News Review | Esther Dyson Interview, ICANN Founding Board Chair

Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2017-10-01) with analysis and opinion: Features •  1) Esther Dyson Interview, ICANN Founding Board Chair,  2) Other ICANN news: a. Verisign Data Stopped ICANN From Breaking the Internet, b. New gTLDs FAIL at EMAIL, c. ICANN Community FAILING Registrants, & More, 3) Names, Domains & Trademarks: New gTLD Buyer's Remorse,  4) ICYMI Internet Domain News: Hurricane Irma vs. Internet, 5) Most Read Posts.

1. Esther Dyson Interview, ICANN Founding Board Chair (video):

Interview of Esther Dyson, ICANN Board Chair (1998-2000), by Brad White of ICANN. The video above was published Sep 29, 2017, by ICANN. Excerpts:

02:37 Q. It sounds like, Esther, you're challenging the very concept of an internet community? "Yes I am, I mean the community definitely exists but it's not actively engaged the way corporations or registries and registrars and lawyers [are]."

05:30  "... how many TLDs there were and that's where ultimately I changed my mind from yeah, you know, there should be a free market as many as you want, but the reality is that reduces, it just, it creates a mess, then you might as well not have the DNS and that's something of course we're facing right now ..." 

06:00  "the problem is not the shortage of domain names" 

06:17  "the reality is the more stuff [TLDs] there is the less useful the domain name system is"

08:36  "One of the biggest fights that was emblematic of a lot of other stuff and here I had fierce disagreements with Joe Sims, our Board meetings were closed. 08:49 Q. And you basically thought that the board meetings should not be closed? "Yeah I thought they should be open" ... 09:03  "the internet culture is based on transparency" ...  09:40 "you should have the the fundamental policy of we hold our discussions and we set policy within the board meeting and we do that in the open so that people can see the disagreements and can see how the decisions were arrived at so that was really unfortunate ..." 

14:30 "the the whole thing with the At-Large [ALAC] not really functioning very well was really disappointing because I really do feel that the users were kind of being ignored ... there was just a lot of people pretending to represent the at large"

17:26  "... it's [domain name industry] become a very lucrative business that at the same time is extremely competitive and there's lots of you know shady domain name practices ... I mean I would have liked to see ICANN regulating fraud and sleazy business more effectively. It's mostly, thank God, kept out of the censorship business."

Full transcript embed below:

See also:

• Esther Dyson on the Internet, ICANN and Doing Business Abroad | Knowledge@Wharton | knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu Apr 10, 2002: “'ICANN has become a real cesspool,' said Dyson."
• Esther Dyson Told ICANN new gTLDs were a mistake in 2011 (video) | DomainMondo.com--"The thing is, we are not running out of domains. This is a “way for registries and registrars to make money,” says Dyson. She also points out that “there are huge trademark issues. I just think it is offensive. If I own a trademark, now I have to go register it on 2,800 domains. It will create a lot of litigation.”
• Testimony of Esther Dyson (pdf)--Hearing on ICANN's Expansion of Top Level Domains, 8 December 2011, before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation.
• ICANN's Boondoggle | MIT Technology Review, August 21, 2012: ".... a financial conflict of interest that continues to this day: ICANN subsists on the very industry it purports to govern. [Esther] Dyson says she “lost any faith, over time,” in ICANN’s ability to regulate the domain-name business."
• August 10, 2016, Letter (pdf) signed by Esther Dyson (and others) opposing the IANA transition.

2) Other ICANN news

a. Data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) Stops ICANN From Breaking the Internet--KSK Rollover Postponed | ICANN.org 27 Sep 2017: "... The changing or "rolling" of the KSK Key was originally scheduled to occur on 11 October, but it is being delayed because some recently obtained data [Verisign data via RFC 8145] shows that a significant number of resolvers used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Network Operators are not yet ready for the Key Rollover ... ICANN will provide additional information as it becomes available and the new Key Roll date will be announced as appropriate ..."--ICANN.org: "an estimated one-in-four global Internet users, or 750 million people, could be affected by the KSK rollover." (emphasis added). 

b. ICANN UASG report (pdf): new gTLDs FAIL at Email

ICANN proves once again that new gTLDs FAIL at email in 2017 just like in 2003. No wonder some have accused ICANN of consumer fraud and gross negligence in delegating over 1200 new gTLDs into the internet root--without any warnings to consumers--knowing registrants and end users would find the new gTLDs' domain names were "failing to work as expected on the Internet." 

New generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) FAIL to work as expected on the internet
graphic source: ICANN UASG report (pdf) p.5

"Those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

c. The ICANN community is failing its customers [Domain Name Registrants] | OpenSRS.com 26 September 2017: ".... This example doesn’t just illustrate how the ICANN organization is failing in its duty to reasonably enforce policy; it makes clear the fact that the entire ICANN community, as the body responsible for creating policy, is failing domain name registrants – the very group of people that ICANN, and all of us in this industry, are intended to serve. ICANN’s policy development process is obviously broken. It’s equally obvious that the ICANN community’s approach to fixing it must be grounded in a solid understanding of their customers’ needs and a commitment to better registrant-experience. We need to refocus our efforts on creating policy that protects registrants, without creating unintended loopholes and dead-ends. Until then, all we can do is wish best of luck to our customers in India and elsewhere in the world."

d. ICANN Webinar: Data Protection/Privacy Activities | ICANN.org: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) webinar to discuss data protection/privacy activities related to the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):
Date & Time: 4 October 2017, 1400 – 1500 UTC (time convert) 10am EDT.
Join via Adobe Connect.
Send dial-in requests to gdpr-questions@ icann.org; Dial-in Information here.
Participant Codes: English – Participant Code: 9001; Français – Participant Code: 9002; Español – Participant Code: 9003; 中文 – Participant Code: 9004; Pусский – Participant Code: 9005; العربية – Participant Code: 9006; Português – Participant Code: 9007.

e. New gTLD .AMAZON battle rejoined--Adopted Board Resolutions | Regular Meeting of the ICANN Board | ICANN.org: "...Resolved (2017.09.23.17), further consideration is needed regarding the Panel's non-binding recommendation that the Board "promptly re-evaluate Amazon's applications" and "make an objective and independent judgment regarding whether there are, in fact, well-founded, merits-based public policy reasons for denying Amazon's applications. Resolved (2017.09.23.18), the Board asks the Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee (BAMC) to review and consider the Panel's recommendation that the Board "promptly re-evaluate Amazon's applications" and "make an objective and independent judgment regarding whether there are, in fact, well-founded, merits-based public policy reasons for denying Amazon's applications," and to provide options for the Board to consider in addressing the Panel's recommendation." (emphasis added)

f. Creating Content Governance and Rebuilding the Infrastructure of ICANN’s Public Sites | ICANN.org: "It probably comes as no surprise to many of you who use www.icann.org that our content can be difficult to find. It's an issue we have grappled with for a long time that needs a permanent fix. On 23 September 2017, at the ICANN Board meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Board approved the Information Transparency Initiative to address this and other problems ... One of the primary objectives of this initiative is to improve the findability of ICANN's public content in all six U.N. languages"--see also Adopted Board Resolutions | Regular Meeting of the ICANN Board | ICANN.org: "... Resolutions 2017.09.23.10 –2017.09.23.11 Valuable ICANN information has accumulated in thousands of pieces of unstructured public content spread across 38 different public ICANN and SO/AC sites. This content continues to grow at rates of 25-30% per year. The ICANN organization currently surfaces this content through multiple, unconnected platforms with differing foundational technologies that are non-scalable, may be vulnerable, and are no longer fit for purpose."

g. This Is No Joke: Request for Proposal: gTLD Marketplace Health Index Assessment | ICANN.org: "Indications of interest are to be received by emailing gTLDMktHealthIndexAssessment-rfp @ icann.org. Proposals should be electronically submitted by 23:59 UTC on 30 October 2017 using ICANN's sourcing tool, access to which may be requested via the same email address above." More information at the link above.

h. Internet Service Provider and Connectivity Providers Constituency (ISPCP) Comments on the ICANN Statistical Analysis of DNS Abuse in gTLDs (SADAG) Report (pdf): "... While the SADAG report is a robust and ambitious analysis of abuse within the DNS, and the constituents of the ISPCP appreciate the time and effort put into the study, it is evident that the study requires either a second phase, additional source material, or a revised analysis, specifically: • It is mentioned only in passing that abuse and price are correlated, for example. Prices from 50 cents to 1 dollar (U.S.) are tied to abusive registrations. However, this ignores mentioning that the .top [new] gTLD is offered at 10 cents per domain for multiple registrars. Given the evidence that price and abuse are tied together, this would require further exploration. • As speculation and defensive registrations dominate the growth of registrations in the DNS and there are new gTLDs and registrars where there are greater than 50% abusive registrations, including one registrar where 90% of the domains are reported as abusive, then an analysis of this registrar’s attraction is required ... is this a deliberate business strategy? ..."(emphasis added)--read the other comments here.

i. Cherine Chalaby will be the next Chair of the ICANN Board and Chris Disspain the next Vice-Chair--Chairman’s Blog: The Montevideo Workshop Wrap-Up | ICANN.org 26 Sep 2017.

j. Registry Resources | ICANN.org--Naming Services portal--"The Naming Services portal replaces the Global Domain [sic] Division (GDD) and New gTLD Applicant portals. This portal will streamline the way registry operators conduct business with the ICANN organization." [Editor's note: anything that "replaces the Global Domain [sic] Division (GDD)" has to be an improvement.]

k. ICANN Public Comment Periods Closing in October | ICANN.org:

• Proposed Dates for ICANN Public Meetings 2021–2023 closes 2 Oct 2017 23:59 UTC

• Proposed Renewal of .MUSEUM Sponsored Registry Agreement closes 3 Oct 2017 23:59 UTC

• Proposed Changes to the NCUC Charter closes 3 Oct 2017 23:59 UTC

l. CEP and IRP Status Update | 22 Sep 2017 | ICANN.org--irp-cep-status-22sep17-en.pdf (pdf)

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks

• Was the $41.5 million price tag for .Shop domains worth it? | OnlineDomain.com--New gTLD Buyer's Remorse.
• US Court Orders Dozens of "Pirate" Site Domain Seizures | TorrentFreak.com: "The order was signed exactly one day after the complaint was filed, in what appears to be a streamlined process."
• US DOJ Antitrust Division: U.S. Senate confirmed Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, who previously worked in Trump’s White House counsel’s office, by a wide margin, 73-21 vote on Wednesday, September 27, 2017.--TheHill.com
• China’s New Domain Name Rules: The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (“MIIT“) issued the final version of the Rules on the Administration of Internet Domain Names on 24 Aug 2017. The new Rules become effective 1 Nov 2017. The final rules delete the controversial Article 37 which required any domain name whose website is hosted in China must be registered with a Chinese domain name registrar.--Lexology.com
• New .ie domain liberalisation proposal | IrishTechNews.ie: The proposal would "drop the need to prove a valid claim to the name. If the policy change is approved, any individual or business with a provable connection to Ireland will be able to register a .ie domain name on a first-come, first-served basis."

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 

•  How the Internet Kept Running During Hurricane Irma: "At one node of the industrial backbone that keeps the internet running, employees sheltered from the worst of Hurricane Irma in a stairwell of a seven-story building in downtown Miami. When the power had gone out, diesel generators instantly kicked in ... the heavy digital machinery at the heart of the internet and the cloud held firm."--NYTimes.com.

•  China Blocks WhatsApp, Broadening Online Censorship | NYTimes.com (this follows China's mid-July crackdown on WhatsApp video chats, multimedia messages).

•  Wireless phone market in U.S. competitive with just 3 or 4 providers--The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a report on Tuesday that says there is effective competition in the mobile wireless industry, though the number of major service providers may drop from four to three (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile-Sprint)--TheHill.com.

•  EU wants tech firms to police the Internet | euobserver.com: "the move - a non-binding recommendation issued on Thursday (28 September) - has attracted criticism from pro-free speech defenders, who question the role of companies in policing online content given the diverging laws throughout member states ... [but] the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights clarifies free speech to include the right to offend, to shock, to disturb the state or any part of the population."

•  Turkey Opens a New Page for Monitoring E-Commerce Activities by Introducing the Electronic Commerce Information System | Lexology.com

•  Tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce pledged $50 million each to U.S. President Trump's STEM education initiative--TheHill.com

5) Top 3 Most Read posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com: 

1. News Review: ICANN Interactive Webinar, Editor's Comment on DNS Abuse

2. Europol Report: 2017 Top Threat In Cybercrime Epidemic Is Ransomware

3. Tez, Google's New Digital Payment App for India (video)

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

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Coalition Letter Urging Congress To Sue NTIA and Delay IANA Transition

"We agree that Internet governance should work from the bottom up, driven by the global community of private sector, civil society and technical stakeholders. But that “multistakeholder” model is fragile. Without robust safeguards, Internet governance could fall under the sway of governments hostile to freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Ominously, governments will gain a formal voting role in ICANN for the first time when the new bylaws are implemented. NTIA has expressed its approval of this expanded role for governments in ICANN."--Coalition Letter (embed below)

A host of organizations and individuals, including Esther Dyson, ICANN's founding Chairman (1998-2000), and Brett Schaefer (Heritage Foundation), active participant in ICANN's CCWG-Accountability WS1 process which is part of the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal approved in June by NTIA (pdf), have written a "coalition letter" (embed below) to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, urging them to sue NTIA (U.S. Department of Commerce and Obama Administration):

"... Sen. Grassley and Rep. Goodlatte are correct: if NTIA allows the [IANA functions] contract to lapse, it will have violated federal law.* The decision to abandon an 18-year contractual relationship governing the Internet has obviously consumed significant NTIA resources, both to fund outside experts and to pay for time spent on the issue and on NTIA employees making a decision about whether to extend the contract. Again, Administrator Strickling himself acknowledged that the rider “does restrict NTIA from using appropriated dollars to relinquish our stewardship…. [of IANA].” Congress should make clear that it will sue to enforce the funding prohibition. As it did in 2014, the House needs to vote to authorize Speaker Ryan to sue to defend its Article I powers — not only the Power of the Purse but also the sole right to dispose of federal property, which the IANA function may well be. A federal court could issue a writ of mandamus, ordering NTIA to exercise the option to renew the contract, or a declaratory judgment that, if the IANA contract terminates, the IANA function contract rights revert to NTIA, not to ICANN. Such a ruling could effectively unwind the Transition. Congress should also renew the funding prohibition for FY2017 so that it has time to properly conduct its own assessment of whether ICANN is ready for the Transition. We acknowledge that the Administration's actions have raised expectations that the Transition is imminent and there will be some frustration in the ICANN community if the IANA contract is renewed again (as it was last summer). But far greater disruption would result if a U.S. court forced the reversal of the Transition after the fact. Rushing the Transition could also prove more disruptive than delaying it—for instance, by delegitimizing ICANN if its new governance structure proves too weak or fractious, or if ICANN becomes more vulnerable to antitrust lawsuits due to the expiration of its contractual relationship with the U.S. government ..." Coalition Letter (embed below)(emphasis added)

*citing in a footnote: "31 USC § 1341(a)(1)(A). See also 31 U.S.C § 1350 (fines up to $5,000 and prison terms up to 2 years)."

31 USC § 1341(a)(1) An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not—(A) make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation;

Coalition Letter (highlighting added):



See also: ICANN, NTIA, IANA Transition, Fundamental Problems, the Macro View | DomainMondo.com 16 July 2016

and ICANN Board Transmits IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal and Enhancing ICANN Accountability Recommendations to NTIA | ICANN.org March 10, 2016


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ICANN, Esther Dyson, Becky Burr: The Historical Perspective

The previous post on Domain Mondo contained this short notice about Becky Burr's election to the ICANN Board of Directors, replacing Bruce Tonkin whose term expires in November, 2016:

Source: News Review [April 17]: dotAFRICA, Public Interest, Judge Holds ICANN Accountable | DomainMondo.com

For those familiar with the history of ICANN, J. Beckwith ("Becky") Burr plays an important role. Her bio on the ccNSO webpage includes this (links and emphasis added):

J. Beckwith ("Becky") Burr is a [former] partner in the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. Becky, who is a veteran of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), has broad experience in e-commerce, information technology, intellectual property licensing, and international regulation of communications and information technology. As Attorney-Advisor at the Federal Trade Commission (January 1995 - June 1997), Becky was responsible for competition and consumer protection policy in connection with information industry/electronic information infrastructure. At the Commission, she participated in developing the FTC's approach to competition and consumer protection in the digital marketplace. At the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA"), first as Senior Internet Policy Advisor (June 1997 - December 1997) and subsequently as Associate Administrator and Director of International Affairs (December 1997 -October 2000), Becky was responsible for domestic and international policy related to Internet and information technology. As the chief NTIA official in the Clinton Administration's inter-agency task force on e-commerce, she was responsible for development and implementation of Administration policy on privacy, as well as Internet governance and privatization of the Internet domain name system.

Burr was at the NTIA when Jon Postel sent his email to 8 (of then 12) global DNS root zone server operators, asking them to change the authoritative Internet root zone server from NSI's A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET (198.41.0.4) to DNSROOT.IANA.ORG (198.32.1.98), a request with which the 8 operators complied, thereby running the global Internet in parallel on 2 separate, but identical root zones, for a short time:

"... One of the reconfigured servers is located at the University of Maryland at College Park ... Gerry Sneeringer, the assistant director for networking for the university's Academic Information Technologies Service, said he received an e-mail message last week from Postel asking that the change be made. "If Jon asks us to point somewhere else, we'll do it," Sneeringer said. "He is the authority here." Akira Kato, a researcher at the University of Tokyo who runs another root server, said in a telephone interview that he, too, reconfigured his server after getting an e-mail from Postel. J. Beckwith Burr, a [U.S. government] Commerce Department official who co-authored the administration's report, said the incident "caused a lot of concern ... We have asked that the system be returned to the situation it was in before and that no such tests are to be undertaken without consultation again."..." --The Day Jon Postel Freed The Internet Root From US Government Control | DomainMondo.com

Burr, now Deputy General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at Neustar, is a Registry Stakeholder Group member of the CCWG-Accountability, and has been an active contributor to Work Stream 1 (WS1), including even addressing the murky history of the United States government's involvement with the Internet Root Zone: see What Is The US Government's Claim to the Internet Root? | DomainMondo.com.

Below is the correspondence from Burr, and Esther Dyson, ICANN Board of Directors founding Chair, in 1998. At that time, it appeared the IANA stewardship transition from the U.S. government to ICANN would be accomplished in a short period of time. What happened? The same issues that were raised by NTIA's Becky Burr in 1998, still plague a dysfunctional ICANN in 2016: transparency, accountability, conflicts of interest, true representation of, and participation by, the global internet community, etc., even jurisdiction! It is truly amazing how little progress ICANN has made, and even regressed in some aspects, since 1998. Esther Dyson, like many others, gave up on ICANN ever achieving Jon Postel's (and others') original vision for the organization, due to the conflicts of interest and domain name industry capture of ICANN structures and processes, the new gTLDs program being the final straw:

".... a financial conflict of interest that continues to this day: ICANN subsists on the very industry it purports to govern. [Esther] Dyson says she “lost any faith, over time,” in ICANN’s ability to regulate the domain-name business." source: ICANN's Boondoggle | MIT Technology Review, August 21, 2012

Embedded below is the letter from Burr, and the response from Dyson, in 1998:

See also on Domain Mondo: 

• ICANN, Greedsters, new gTLDs, and the BIG LIE
• Esther Dyson Told ICANN new gTLDs were a mistake in 2011 (video)
• ICANN Was Originally Intended To Be A Membership Organization

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ICANN Was Originally Intended To Be A Membership Organization

One of the tragic facts in ICANN's history is that Jon Postel died before ICANN's first Board of Directors meeting:

"Without Postel as its peacekeeper, ICANN had trouble raising money and was forced to survive on fees from Network Solutions and a new crop of domain-name registrars that grew up under ICANN’s oversight, [Esther] Dyson says. Thus was born a financial conflict of interest that continues to this day: ICANN subsists on the very industry it purports to govern. Dyson says she “lost any faith, over time,” in ICANN’s ability to regulate the domain-name business." (source: MIT Technology Review)

One of the issues the Enhancing ICANN Accountability Cross Community Working Group (CCWG-Accountability) is now grappling with is whether ICANN should have an empowered membership capable of removing directors, etc. A look back indicates that is what was originally intended--

Resources - ICANN: Articles of Incorporation of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - As Revised November 21, 1998:  ".... 9. These Articles may be amended by the affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of the directors of the Corporation. When the Corporation has members, any such amendment must be ratified by a two-thirds (2/3) majority of the members voting on any proposed amendment." (emphasis added)

Also note the original ICANN Bylaws (6 Nov 1998): "ARTICLE II: MEMBERSHIP (This Article is reserved for use when the Corporation has members.)" (emphasis added)

In fact, ICANN staff produced a memo dated August 11, 1999, outlining options for membership as provided in the ICANN Articles and Bylaws then in effect:

"Analysis: Statutory Members Versus Nonstatutory Members for the ICANN AT-Large Membership .... One of the fundamental issues underlying the development of a process to create an ICANN "membership" that will select At-Large Directors of ICANN is to determine precisely what rights and/or powers those "members" will have... II. Rights of Statutory Members - California law provides that certain specific rights and powers automatically belong to any "member" of a non-profit corporation. A "member" includes "any person who, pursuant to a specific provision of a corporation's articles or bylaws, has the right to vote for the election of a director or directors or . . . has the right to vote on changes to the articles or bylaws." (5056). If the ICANN "membership" was created without any explicit limitations on these rights or powers, an ICANN member would be a Statutory Member, as we are using that term here, and would have the following rights and powers, as set forth in the California Nonprofit Corporation Law:
....
6. Members may bring derivative actions, subject to the usual conditions. (5710) No bond shall be required if enough members bring the action. (5710)
7. Most amendments to articles must be approved by Board and members (and any other persons specified in articles). (e.g. SOs). (5812)
8. Board must send annual report (as defined in 6321) to members within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year. (6321)
9. Membership lists and accounting books and records and minutes must be made available to members for proper purposes. (6330, 6333 and 6338)
10. Members may amend the bylaws; however, the bylaws may provide that the amendment may occur only with the approval of a specified person other than the Board. (e.g. SOs). ( 5150) Note, however, that the Board may amend the bylaws without the approval of members unless the action would materially and adversely affect the right of members as to voting or transfer.
11. Directors elected by members may be removed by members. (5222)
12. The bylaws must specify a quorum requirement. (5512)
13. Members can bring legal actions to....." (emphasis added)

In less than three months after the staff memo above was issued, the ICANN Board of Directors amended the ICANN Bylaws to prevent any possibility of "members"--

October 29. 1999, amended bylaws: "ARTICLE II: MEMBERSHIP - Section 1. GENERAL - The Corporation shall not have members..." (emphasis added)

Today the applicable bylaw provision preventing members is in Article XVII:

ICANN Bylaws: "ARTICLE XVII: MEMBERS - ICANN shall not have members, as defined in the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law ("CNPBCL"), notwithstanding the use of the term "Member" in these Bylaws, in any ICANN document, or in any action of the ICANN Board or staff." (emphasis added)

And the rest is history. One of the ways ICANN was "captured" by special interests, was the elimination of any possibility of membership by amending the bylaws to prevent "membership." Now, the CCWG-Accountability is trying to "re-invent the wheel" and reform ICANN into what had originally been intended.

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New gTLDs, ICANN Boondoggle, MIT Technology Review

Now that we know ICANN knowingly compromised Internet stability and security just to make money off its new gTLDs--time for a look to the recent past and some of the warnings ICANN had before it made the worst decision in its 16+ year history--

ICANN's Boondoggle | MIT Technology Review: (August 21, 2012) "... It’s [new gTLDs expansion] happening because the body in charge of these things—the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN—thought it would be fun and profitable. That may sound flip, but it’s the simplest explanation for the coming chaos... ICANN is itself a monopoly... There is no general shortage of Web addresses. If there were, we might have seen businesses flocking to other new domains ICANN has already introduced over the past decade [.INFO, .BIZ, .MOBI, etc.]. ICANN says it’s opening up these domains to promote competition and choice in the domain-name industry. But confusion and profiteering are the more likely results... there’s a lot of money to be made now, starting with the fees that marketers, lawyers, and consultants familiar with the domain-name business have already begun to extract from big brands... Through all this, ICANN could also cash in... $357 million in application fees that the Los Angeles–based organization has already collected... What amazing new benefits will all this spending bring to consumers? None whatsoever, at least in the eyes of venture investor Esther Dyson, who served as chair of ICANN from its inception in 1998 until 2000. Dyson once supported the idea of allowing companies to create arbitrary top-level domains, but she says she came to believe that the change would be unnecessary and confusing for the public. “I don’t think it’s illegal, but it’s wasteful,” she says. “One version of the future is: a lot of people spend a lot of money marketing [new gTLD domain names], and a lot of new consultancies are created, and a lot of lawyers are very busy protecting and enforcing property rights, and there is no net benefit to anybody.”... Who gave ICANN the power to make this mess? The U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the ultimate keeper of the root zone file... Thus was born a financial conflict of interest that continues to this day: ICANN subsists on the very industry it purports to govern. Dyson says she “lost any faith, over time,” in ICANN’s ability to regulate the domain-name business..." (emphasis added, read more here)

Welcome to ICANN's Depraved.New.World --



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New gTLDs, Name Collisions, How ICANN Broke The Internet (video)

Esther Dyson, founding Chairman (1998 to 2000) of the ICANN Board of Directors, on ICANN's new gTLDs program: "... we are not running out of domains. This is a “way for registries and registrars to make money”... “there are huge trademark issues. I just think it is offensive..." (2011)

The Recorder September 8, 2014: Stephen Coates, Twitter Inc.'s first in-house trademark lawyer: "... My hire also coincided with the opening of the new gTLD (generic top-level domain) space, which created several special problems for Twitter. Q: Can you explain what that is? A: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing body that runs the domain name and the world of the Internet, decided to open up applications for new gTLDs, with anything to the right of the "dot."... "dot" Microsoft, "dot" App... Twitter didn't file any new applications, so we don't have any new gTLDs, but for defensive reasons and strategic marketing reasons, we are buying a lot of domain names anyway. With those new gTLDs, there have been some challenges, the chief of which for Twitter was "name collision." Q: What is name collision? A: Name collision is a list of 2,000 to 3,000 names and numbers that ICANN has deemed as creating security risks on the Internet, with very technical issues. ICANN is multiplying the number of [top-level domains] out there... so when you have all these new TLDs, what is that going to mean for the Internet? Is it going to break? These are the questions that have been asked for several years and the problem with name collision is that it included a lot of brands, including "Twitter" and "tweet."..."


Top YouTube comment to the video above: "Stunning. This is saying, in a nutshell "Do you use default domain suffixes and short names in your network? Yeah - we're gonna break that, hard. Deal with it." I'm sorry - the way I expect most of us to deal with it is to stub out the new domains at the border DNS servers, at least for our production networks. It is, in fact, what I've already done. So - anyone buying a .prod domain will be invisible to my network, sorry you wasted the money. In the long term, we'll adapt - but it's going to be a decade before a domain in .prod (for example) is actually reachable by many networks. And .corp is going up in May 2015! That's another that's going to be widely broken." 

ICANN 50: Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework from ICANN June 23, 2014

More Info:
Resources - ICANN: "Name Collision Resources & Information"

https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/name-collision-02aug13-en.pdf

ICANN: "Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework"

See also: domainmondo.com: ".... Claim: ICANN New gTLDs: "One of ICANN's key commitments is to promote competition in the domain name market while ensuring Internet security and stability."
Fact: ICANN has damaged the competitive domain name marketplace, and degraded Internet security and stability, by its incompetent and irresponsible flooding of the domain name ecosystem with more than 1000 new gTLDs [see ICANN: "the internet will explode"]."

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Drinking the Kool-Aid With Frank Schilling

Time to pause and drink some Frank Schilling Kool-Aid on a hot summer day--I love Twitter and almost everybody loves Frank (even if you disagree with him)--so here's a selection of his Tweets (and 1 Retweet-- being the first one below) with a little Domain Mondo commentary in-between:

Best Deal for .XYZ Registrations looks to be at Uniregistry http://t.co/dA8gpmSTUV http://t.co/MJiiTC8XXt
— The Domains (@thedomains) June 3, 2014

LOL! Little did they know!

.XYZ available today at http://t.co/GnbSDUs9PR just $8.88!
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) June 2, 2014

Some names are clearly better than others, but the best names are usually the ones you own.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) May 28, 2014

Meaning the ones Frank owns!

Domain Names are the real estate of the Web. Absolutely no question. Control all the domain names and you control the Internet.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) May 26, 2014

CONTROL them ALL Dr. No--err--Mr. Frank!

.com names will always be with us. Heroes never die. But new protagonists are emerging. Bet on all of them.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) May 8, 2014

"Bet on all of them"--oh yeah, real good advice for investors or gamblers!

Will new domain-names impact existing .com prices? Bringing more diamonds out of the ground does not make the price of diamonds go down.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) May 5, 2014

Uh, Frank, you better check with De Beers on that one.

I bought some of my best domain names after having a glass of wine in front of the computer. I bought some of my worst after the third glass
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) March 3, 2014

Imagine that!

Marketing for .SEXY and .TATTOO begin March 8th. At $19.99, anything good .SEXY will be gone in a year.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 27, 2014

Notice Frank doesn't predict the same for .TATTOO - #newgTLD remorse?

If you knew how little people thought about you - you wouldn't worry what people think of you.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 21, 2014

For follow-up see this

2015: .info shrinks, com flatlines, some NewG accidentally GA's a name they need + barters premium to get it back. Biz gets beat by a New G.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 15, 2014

"2015 ... com flatlines" = Frank heavy into the Kool-Aid

.com will always be the yardstick other names are measured by, but in future .com will not always rank at the top of that measure.
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 12, 2014

OK, what will be at the top of that measure? .TATTOO? LOL!

domain advice: It's not a good generic GTLD unless it works for toiletpaper. toiletpaper.bike = fail toiletpaper.shop = pass
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 10, 2014

A psychiatrist could have a field day psychoanalyzing the above--I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole!

.guru has passed .coop in registration volume in 2 days. and guru is not 'that' strong a string
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 6, 2014

Yes, it's called fools and their money

Esther Dyson completely out of her depth. Compare this future: http://t.co/krjtqSp5rk to her views on the matter: http://t.co/jRGYH1kaL8
— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) February 21, 2014

I'm not getting between Frank and Esther Dyson!

Have a good weekend--you too, Frank!

-- John Poole, Domain Mondo

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Esther Dyson Told ICANN new gTLDs were a mistake in 2011 (video)

If video (below) does not show or play, go to the link below.

Esther Dyson On New Top-Level Domains: “There Are Huge Trademark Issues” | TechCrunch: "Esther Dyson, who was the founding chairwoman of ICANN (among other things) doesn’t like the new top-level domains ... approved by ICANN. ... The thing is, we are not running out of domains. This is a “way for registries and registrars to make money,” says Dyson. She also points out that “there are huge trademark issues. I just think it is offensive. If I own a trademark, now I have to go register it on 2,800 domains. It will create a lot of litigation.”" (go to link above if video does not show or play)

See also: Esther Dyson 2011 Testimony on new gTLDs, US Senate

So ICANN did not listen to its founding chairwoman, and sold out the public interest to hucksters!

"You can't just leave those who created the problems, in charge of the solutions."  --Tyree Scott


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ICANN, Greedsters, new gTLDs, and the BIG LIE

First the BIG LIE --

New Web suffixes set to enter market - Erin Mershon - POLITICO.com: “... For a lot of businesses, we’ve just simply run out of available names,” said Cyrus Namazi, vice president for industry engagement at ICANN. “You won’t find [the name you want] in a .com or .net. You have to hyphenate something or change your string.”

That's not true. Guess what I buy, and only buy? Hand reg dot coms! They are available all over the place. And dot net -- hardly touched! What a bunch of BS is being spewed by ICANN, Cyrus Namazi, and the greedsters behind the new gTLDs.

But let's continue:

But others argue the program will mainly create a host of new jobs for lawyers . . . without adding much value to the Internet. Consumers aren’t clamoring for the new names . . . “Half the time [consumers] type Facebook into their search bar anyway,” said Esther Dyson, a former ICANN chairman who opposed the expansion. “I don’t think it’s adding a huge amount of value. Adding [these strings] is likely just to get confusing.” Dyson sees much more value in a less glitzier aspect of the expansion — the addition of internationalized domain names.

Now the truth:

Even the most aggressive applicants say they aren’t aiming to knock .com off its perch, at least right away. “Even though the Internet is only about 20 years old, our minds have been programmed, for all practical purposes, to end our urls with a .com,” Namazi said. “And for that mindset to change, it’s going to take some time.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/new-web-suffixes-set-to-enter-market-101601.html#ixzz2oyxa3zyJ

-- John Poole, Domain Mondo, January 5, 2014

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