2018-09-30

News Review 1) ICANN Org vs EPDP Access? 2) New gTLDs Next Round?

graphic "News Review" ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2018-09-30 with analysis and opinion: Features •  1) ICANN Org vs EPDP Access? 2) New gTLDs Next Round? 3) Other ICANN news: a. .AFRICA Litigation, and more, 3) Names, Domains & TMs: Malicious Domain Names, and more, 4) ICYMI: US-China Internet Bifurcation, Bad Internet Laws, Digital Cooperation, 5) Most Read.

1) ICANN & GDPR: ICANN Org vs EPDP Access?
Next ICANN EPDP Team Meetings scheduled for Tuesday Oct 2, and Thursday Oct 4, 13:00 UTC, 9am EDT. Non-members of the EPDP Team can follow the EPDP meetings (including "small team" meetings Wednesday and Friday this week) via Adobe Connect or audio cast via browser or application.

Editor's note: links to transcripts and Adobe Connect recordings will be posted here, as made available by ICANN. Note that links to EPDP meetings' transcripts are posted (usually within 24 hours) on the GNSO calendar. See also EPDP Team wikimail listTemp Specaction itemsEPDP Charter(pdf), GNSO's EPDP page, & weekly updates to GNSO Council.

Fri. Oct 5 EPDP small group meeting (wiki link) 13:00 UTC (9am EDT): meeting transcript (pdf),
MP3, Adobe Connect replay, chat transcript (pdf), Background document embedded below:

Oct 4 EPDP Meeting (agenda), meeting transcript (pdf), chat transcript (pdf), Adobe Connect replay, MP3Purpose N (pdf). Data elements workbooks. Editor's note: meeting discussions were led by 2 CBI facilitators, Gina Bartlett and David Plumb.

Wed. Oct 3 small group meeting: background document (pdf). Editor's note: 2 facilitators from CBI.org were at this meeting--Gina Bartlett led the meeting and David Plumb was present--so apparently CBI.org has been retained for further "facilitation and mediation" although the details are not known. The Wednesday small group EPDP members present: Alex Deacon (IPC), Laureen Kapin (GAC), Ben Butler (SSAC), James Bladel (RrSG), Marc Anderson (RySG), Margie Milam (BC). NCSG (6 EPDP members) was MIA (missing in action) for most of the meeting with no explanation or apologies noted--Stephanie Perrin (NCSG) did appear more than an hour after the meeting started.  

The Wednesday small group did not address the implicit flaws in the present WHOIS data fields (which if corrected would clearly distinguish between a legal entity or person as the actual registrant), instead they appeared to reach 'rough' consensus on adding more WHOIS data fields (before Perrin appeared). So much for data minimization! Meeting transcript (pdf), Notes & Action ItemsAdobe replay, MP3, chat transcript (pdf) excerpt:
Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "note that the registrars will be held accountable for how well informed the individual is. If they give away their rights because they were not well informed, it will be the registrars fault."
Ben Butler (SSAC): "Thank you Stephanie. That would seem to raise the importance of getting the educational resources item right."
Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "Caution is required here ....if civil society were to sue under the GDPR, in my view (remember, I am not even a lawyer let alone a litigator) the strategy would be to go for ICANN as data controller responsible for the policy, and the registrar as data controller for the client relationship data."

Oct 2 Meeting (agenda, documents, high level notes and action items), chat transcript (pdf) embed below; and Meeting Transcript (pdf);
Oct 2 Chat Transcript:

Highlights of the EPDP F2F Meeting Sep 24-26 in LA:
Photo of ICANN CEO Goran Marby, with words below:" ICANN's  GDPR Train Wreck"  ©2018 DomainMondo.com
Definition of "train wreck" -- a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a peculiar fascination for observers.
Best Quote of the entire F2F Meeting was from Stephanie Perrin [NCSG] on the first day:
"... about the only valid primary purpose for gathering data from the registrant is so that you can give the registrant the rights to a domain name that’s--that is the most legitimate purpose there is."
Biggest controversy: ICANN CEO Goran Marby on Tuesday
ICANN CEO Goran Marby met with the EPDP working group Tuesday (transcript embedded below) the day after his controversial blog post:

Clueless to the end, ICANN CEO Goran Marby’s final statement to the EPDP working group: "It was fun" (transcript, supra, p. 32). Marby's Tuesday EPDP session Adobe Connect replay and MP3 audio.


Other highlights:
Day One--Welcome & Introductions:
Kurt Pritz, EPDP Chair: "I’m certainly aware of the concerns and even criticism of our progress to date, so I've taken, you know, every comment I’ve heard on board. And in hindsight we might [have] do[ne] some things differently ... while I wish we were further ahead, I don't feel so bad about it ... You know, personally, I don't think that the multistakeholder model can take [any] more of these top down temporary specifications before it falls in on itself ..."

Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Hi. I’m Milton. I spoke to Margie Milam of the Business Constituency who has disappeared but I didn't do it."

Alan Greenberg (ALAC): "I talked to Farzi [Badii] who the last time I heard her introduce herself, introduced herself as Farzaneh Badass. And she’s a ... concert violinist in the making."
David Plumb (facilitator): "Yes, not surprising."
Alan Greenberg: "Badass or concert violinist?"

Editor's notethere is no question some substantive work was done during the F2F, but whether it was enough to meet the EPDP's tight timeline is questionable. We may have a better idea after the EPDP meeting(s) this coming week, depending on how well the EPDP working group, and its Chair Kurt Pritz, function without the three facilitators from CBI.org who led most of the F2F meeting sessions.
"I mean, from some of the things I’ve seen in the chat it looks like the third party mediators were a positive thing, but it’s not clear to me whether or not any substantive progress was actually made at the face-to-face or are we going to end up in yet another RDS PDP type situation? The other thing as well is, I mean, the – whether or not this kind of outside the EPDP lobbying by certain groups – whether that’s having any impact on the general morale of people involved within the EPDP."--Michele Neylon (RrSG), GNSO Council Meeting, Thursday, 27 Sep 2018 transcript (pdf), p. 38.
More info on the EPDP F2F meeting in last week's News Review.

Note also
  • Whois Reform Grinds forward--by Milton Mueller, InternetGovernance.org, Sep 28, 2018. [Editor's noteProfessor Mueller, a NCSG member of the EPDP, provides a deep dive into the current status of the EPDP issues.]
  • ICANN Webinar (one hour) data protection/privacy (GDPR) update now scheduled for Oct 8, 2018, 15:00 UTC (11am EDT) via Adobe Connect. Dial-in info, questions, etc., here. 
  • Tim Berners-Lee announces Solid (domain: solid.inrupt.com), an open source project to decentralize the web and give users control of their data, and Inrupt (inrupt.com), a startup to guide the project.

2) New gTLDs Next Round? 
Comments closed Sep 26, 2018, to the Initial Report on the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (Overarching Issues & Work Tracks 1-4).

Editor's note: all submitted comments are here. Of particular note, are the comments submitted by:
  • Public Interest Community (pdf) members: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org), Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Public Knowledge, Martin Silva Valent, Esq. (Professor at Universidad de Palermo), Kathryn A. Kleiman (Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University), Leah Chan Grinvald (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School), Eve J. Brown (Professor at Roger Williams University), A. Michael Froomkin (Professor, University of Miami School of Law), Bryan Bello (Center for Media and Social Impact, American University).
and my submitted comment (pdf) embed below. I thank the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, for their affirming response which I received Friday.

See also New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP September 2018 Newsletter (pdf).

3) Other ICANN News
graphic "ICANN | Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers"
a. .AFRICA new gTLD litigation UPDATE:
Future Hearings:
Jan 25, 2019 at 08:30 am Final Status Conference;
Feb 6, 2019 at 10:00 am Trial.

b.
 Pre-ICANN63 Policy Open House webcast:
ICANN63 is in Barcelona, Spain, Oct 20-25, 2018.
Thursday, 11 October 2018, 10:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC. The open house will run in English with simultaneous Spanish interpretation. The presentation materials will be translated into Spanish, and posted following the open house with the recordings of the sessions here. Register via this form by 8 Oct 2018. More info here.

c. Issues and Challenges Impacting Domain Name Registrants (pdf):
--ICANN.org blog 26 Sep 2018. See also icann.org/registrants.

d. Open for Public Comment at ICANN Closing in October (23:59 UTC on the respective date indicated below--subject to change by ICANN):

e. SSR2 Restart, Terms of Reference Update (pdf).

f. ICANN's new gTLD .BRAND extortion racket loses two more: .spiegel and .blanco.

4) Names, Domains & Trademarks
graphic "Names, Domains & Trademarks" ©2017 DomainMondo.com
a. Malicious Domain Names often use a trusted TLS certificate and appear to be safe for online shoppers who unknowingly provide sensitive account information and payment data reports Venafi.com. Among the key findings from the research:
  • The total number of certificates for look-alike domains is more than 200% greater than the number of authentic retail domains.
  • The growth in look-alike domains appears to be connected to the availability of free TLS certificates; 84% of the look-alike domains studied use free certificates from LetsEncrypt.org.
b. Zoho.com says its domain name registrar, TierraNet (tierra.net), pulled Zoho's website offline for a few hours after receiving three phishing complaints in two months related to Zoho-hosted email users. Zoho is now looking for a new domain name registrar according to TechCrunch.com. [Editor's noteZoho may want to check out Cloudfare Registrar. Early access sign up.]

c. Intellectual property and e-commerce: Alibaba’s perspective | wipo.int.

5) ICYMI Internet Domain News 
graphic "ICYMI Internet Domain News" ©2017 DomainMondo.com
US-China Internet Bifurcation:
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts the internet will bifurcate into Chinese-led and US-led versions within the next decade: "I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America."--CNBC.com.

Bad Internet Laws:

UN Sec-Gen High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation:
More information: digitalcooperation.org and @UNSGdigicoop.

6) Most Read Posts this past week on DomainMondo.com: 
graphic "Domain Mondo" ©2017 DomainMondo.com



-- John Poole, Editor  Domain Mondo 

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