2018-07-22

News Review | ICANN Is Unfit, The IANA Transition Should Be Unwound

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Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2018-07-22) with analysis and opinion: Features •  1) Comment to NTIA: ICANN Is Unfit, The IANA Transition Should Be Unwound, 2) ICANN news: a. ICANN vs EPAG - ICANN Loses Again, b. WHOIS & GDPR: Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Team, and more, 3) Names, Domains & Trademarks: a. The Power of TLD .COM,  b. Verisign Q2 2018 earnings, and more, 4) ICYMI, 5) Most Read.

UPDATE--Should the IANA Transition Be Unwound? Read all comments submitted to NTIA here.

Original Post:
1) Comment to NTIA: ICANN Is Unfit, The IANA Transition Should Be Unwound
"ICANN is incompetent, corrupt, and unfit for the role it was given by the U.S. government in 1998 ... The IANA transition was a mistake and a fraud upon the American people and the global internet community."


Full comment with all attachments (pdf 2MB) (57 pages), also at NTIA here (pdf).

See also George Kirikos's comment here (pdf).

2) ICANN News
graphic "ICANN | Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers"
a. ICANN v. EPAG Domainservices, GmbH
 ICANN's GDPR Train Wreck: ICANN Loses Again in German Court
ICANN and its IP Constituency (trademark lawyers) lost Round 2 in ICANN's legal action (request for an injunction) against EPAG Domainservices, GmbH, an affiliate of Tucows, the world's second largest domain name registrar, filed in the Regional Court of Bonn, Germany. The case is now headed to the Higher Regional Court of Cologne as the court of appeal, which could refer the matter to the European Court of Justice. For more read the updates at last week's News Review.

b. WHOIS & GDPR: Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Team 
As noted in the  updates to last week's News Review, the GNSO Council approved the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Initiation Request (pdf) and Charter (pdf) at its meeting Thursday, July 19, 2018.  It is expected that the EPDP Team, chaired by Kurt Pritz, will hold its first meeting during the week of 30 July 2018. The three dissents: Ayden Fedérline (pdf), Tatiana Tropina (pdf) and Stephanie Perrin (pdf):
"Yes, and I think that Tatiana and Ayden have eloquently expressed many of my reasons. There is one issue that I would like to add to those and that is that it is plainly evident from the way that we have approached this question and the EPDP that we've not yet, as ICANN, and as the GNSO addressing the problem of GDPR, some of us don't think it’s a problem, some of us think it’s an improvement, but at any rate we have not addressed the issue with the benefit of the advice that we have received from the data commissioners, in other words, with the perspective of data protection law. And I feel that it’s long overdue to address these concerns. I don't wish to delay the progress; we have to get busy. I have a remedy and I will try and bring remedy throughout the work on the EPDP. We have a volunteer from the Council of Europe to assist us in legal interpretation, that would be Peter Kimpian, a data protection lawyer from the Hungarian Data Protection Office who has worked extensively with the Council of Europe on GDPR and on Convention 108 and the revised Convention 108. They have offered to assign him to us. I would recommend that the Council accept that offer because at the moment we have a – we have a charter that is not framed the way it should be in terms of data protection analysis and we need to remedy this. And I share with both Ayden and Tatiana the concerns that we have many members that are turning this into a cross community working group but none of them who could, are bringing a data protection expertise to the table. Thank you."--Stephanie Perrin (emphasis added).

Also note ICANN at a Crossroads: GDPR and Human Rights | circleid.com by Raphaël Beauregard-Lacroix:
"... In a 17 May letter, European commissioners asked ICANN, through its CEO, to "show leadership and demonstrate that the multi-stakeholder model actually delivers." Be it taunting or encouraging, this challenge underscores the current need for intentional, proactive leadership from both the ICANN organisation and its community ..."
See also:

c. Approved Board Resolutions | Special Meeting of the ICANN Board 18 Jul 2018--ICANN.org: Big Fat Pay Increases for ICANN's Incompetent Management Team, Extension of CEO's contract to run through through May 2022, Reconsideration requests of dotgay, Dot Music, and more at link above.

d. Famous Last Words--"ICANN org has increased confidence that the root KSK rollover planned for 11 October 2018 will have the potential to affect only a tiny fraction of DNS users"--ICANN.org 18 July 2018.

e. ICANN Board Approves Dysfunctional Implementation of At-Large Review over objections from members of the ICANN community--ICANN Board Minutes | ICANN.org 23 June 2018 meeting. The objections included comments from the Registrar Stakeholder Group,  Registries Stakeholder Group "... Structures that are intended to support user engagement in ICANN may, in fact, hinder direct user participation and discourage new voices from engaging with ICANN policy development processes ... Fifty percent of At-Large respondents and seventy-five percent of non-At-Large respondents believed that At Large Structures are not truly representative of global end user opinion ... These findings point to fundamental problems with At-Large representation" and NCSG--"... At-Large has been dominated by a few people for too long ... It is not focused enough on holding ICANN (via the Board) accountable and empowering individual Internet users ..." [Editor's note: any wonder why the ICANN Board brushed aside these valid objections? ICANN: unfit, incompetent, corrupt.]

f. CCWG-Accountability WS2 have distributed their final report for consideration to the ICANN Chartering Organizations. on The Final Report includes a summary of work completed by WS2 and a listing of recommendations, here and here (with annexes). The Chartering Organizations have been asked to complete their approval of the Final Report by the conclusion of ICANN63 October 20-25, 2018. If approved, it will then be sent to the ICANN Board for approval and implementation.

g. Methodology Review of the Domain Abuse Activity Reporting (DAAR) System | ICANN.org.

h.  Better Late Than Never--Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP)--report-comments-ncap-project-plan-13jul18-en.pdf (pdf) excerpt: "The ALAC urges the SSAC to proceed with the Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) Work Party's project plan and allocate enough time to do it right. We believe it is important to minimize the unintended consequences for end users. Name Collision occurs when a user, attempting to reach a private domain name, unintentionally reaches a public domain name and, as such, cut to the core of end user trust of the internet and could pose potential security issues."

i. ICANN Naming Services portal User Guide for Registries 19 Jul 2018: nsp-user-guide-19jul18-en.pdf [637 KB]

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks
graphic "Names, Domains & Trademarks" ©2017 DomainMondo.com
a.  The Power of Top Level Domain .COM: After years of complaints from rival search engine DuckDuckGoGoogle has relented--Google obtained domain name duck.com when it bought video compression startup On2 (on2.com) in 2010, and redirected duck.com to google.com, but now Google is redirecting the domain name duck.com to on2.com, a page with links to duckduckgo.com, ducks.com which redirects to basspro.com (Bass Pro Shops), and to an article on Wikipedia.org about ducks. On Friday, DuckDuckGo CEO & Founder Gabriel Weinberg tweeted "Thank you! That will clear up the consumer confusion. Would you please consider selling the domain to us?"

b. Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) Q2 2018 earnings webcast July 26, 4:30pm EDT.
$VRSN
c. ICANN's New gTLD IDNs: Cyrillic Characters Are Favorites for IDN Homograph Attacks--bleepingcomputer.com.

d. Next steps for brand protection in a post-GDPR world: trademark takeaways from ICANN 62 | worldtrademarkreview.com.

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 
graphic "ICYMI Internet Domain News" ©2017 DomainMondo.com
  • India: Bordering on Absurd: Rajasthan’s Obsession with Internet Shutdowns--thequint.com.
  • U.S. to help organizations interested in programs supporting Internet Freedom--devdiscourse.com.
  • ITU and Global Cyber Alliance join forces to help countries prepare for and respond to cyber-threats: "Secured cyberspace vital for the development of the digital economy"--itu.int

5) Most Read Posts this past week on DomainMondo.com: 
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