News Review: 1) .AFRICA Case Update; 2) ICANN Dysfunction Alive & Well

Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

Features • 1) .AFRICA Case Update, 2) Tweet of the Week: ICANN Dysfunction Alive & Well, 3) ICANN Board Report, 4) Names, Domains & Trademarks: Google & googlee, 5) ICANN's Remit & Human Rights, 6) New gTLD .FEEDBACK, 7)ICYMI, 8) Neustar $NSR merger, 9) ICANN Public Comment Periods, 10) Most Popular.

1) New gTLD .AFRICA Litigation Case Update: "It ain't over till it's over"--Yogi Berra

Excerpt from Court's Order of March 21, 2017

For more: DotConnectAfrica Trust v. ICANN (Trial Court Proceeding) | ICANN.org: Order Approving Stipulation Staying Discovery and Continuing the Trial Date [PDF, 681 KB] 21 March 2017.

2) Tweet of the Week: ICANN Dysfunction Alive & Well (transcript of ICANN58 interaction):

A Picture of Dysfunctional @ICANN Leadership Compounded By Incompetence at #ICANN58 https://t.co/mx0vzo3UYc #domains #netgov #ICANN pic.twitter.com/ygdjPuBTS1

— Domain Mondo (@DomainMondo) March 24, 2017

Background: News Review: ICANN Secretly Colludes With New gTLD Registry Operators 17 Jul 2016

3) ICANN Board Report March 2017 (pdf)

Excerpt: As of the end of January 2017, ICANN org has 367 people, which is 19 people less than the FY17 year end budget projection of 386. Over the last three months, 13 joined and another 8 left. ICANN Organization by Locations: As of January 31 2016 [sic], North America Offices & Remote consists of 218 people (79%) in Los Angeles office, 29 in Washington DC office, 28 work remotely in US, 1 works remotely in Canada, totaling 275 (75% of the total organization).

source: ICANN.org

4) Names, Domains & Trademarks:

•  Google's 'googlee' infringement case | barandbench.com:

“Is a “Googlee” a “wrong one”? A cricket enthusiast will say, “Yes of course.” In the virtual world too, the answer is well, yes, as the Petitioner, Mr. Gulshan Khatri found to his consternation, when he used it as a domain name: ‘googlee.in’.”--Delhi High Court’s Justice S Muralidhar in his domain name infringement decision in favor of Google.

•  Rebranding Your Law Firm: How a 150-Year-Old Firm Gave Itself a Makeover | JDSupra.com: "To have a successful website, we felt we must first have the appropriate domain ... We were successful in acquiring www.bradley.com even though it was originally registered with a foreign corporation."
•  End of the road for UDRP for copyright? | Lexology.com
•  China's Chery files trademark complaint against Mercedes over green car brand | Reuters.com--Mercedes-Benz is using the "EQ" name for a line of green-energy vehicles while Chery has used the name "eQ" for its two-door battery electric car for two years. Editor's Note: EQ.com is registered via GoDaddy to an individual in China but does not resolve.
•   Amazon Chime team responds to trademark suit, claims it wasn't aware of competing Chime service | GeekWire.com: "An Amazon Web Services employee claims the company had never heard of CafeX Communications and its competing Chime service when it decided to christen its new set of conferencing and collaboration tools Amazon Chime." Editor's note: neither Amazon nor CafeX are the registrant of chime.com (Chime Interactive).
•  That Taylor Swift Spotify-Rival Rumor, Explained by a Trademark Lawyer | VanityFair.com: "But if the filing that you may or may not use is likely to go public and possibly get misconstrued, why trademark at all?

“She needs that [trademark] registration for enhanced policing,” explained Schwimmer. “And there’s another thing, which is: you need registrations to get intermediaries to pay attention to you. So if you go to Amazon and want to take down stuff; you go to a domain name company or eBay, and you want them to take down the infringing stuff, [the companies] don't want to have to evaluate whether you are the real whatever. The easiest thing is to say, ‘Here is my trademark registration.’ ”" (emphasis added)

5) ICANN's Remit & Human Rights:

"... ICANN’s remit is limited to coordinating the allocation and assignment of Domain names, Internet Protocol(IP) addresses, Autonomous System (AS) numbers, and protocol port and parameter numbers. [See ICANN Bylaws] The SSAC believes that assessments based on content accessed through these unique identifiers should not be in scope for discussions regarding Human Rights for the ICANN organization. This may be different from the interests or remits of some stakeholder groups and their members. The SSAC believes strongly that any binding language that holds ICANN accountable to Human Rights values should fall within the scope of ICANN’s limited remit, and implemented via a Human Rights Impact Assessment followed by the development of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy for ICANN. This CSR policy should cover the processes governing ICANN community participation, as well as the ICANN corporation itself ..."--ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committtee--SAC092: SSAC Input to the Cross Community Working Group onAccountability Work Stream 2, Human Rights (pdf) (emphasis added)

6) New gTLD .FEEDBACK:

ICANN Compliance 16 March 2017: ICANN Sends Notice of Breach to Registry (Top Level Spectrum, Inc.) (pdf). A Test of ICANN's Public Safety and Unfair Competition Mechanism as a Remedy in Consumer Protection Disputes With Registry Operators .Feedback | MayerBrown.com--Article (pdf) first published in the Third Edition, Volume 2, Number 1 of The Brand Protection Professional (BPP) on 20 March 2017. PICDRP Exhibits | markmonitor.com:

• FEEDBACK - PICDRP Complaint - Long Form (pdf)
• FEEDBACK PICDRP Complaint - Exhibits (pdf)
• FEEDBACK PICDRP Complaint Form - Short - Final (pdf)

7)  ICYMI Internet Domain News Quick Takes--

• Amazon.com will collect sales taxes nationwide starting April 1 | cnbc.com
• ICANN Complaint System Easily Gamed | circleid.com
• Domain Name Security Rollover Is on Track Despite Worries | BNA.com: despite possible service disruptions, the switch to the new Key Signing Key (KSK) is on track for Oct. 11, 2017
• Independent Review Process Documents | ICANN.org: CEP and IRP Status Update – 16 March 2017 [PDF, 427 KB]
• GoDaddy slashes website-making tool rates by up to 75 pc | outlookindia.com
• How a website can expand your business overseas | Startups.co.uk: "Expanding overseas can be a daunting task for any start-up. Here's how a .com website can be used to aid this transition and achieve global presence"
• Inside the Hunt for Russia's Most Notorious Hacker | WIRED.com: "the uncomfortable truth is that Bogachev and other Russian cybercriminals lie pretty far beyond America’s reach"

8) Neustar $NSR merger: Stockholders of Neustar, a domain registry and technology services company, voted to approve the previously announced definitive merger agreement, dated as of December 14, 2016, by the terms of which a private investment group led by Golden Gate Capital will acquire Neustar. At the special meeting held on March 14, 2017, approximately 82% of Neustar shares outstanding and entitled to vote at the meeting were voted in favor of the adoption of the merger agreement. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Neustar’s stockholders will be entitled to receive $33.50 per share upon the closing of the proposed merger. The merger is expected to close no later than the end of the third quarter of 2017, subject to the receipt of required regulatory approvals and the satisfaction or waiver of other customary closing conditions.--Neustar.biz

9) ICANN Public Comment Periods that close 30 Mar - 1 May 2017 (subject to change):

• GNSO Initial Report on the IGO-INGO Access to Curative Rights Protection Mechanisms Policy Development Process Close Date 30 Mar 2017 23:59 UTC 
• Reference Japanese Label Generation Rules (LGR) for the Second Level Close Date 31 Mar 2017 23:59 UTC 
• Recommendations to Improve ICANN's Transparency 10 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC 
• Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Implementation Guidelines 17 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC 
• Interim Paper Cross-Community Working Group on Use of Names of Countries and Territories as Top Level Domains 21 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC 
• Enhancing Accountability Guidelines for Good Faith 24 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC 
• Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team Draft Report of Recommendations for New gTLDs 27 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC 
• ICANN's Draft FY18 Operating Plan and Budget, and Five-Year Operating Plan Update 28 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC 
• GNSO Community Comment 2 (CC2) on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process: 1 May 2017 23:59 UTC 

10)  Most popular post (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com: News Review: New gTLDs Failing, ICANN58 Ends, ICANN in La La Land

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER

News Review: New gTLDs Failing, ICANN58 Ends, ICANN in La La Land

Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

Features •  1. New gTLDs Failing, 2. ICANN58 ends, 3. Important Skills for ICANN Board Members, 4. ICANN CEO Goran Marby re: ICANN data, 5. More ICANN Dysfunction & Incompetence,  6. New gTLDs .CORP, .HOME and .MAIL, 7. LAC DNS Marketplace Study, 8. Amazon.com in Spanish, 9. ICANN in La La Land, 10. Internet Domain News Quick Takes, 11. Three most popular posts, 12. One Last Thing.

1. New gTLDs Failing (new generic top-level domains)--nTLD extensions are already failing | reddit.com--one comment out of many: "nTLD extensions are already failing ... Everyone said the new TLDs were nothing but a money grabbing scheme by the ICANN ... It seems now, some nTLDs seem to be already failing with less than 5,000 active domains and dropping, barely to keep the costs active and they are increasing renewal prices to keep the boat afloat"--For background see last week's 4. Uniregistry plans to hike prices up to 3000% for some new gTLDs.

ICANN's "Grand" Millstone

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.--Mike Tyson

Follow-up:

• GoDaddy drops Uniregistry domain names due to price hike | DomainNameWire.com--excerpt from one comment--"They [new gTLDs] will now all join .mobi in the big TLD cesspool in the cloud ... The internet will be a better place without them." (emphasis added)
• GoDaddy New gTLD Registration Number is Telling | DomainInvesting.com "... the number of daily new gTLD registrations at GoDaddy [the world's largest domain name registrar] is not growing ..." 
• Hint: new gTLDs don't have a "lack of awareness" problem--if anything, registrants are increasingly only too aware of the rip-off that most new gTLDs are--from "universal acceptance" problems to unpredictable and predatory new gTLD domain names' pricing--giving new gTLD registry operators carte blanche authority to "rape and pillage" the global domain name marketplace and domain name registrants worldwide, may be ICANN's sicko idea of the way to operate in the global public interest and "to promote global innovation, competition and consumer choice," but ICANN is dead wrong.
• WIPO: Cybersquatting Cases Hit Record in 2016, Driven by New Top-Level Domain Names | wipo.int--ICANN must be so proud!
• As a domain name industry prophet once said, "Mistakes ALWAYS happen before you even set sail."  The mistakes ICANN made in its new gTLDS program, were fundamental and foundational, long before the first new gTLDs came into general availability in early 2014. Yes, Frank Schilling and many others, "drank the Kool-Aid" that ICANN was offering, but it is ICANN that is most responsible for this mess. ICANN was warned, repeatedly, by many, including Esther Dyson (ICANN's founding Board Chair), the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (see this 2011 letter to ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom) (pdf), as well as FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, and this 2008 U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division letter attached to the Commerce Department Letter (pdf) to then ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush, excerpt:

Excerpt from 2008 Letter from U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division
See also: News Review: ICANN Used 'Junk Science' Firm to Justify New gTLDs

One thing is now clear, all of the problems related to, or caused by new gTLDs, are increasingly consuming ICANN's time and resources--from policy-making and reviews, to disputes, IRPs, and litigation, to a myriad of other issues that ICANN failed to "think through" before rolling out its ill-conceived and misbegotten new gTLDs program--and most stakeholders who had objections or serious reservations about the new gTLDs program all along, have since left ICANN, including its "ICANN community," leaving mostly just a gaggle of special interest lawyers and lobbyists, domain name industry "professionals" and a cadre of professional "volunteers"--ICANN pays airfare, hotel, and per diem expenses for an unbelievable number of people to show up at ICANN junkets a/k/a "meetings" (example: ICANN57 (pdf) "travel support"=$918,292.60)  to fill seats, and make it look like ICANN multistakeholderism "works." From appearances at any ICANN gathering, one might think the domain name industry supports new gTLDs unreservedly, the reality is very, very different: There’s no way to sugar-coat it, today we are an industry divided | MorganLinton.com. It's just that ICANN has muffled and driven away the dissenting voices. That's the way "ICANN consensus" in reality works. For those of us "observing" ICANN, it's like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Tip to the wise: watch China's moves between now and the 2018 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference.

2. ICANN58--something is rotten in the state of Denmark--ended Thursday in Copenhagen:

ICANN58 highlights:

a. The failing new gTLD Registry Operators are now seeking financial support from ICANN in the form of reduced fees, and a marketing "awareness" program (which would likely violate ICANN's 501(c)(3) status and other legal prohibitions)--"only 63 new gTLDs have registered in excess of 50,000 names ... literally many hundreds with fewer than 10,000 registrations" (highlighting added):

b. ICANN Dysfunction is Alive and Well: ICANN CEO Goran Marby and ICANN GDD President Akram Atallah blow off ICANN stakeholder Denise Michel's comments and questions about dysfunctional processes of ICANN's Global Domains Division (GDD), ICANN staff ignoring and bypassing ICANN Community and others' objections to amendments to the new gTLD base Registry Agreement:

Source of above: ICANN Copenhagen GNSO Commercial Stakeholder Group (CSG) Meeting Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 9:00 CET transcript (pdf) pp,18-20.

c. New gTLD .WEB:

#ICANN58 GAC/Board, J Jeffrey: US DoJ sent civil investigation demand, re Verisign role in .web, to ICANN & other parties in community.

— Samantha Dickinson (@sgdickinson) March 15, 2017

d. GAC:  CENTR Report on ICANN58 (updated pdf download at link)(excerpt below):

CENTR Report on ICANN58 p. 4

#ICANN58 GAC: as temporary solution to independent secretariat funding gap, GAC members are agreeing to limit work that ACIG does this year

— Samantha Dickinson (@sgdickinson) March 15, 2017

The ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has 171 members, and 35 observers but only 59 GAC members (35% participation rate with half or more of those receiving ICANN "travel support" (airfare, hotel, per diem stipend) based on ICANN57 data) and only 9 observers (26% participation rate) attended ICANN58--source: GAC Communique (pdf). Accordingly, it appears most governments are not actively participating in the GAC, and, not surprisingly, the GAC secretariat lacks sufficient financial funding. Wither ICANN?

e. Best Quote of ICANN58: ICANN is a prison--

#ICANN58 Glen de Saint Géry: People say that #ICANN is like a life sentence. But I've never felt imprisoned at all.

— Samantha Dickinson (@sgdickinson) March 16, 2017

More ICANN58 info, including the GAC Communique, here.

3.  Important Skills for ICANN Board Members--guidance from the ICANN Board to the Nominating Committee (highlighting added)--apparently past and present ICANN Board members lack some or all of these skills. Surprised?

4. Letter from ICANN CEO Goran Marby re: ICANN data (highlighting added):

5.  More ICANN Dysfunction & Incompetence: 

• Letter from Patrick Baumann to Chris Disspain | ICANN.org New gTLD .SPORT--Issue: Final Declaration regarding dot Sport Limited v. ICANN Independent Review Process--baumann-to-disspain-01mar17-en.pdf[467 KB].
• Letter from Mario Paez to ICANN | ICANN.org: New gTLD Application for .GAY--paez-to-icann-08mar17-en.pdf [472 KB].

6.  New gTLDs .CORP, .HOME and .MAIL--comment excerpt on circleid.com: I don't see why marking those domains as "toxic, reserved forever" isn't a valid response. Dumping the contaminated material into a shipping container and tossing it down a black hole's an efficient way of cleaning up the [new gTLDs] mess (emphasis added).--Background: 6 March 2017 Letter to the New gTLD Applicants for .HOME, .CORP, and .MAIL  from Akram Atallah, President, Global Domains Division ICANN re: new gTLD applications for .HOME, .CORP, and .MAIL, in response to Letter from .HOME Registry Inc. et al. to the ICANN Board [Published 26 August 2016].

7.  Publication of the LAC (Latin America & Caribbean) DNS Marketplace Study | ICANN.org: A consortium led by Oxford Information Labs, LACTLD, EURid and InterConnect Communications conducted the final "LAC DNS Study" (pdf, 3.9 MB), study for ICANN. The report identifies seven key drivers of domain name growth for the region:

• Defining and refining the sales channel and reversing the trend of falling numbers of ICANN accredited registrars since 2013;
• Building user awareness of domain names;
• Making registration policies open and simple;
• Providing online payment facilities;
• Ensuring fast activation of new registrations;
• Reasonable and competitive fees; and
• Promotions, marketing, and campaigns.

Unfortunately, this "hit and miss" list just skims the surface, and is misleading because it fails to address some core problems in the region.

8. Amazon.com adding Spanish--the first new language on Amazon.com since the website's creation over 20 years ago--"Customers will be able to shop, browse and search for millions of products, view their shopping cart, and place orders in Spanish on Amazon.com and through the Amazon Mobile Shopping app," an Amazon.com Inc. spokeswoman told CNET.com. The U.S. now has more than 40 million native Spanish speakers and over 10 million bilingual Spanish speakers, making it the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. Amazon, the world's largest e-retailer, is seeking to not only attract the growing Spanish-speaking population in the U.S., but also Mexico, where Amazon recently launched its Prime subscription service for about $46 a year.

9. If you're returning to, or visiting, ‘La La Land’ a/k/a ICANN headquarters anytime soon--

La La Land: gold marker pin shows ICANN headquarters location (click on map or link for larger map)

Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows, Santa Monica, offers “Escape to La La Land” package thru March 31, which includes accommodations in a bungalow, a picnic lunch and a dinner for two, a map of Los Angeles marked with locations where the movie is set and two tickets to a show at the popular jazz club Herb Alpert’s Vibrato Grill & Jazz. From $1,900 a night.--NYTimes.com

10.  Other Internet Domain News Quick Takes:

• If the U.S. Government Can't Get Domain Seizures Right, Why Would Big Pharma Do Better? | Electronic Frontier Foundation | EFF.org
• Puzzling Question of ICANN Formation Jurisdiction Persists | Lexology.com
• Trump's proposed budget (pdf) re: NTIA of the Commerce Dept: "Continues to support the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in representing the United States interest at multi-stakeholder forums on internet governance and digital commerce. The Budget supports the commercial sector’s development of next generation wireless services by funding NTIA’s mission of evaluating and ensuring the efficient use of spectrum by Government users." (p.14)
• India Not Eager to Hop On to China’s Cyber Sovereignty Bandwagon | sputniknews.com March 7, 2017: “As BRICS host this year, China stands ready to work together with Russia and other BRICS partners,” Long Zhou, Coordinator, Cyber Affairs Division of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Beijing.
• Delhi-based Digital Empowerment Foundation has tied up with Google and the Tata Trust to teach e-trading and e-banking to women across select districts of 27 Indian states.--HindustanTimes.com.
• GoDaddy Launches Business Hosting for Fast-Growing Small Businesses | MarketWatch.com
• Dark Web Reported to Have Shrunk by 85% | mascherari.press
• What Is Ransomware? | ICANN.org
• CIA hacking upside? "It appears US spies are using targeted hacking tools in their investigations. The surprise: That could mean your data is safer."--CNET.com
• ITIF: 92% of Top Federal Websites Fail to Meet Security, Speed, Accessibility Standards | executivegov.com: "A new study from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says 92 percent of the U.S. federal government’s most popular websites do not meet basic standards for security, speed, mobile friendliness or accessibility."
• FCC battle over online privacy: Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has introduced a resolution that would kill rules the FCC passed in October to regulate consumer privacy for internet service providers.--CNET.com  
• The World Wide Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, warns it's in peril on 28th anniversary | usatoday.com
• Now That You Have Accessed Digital Assets, Don’t Forget to Value Them | The National Law Review | natlawreview.com: "an increasing number of digital assets have an economic value, for example logos, libraries of digital music, Internet domain names."

11.  Three most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:

1. News Review: 1. Trademark Squatters; 2. ICANN "Highly Political, Toxic"
2. TechReview | WikiLeaks Takes A Big Dump On The CIA (video)
3. LIVE Video Replay: March 15 Federal Reserve FOMC Press Conference

12. One last thing:

"The changing face of the Internet is no longer a matter of public communications, but a matter of public services. And with this observation, we are back to a more basic theme. The essential topic of the conversation is how to strike a sustainable balance between a rapacious private sector that has amassed overarching control of the digital service and content space, and the needs of the larger society in which we all would like some equity of opportunity to thrive and benefit from the outcomes of this new digital age."--Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC (emphasis added)

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER

News Review: 1. Trademark Squatters; 2. ICANN "Highly Political, Toxic"

Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

Features • 1. Domain Name Threats from "Trademark Squatters"; 2. ICANN's Sick, Toxic Organizational Culture; 3. Who should be fired? ICANN Management Organization Chart; 4.  Uniregistry to hike prices for some new gTLDs; 5. Root Stability Study Final Report; 6. Florida passes Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act; 7. Roth conference: Rightside and Web.com; 8. ICANN58, Rightscon, IETF 98; 9. ICANN's CCT Review; 10. Other Internet Domain News; 11. Most Popular Posts.

1. New Domain Name Threats from "Trademark Squatters"

Avoiding trademark and domain name scams | Dentons | JDSupra.com: "... 3. Do not reply to suspicious emails, even to indicate a lack of interest. Scammers use these replies to gather additional information about your company, and to identify which companies they will continue to target .... 6. Be aware that in Canada, trademark laws are changing and it will soon be possible to register a trademark in the country without ever having used it in Canada or anywhere else in the world. This will leave any of your [domain names and] unregistered brands open for exploitation by trademark squatters and pirates ..." (emphasis added)

Incompetent and gullible ICANN has already fallen prey to the "Trademark Squatters"--ICANN's Special Privileges for Trademark Owners are The.Worst | Electronic Frontier Foundation | eff.org: "... ICANN's acquiescence to even the most outlandish demands of the trademark lobby [e.g., IPC and INTA] has also set a precedent enabling some registries to go even further; for example, the registry Donuts (which we recently exposed as an architect of the copyright-blocking Healthy Domains Initiative) offers a DPML-Plus program that allows brand owners to block registrations not only of their registered marks, but also substrings, misspellings and variants of those marks, across hundreds of domains, for a period of ten years. We are aware of no national trademark system anywhere in the world that provides such extensive privileges to brand owners. Neither is there any convincing reason why the domain industry should be providing them with such privileges. Today's letter to ICANN exposes this scam and calls upon ICANN to stop being so solicitous to brand owners at the expense of other legitimate users of the domain name system. In particular, we are very clear that ICANN should not extend the Trademark Clearinghouse to top-level domains that it doesn't already cover, such as the most widely used domains .com, .org, and .net. ..." (emphasis added).

See also: Why Did ICANN Become a Member of Trademark Lobbyist Group INTA? DomainMondo.com 15 Oct 2015.

Letter referenced in the above article embedded below--Trademark Scholars Letter to ICANN GNSO RPM Working Group:

Final note: This Guy Would Fit In Perfectly at ICANN:"One of the attorneys behind the Prenda Law "copyright trolling" scheme has pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and money laundering. After years of denial, John Steele admitted Monday that he and co-defendant Paul Hansmeier made more than $6 million by threatening Internet users with copyright lawsuits ..."--arstechnica.com.

2. ICANN's Sick, Toxic Organizational Culture:

At last count, there are 37 reviews of ICANN on Glassdoor.com and they reveal a sick and toxic organizational culture at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN):

Interesting Work, Nepotism Alive and Well, Lousy Management  "Mar 9, 2017, review by Current ICANN Employee - Project Manager in Los Angeles, CA - I have been working at ICANN full-time (more than 3 years):

• Pros: The work is highly challenging, smart people, unique company like no other in the world, interesting mix of highly technical people, legal talent and everything in between. A bottoms up policy organization with the two largest groups of professionals either having law or engineering degrees. Smart people, learn something new everyday.
• Cons: Far and few respected executive managers. Management is out of touch, get promoted based on relationships, politics, nepotism and incompetence far far far more than other organizations. This company operates like a out-of-control insane 20 person start-up. With a shake-up in management maybe it will grow up to behave like the medium size organization it is.
• Advice to Management--Clean house--Realize who should actually be in management and promote them! Tons and tons of managment does not make for good leadership. Less managers, real leaders would go a long way to make this the great organization it should be." (emphasis added)

Here's another:

Mar 10, 2017,  ICANN: "Where Good Careers go to Die" - Former Employee: I worked at ICANN full-time

• Pros: Highly political if you like that sort of thing.
• Cons: Can be a toxic, draining, soul sucking experience.
• Advice to Management: Fire yourselves.

3.  Who should be fired? ICANN Management Organization Chart, Mar 1, 2017 (pdf) embed:

ICANN organizational culture has definitely been impacted by the conflicts of interest, incompetence, dishonesty and the evident cronyism during the last administration, which reminds me of this past week's comments by Peter Thiel: Globalization is over--just a group of people who "messed up the world"--[ICANN, WEF, or both?]:

"The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war, but even so, I think there are a lot of regulatory challenges that Silicon Valley will be facing from Western Europe and elsewhere in the years ahead ... There's a technological determinism story you can tell where this is the future and China will eventually buckle under and cave and eventually adopt all of these things, but then you might wonder, maybe this doesn't happen at all, and maybe it's possible for the internet to actually fragment and not to have this historical necessity to it ... No one in their right mind would start an organization with the word "global" in its title today, that's so 2005, it feels so dated." --Peter Thiel, Mar 7, 2017, at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston (emphasis added),

To illustrate his point, Thiel took aim at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos: "A decade ago, this was a group of people who were running the world," he said. "And now, it's just a group of people who messed up the world."

4. Uniregistry plans to hike prices up to 3000% for some new gTLDs:

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.--Mike Tyson

Some new gTLDs at Uniregistry getting massive price hikes | gTLD.Link--price increases of up to 3000% starting September 8--which generated negative and angry postings and comments in the domaining blogosphere to which Uniregistry's Frank Schilling finally responded on the blog post titled Frank Schilling just killed the New gTLD domain name program (Warning!) | onlinedomain.com--excerpt (emphasis added):

Frank Schilling: "... Making this change will give us the ability to lower prices and raise them ... our regulator [ICANN] dictates that “raising” prices requires this notice ... When we originally wrote our applications and applied for new gTLD’s, no registry operator knew there would be 1000 applications or that we would have some extensions with under 5,000 registrations. We’re pivoting to deal with that business reality ... There is a real cost to putting on a registry operation ... when we applied we put forth our best plan and best intentions. Now, after a reveal of 1000 extensions and after years of evolution, we are assessing business realities and we are pivoting for the good of our spaces and our registry. I understand that nobody likes that ... I am doing what I need to do for these namespaces to be successful. I also invested (many tens of millions) ... Regarding: “Registrants are not part of your company and are not required to and should not be forced to pivot anything.” When you invest in any namespace you do so under the rules of the registry. The tail doesn’t wag the dog. We have issued a press release to registrars which I hope will explain our repricing of these namespaces further ..." (emphasis added)

I haven't seen any Uniregistry press release about this passed along from registrars to domain name registrants. But at least Frank Schilling has been honest about what's coming. ICANN, most of ICANN's new gTLDs' registry operators, and many of their registrars, abhor transparency when it comes to new gTLDs' price increases. The ill-conceived and misbegotten new gTLDs program has been designed to rip-off domain name registrants from day one, and ICANN is now in the process of removing the last vestige of price increase transparency from its base new gTLDs registry agreement. Also note tweets by @GeorgeKirikos and Rick Schwartz‏ @DomainKing, including this.

Editor's note: I have been warning domain name registrants for years of the pricing unpredictability of new gTLDs, while many domaining bloggers who chose to tout and promote the new gTLDs, are now somehow outraged that this could happen. Caveat Emptor! See also New gTLD Domains, the Walking Dead and Dying, ICANN FY15 Results | DomainMondo.com and my comment less than two weeks ago:

"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, mismanaged the global DNS and damaged the competitive global market for domain names by grossly over-expanding the number of new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), beginning in 2014. As a result, many new gTLD registry operators are financially struggling, and after more than three years, many are still unprofitable."

5. Root Stability Study Final Report Now Available | ICANN.org: Report (pdf) p. 44: "However, the absence of an observed degradation of the security and stability of the root DNS system is no reason to be less cautious for possible future impact of the New gTLD Program ... We advise the New gTLD Program to retain a controlled rate of delegating new gTLDs. Further, we advise more frequent monitoring of the impact of new gTLD delegations, in order to obtain more detailed insight and to identify and respond to events impacting root DNS system stability on a short time scale ..." 

6. Florida Passes the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act | Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP | JDSupra.com: What is a “digital asset? "The Act defines “digital assets” as electronic records that are transmitted or stored on digital devices or the internet. Commonly used digital assets include documents (Adobe PDF, MS Word, spreadsheets, etc.), domain names or blogs, email accounts, social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.), online user accounts (banks, PayPal, Venmo, etc.), and digital currency (for example, credits with online vendors such as iTunes)."

7. Roth conference March 12-15, 2017:

Domain name registrar and registry services provider Rightside $NAME CEO Taryn Naidu, and CFO Tracy Knox, are scheduled to present at the 29th Annual ROTH Conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, CA, on Monday, March 13, 2017, at 7:00 am PT / 10:00 am ET. The presentation will be available through a live audio webcast accessible from the investors section of Rightside's website at http://investors.rightside.co/ (and archived there for 90 days) or here or on the Roth conference website by registering for the webcasts. Almost 500 other companies are presenting, including domain name registrar Web.com Group Inc. $WEB on Monday, March 13, 2017, at 8am PT / 11am ET (available via Roth webcast).

8. Meetings:

• ICANN58 in Copenhagen, Denmark, continues through March 16. More info here.
• RightsCon Summit Series: March 29-31, 2017, Brussels, Belgium. "RightsCon is the world’s leading event on the future of the internet."
• IETF 98: March 26-31, 2017, Swissotel Chicago, 323 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL

9. CCT Review | ICANN.org March 7, 2017: Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team Draft Report of Recommendations for new gTLDs--the full report [PDF, 3.91 MB]; Public Comment Period closes 27 April 2017, excerpt:

"Looking at trust of new gTLDs specifically, the survey found that while consumer end users do not trust new gTLDs nearly as much as they do legacy gTLDs .... The report of draft recommendations makes a distinction between registrants and end-users. Registrants refers to purchasers of domain names, not end-users." .... Key Findings and Recommendations - Data Collection: Formalize and promote ongoing data collection, as the lack of data has handicapped attempts both internally and externally to evaluate market trends and the success of policy recommendations. Competition: ICANN should collect wholesale and retail price data from all gTLD registries and registrars to better inform future CCT reviews. Engage in a systematic collection of data on secondary market prices and country-level data on market competition ..."

10. Internet Domain News Quick Takes:

• Cybercrime Ransomware: An executive guide to one of the biggest menaces on the web | ZDNet.com
• The Limits of Monopoly Power: Google and the Communications Decency Act (CDA): "... as a result of the court’s ruling, Google must be held to the good faith clause of CDA. For a company with an ex-mantra of “Do No Evil,” Google got caught with their pants down ..."--entrepreneur.com referencing E-Ventures Worldwide, LLC v. Google, Inc., Case No: 2:14-cv-646-FtM-29CM  (M.D. Fla.).
• New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP March 2017 Newsletter | gnso.icann.org (pdf)
• Krista Papac, Director of Registry Services and Engagement for ICANN's Global Domains Division, has been named as ICANN's Complaints Officer.--ICANN.org
• CentralNic Group PLC a buy, says Peel Hunt | proactiveinvestors.co.uk: "the broker is more bullish about the group’s acquisition opportunities following the successful purchase of Instra in January of last year."
• ICANN's Draft FY18 Operating Plan and Budget, and Five-Year Operating Plan Update | ICANN.org: Close Date 28 Apr 2017 23:59 UTC
• Attention Domainers & Investors: All of the World's Money and Markets in One Visualization | visualcapitalist.com.

11. Most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:

1. News Review: China Will 'Vigorously' Promote the Reform of ICANN
2. Net Neutrality: Senate Oversight Hearing of the FCC, March 8, 10am ET
3. TechReview | After Snap's Successful $SNAP Tech IPO, Who's Next?
4. Scott Galloway: Snapchat $SNAP Is a Loser & Could 'Torch the Market'

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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News Review: China Will 'Vigorously' Promote the Reform of ICANN

Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

Features •  1. China Will 'Vigorously' Promote the Reform of ICANN; 2. A New Independent Organization for the World's Internet; 3. ICANN & Online Content Regulation; 4a. ICANN "WHOIS Privacy / Domain Registration Extortion"; 4b. Are you an ICANN insider or ICANN outsider? 5. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”--ICANN58;  6. CPH Letter to ICANN Board; 7. ICANN, Verisign & Cyber Sovereignty; 8. Internet's 329.3 Million Domain Names; 9. i2 Coalition Award to Elliot Noss; 10. Internet Society Online Forum; 11. 3 Most Popular Posts.

1. China releases its first strategic report on the internet, saying China "will vigorously promote the reform of ICANN"--

The International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace, jointly issued by the Foreign Ministry and the Cyberspace Administration of China, excerpt below (emphasis added):

"4. Reform of Global Internet Governance System: China will participate in the follow-up of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society [WSIS], support the international community to consolidate consensus and implement the outcomes, ensure equal sharing of the benefits of information society, and list information society building and Internet governance as important items for review. China will push for institutional reform of the UN Internet Governance Forum to enable it to play a greater role in internet governance, strengthen its decision-making capacity, secure steady funding, and introduce open and transparent procedures in its member election and report submission. China will participate in international discussions on fair distribution and management of critical Internet resources. It will vigorously promote the reform of ICANN to make it a truly independent international institution, increase its representations and ensure greater openness and transparency in its decision-making and operation. China will actively participate in and contribute to activities of global Internet governance platforms, such as the "Future of the Internet" Initiative under the World Economic Forum."

See also:

• New policy opposes web hegemony | ChinaDaily.com.cn
• International strategy of cooperation on cyberspace | ChinaDaily.com.cn
• Full Text: International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace | news.xinhuanet.com
• China Describes Its Vision Of Government-Controlled Internet | NPR.org
• China Wants To Rip The Internet Out Of America's Hands | DailyCaller.com

Editor's note: Considering that the U.S. government ceased exercising its "historic stewardship role" over the internet sometime in 2012 coincident with ICANN's decision to proceed with its ill-advised and misbegotten new gTLDs program, and then the U.S. completely abdicated its role at the end of NTIA's "IANA transition" (March, 2014-September, 2016), the field is now clear, and the need is obvious for some kind of multilateral, intergovernmental oversight, if not regulation, over the world's internet, by treaty or otherwise (see Microsoft's proposal below). ICANN, incompetent at best and corrupt at its worst, with its inept Board and dysfunctional leadership epitomized by Fadi Chehade and Rod Beckstrom, and its "community" dominated by domain name registrars, registry operators, plus a gaggle of special interest lawyers and lobbyists (see my note and Steve Crocker's comment under ¶ 4. below), has failed the global internet community, including most domain name registrants.

2.  Microsoft wants a "Digital Geneva Convention"supported by a New Independent Organization for the World's Internet:

"The world needs a new independent organization like the International Atomic Energy Agency"--Brad Smith, Microsoft (emphasis and link added)

A "Digital Geneva Convention"

source: Microsoft (see video below)

source: Microsoft (see video below)

Others have now picked up on the Microsoft proposal: Digital Geneva Convention: multilateral treaty, multistakeholder implementation | DiploFoundation | diplomacy.edu--

".... future cyber governance architecture will be discussed in many contexts during 2017. The UN GGE will have to propose next steps after the conclusion of its mandate this year. The 12th International Governance Forum (IGF), which will be held in Geneva in December 2017, could be also a place where security, economic, technical, and other communities can converge to address Internet issues in a multidisciplinary way, without the pressure of reaching a binding commitment at the end of the meeting. Microsoft’s proposal for the Geneva Digital Convention provides inspiring analogies and initiates discussion on the future of digital governance, in particular in the security field. While there are major differences among stakeholders, there is also considerable convergence and many common interests. Major actors from government and the business sector stand to lose in the absence of a unified and stable Internet. This common interest provides some optimism for the future discussions and negotiations on digital governance."--Dr Jovan Kurbalija, Founding Director of DiploFoundation and the Head of the Geneva Internet Platform. A former diplomat, Dr Kurbalija has a professional and academic background in international law, diplomacy, and information technology.

Protecting and Defending against Cyberthreats in Uncertain Times:

Video above published Feb 14, 2017--Brad Smith, President, Microsoft speaks at the Cybersecurity Conference - US 2017 | RSA Conference in San Francisco, Feb 13-17, 2017--"While many hacks, data breaches and leaks are the work of criminals seeking financial gain, new threats continue to emerge targeting civilians, businesses and governments. Microsoft President Brad Smith discusses these growing and evolving cyberthreats and what’s needed to protect and defend this critical infrastructure." See also: The need for a Digital Geneva Convention - Microsoft on the Issues.

source: Microsoft.com supra

3. ICANN & Online Content Regulation: 

Notice and Takedown in the Domain Name System: ICANN's Ambivalent Drift into Online Content Regulation by Annemarie Bridy |  papers.ssrn.com: "... After discussing ICANN’s history, mission, and circumscribed role in the resolution of disputes over trademarks in domain names, this article reckons both descriptively and normatively with the fact that registry operators are now acting — without precedent but with ICANN’s blessing — as private copyright enforcers. No matter how vehemently ICANN officials insist that they are minding the limits of their mission, the truth of the matter is that ICANN knowingly created a contractual architecture for the new gTLDs that supports a program of private, DNS-based content regulation on behalf of copyright holders and, potentially, other “trusted” parties. Moreover, in creating that architecture, ICANN did nothing to secure any procedural protections or uniform substantive standards for domain name registrants who find themselves subject to this new form of DNS regulation. That omission should be a red flag for those who worry that ICANN’s newly minted independence from the U.S. government will make its internal governance more susceptible to capture by powerful commercial and governmental interests ..."--Annemarie Bridy, University of Idaho College of Law; Stanford University Center for Internet and Society, Date Written: February 20, 2017--Washington and Lee Law Review, forthcoming (emphasis added).  See also Private Anti-Piracy Deals With Domain Registries are Dangerous, Professor Warns | TorrentFreak.com.

Also note: A Response to Paul Vixie’s "Notice, Takedown, Borders, and Scale” | Center for Internet and Society | cyberlaw.stanford.edu: ".... What I actually wrote is that the Domain Name Association, of which Donuts is a member, misses the mark when it characterizes the trusted notifier program as a form of “self-governance” for registry operators. That’s because the obvious regulatory targets of the trusted notifier program are [domain name] registrants, whose alleged bad behavior the program is aimed at sanctioning. It is true that Donuts came to its agreement with the MPAA voluntarily. The same cannot be said, however, for registrants who are ultimately subject to actions taken under that agreement. I stand by my conclusion that the trusted notifier program is not simply a form of voluntary self-governance by registries but is actually a form of DNS governance in which registries are as much governors of others as they are governors of themselves."-- Annemarie Bridy, March 3, 2017

Editor's Note: None of this should surprise anybody. These are the natural consequences of the dysfunctional leadership of Fadi Chehade when ICANN became a member of INTA--Why Did ICANN Become a Member of Trademark Lobbyist Group INTA?--and as a result, ICANN staff coaching and strategizing with INTA members.

4a.  ICANN "WHOIS Privacy / Domain Registration Extortion"

19 Feb 2017 Letter from Bryan T. Meehan, Sr. to Göran Marby | ICANN.org published by ICANN on March 2, 2017: meehan-to-marby-19feb17-en.pdf [pdf - 463 KB]--Editor's note: Bryan, good luck on getting any "help" from ICANN. You should have filed a complaint with the FTC. ICANN is in the business of enabling various rackets for financial exploitation of domain name registrants. The "ICANN community" is dominated by registry operators, registrars, plus a gaggle of special interest lawyers and lobbyists. Here's a prime example:

"[ICANN's] new gTLD[s] program, which no Internet end-user asked for, and which proceeded from inception to implementation with no commercial support outside of the commercial registrars and registries"--Dr. Paul Vixie in circleid.com. (link added).

Also note the point made recently by current ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker:

"I appreciate your reference to the wider community. One of the more strongly debated aspects during the [IANA] Transition was whether ICANN should become a membership organization. The Board pushed back against this idea because ICANN is responsible to the entire Internet community, not  just the SOs and ACs or, more narrowly, the people who are active among the SOs and ACs ... "--Steve Crocker, March 3, 2017, writing on the CCWG-ACCT public mail list (emphasis and link added). 

4b. Quote of the Week: (Are you an ICANN insider or ICANN outsider?)

[CCWG-ACCT] Terminology for the ICANN trinity"Make it as simple as possible so that ICANN outsiders will understand it. Thanks to the 1000+ acronyms ICANN has created enough confusion not only among the "people in the street" who are using domain names but also among Internet policy makers who are not ICANN insiders but have to deal with implications coming from domain names." --Wolfgang Kleinwächter

5. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”--ICANN58 

ICANN58 meeting in Copenhagen--pre-meetings begin March 10, 2017. The ICANN Community Forum meetings are March 11-16. More information here. After ICANN58 has ended, Domain Mondo will have a full report on all the "mischief" ICANN and the "ICANN community" have been up to in Copenhagen.

6. Speaking of ICANN and registry operators and registrars who make up GNSO's Contracted Party House (CPH), read the Letter of 14 Feb 2017 from Contracted Party House to Members of the ICANN Board | ICANN.org (published by ICANN on March 2, 2017) highlighting added:

7. ICANN, Verisign & Cyber Sovereignty:

8.  Internet Grows to 329.3 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Fourth Quarter of 2016 (NASDAQ:VRSN) | investor.verisign.com: "The increase of approximately 2.3 million domain name registrations globally equates to a growth rate of 1.8 percent over the third quarter of 2016. Domain name registrations have grown by 21 million, or 6.8 percent, year over year. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 142.2 million domain name registrations in the domain name base in the fourth quarter of 2016. This represents a 1.7 percent increase year over year. As of Dec. 31, 2016, the .com domain name base equaled 126.9 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base equaled 15.3 million domain name registrations. New .com and .net domain name registrations totaled 8.8 million during the fourth quarter of 2016. In the fourth quarter of 2015, new .com and .net domain name registrations totaled 12.2 million."  More at The Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief Q4 2016.

9.  i2Coalition To Present Tucows CEO Elliot Noss With Internet Community Leadership Award | i2Coalition.com: The “Ron Yokubaitis Internet Community Leadership Award” 2017 recipient will be Elliot Noss, the Chief Executive Officer and President of Tucows, Inc. (Hover, OpenSRS, eNom). The award will be delivered at a ceremony on May 3rd in Washington, D.C., during the closing ceremonies i2Coalition’s yearly Washington, D.C. Fly-In.

“Elliot has been challenging industry norms since the early days of the commercial Internet. He is one of the Internet’s most effective champions for users’ rights during that entire period.”--i2Coalition Executive Director Christian Dawson

10.  Letter to the Editor: Would you be able to help?

Hi John,
The Internet Society is looking for a group of young people between 13 to 25 years old to join us for a conversation about the Internet. We want to know what the Internet means to them today and what they hope it will be like tomorrow.

Do you know someone who fits this profile? If so, please invite them to register for our next online forum, scheduled for Thursday, March 16 at 16h UTC (more details below).

The event will also serve to launch the Internet Society’s "25 Under 25”, a programme to recognise passionate, committed young people who are using the Internet to change the world. Feel free to forward and share this message widely!

Participation details:
Date: Thursday, March 16; Time: 16:00 UTC, 11:00 am EST (US). Pre-register here.

--Toral Cowieson, Senior Director, Internet Leadership, Internet Society

11. The 3 Most Popular Posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:

1. News Review: ICANN Multistakeholder vs Multilateral Internet Governance
2. TechReview: Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference
3. Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, 27 February - 2 March 2017

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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