!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lead Networks Lose ICANN Accreditation (isquattedyour.eu)
• Tucows Takes Over Parava's Domains (isquattedyour.eu)