Showing posts with label Internet Root. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Root. Show all posts

2017-03-12

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

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
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"
Graphic: Avoiding trademark and domain name scams
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:
Graphic: 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 | Copenhagen
  • 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:

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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2016-12-28

ICANN CDAR Internet Root Server System Stability Draft Report Comments

"Having already made the worst mistake in its organizational history in the way it implemented the new gTLDs program, ICANN appears content to continue in its misguided ways until it wrecks the internet and/or domain name system, global public resources over which ICANN is not, and never has been, a good steward."--Comment to ICANN's CDAR study (see below) (links and emphasis added).
The Continuous Data-Driven Analysis of Root (CDAR) Server System Stability Draft Report comment period has been extended to 15 Jan 2017 23:59 UTC.

Comments submitted by the original deadline 22 Dec 2016 23:59 UTC:

*Comment to ICANN from the Editor of Domain Mondo re: Continuous Data-Driven Analysis of Root Server System Stability Draft Report:

"The Draft Report is inadequate and fails to assure the global internet community of the Root Zone security and stability, nor does the report definitively answer the essential questions:
"The study’s primary research question is: Did the delegation of new gTLDs degrade the stability or security of the root DNS system? And based on the analysis carried out for this research question, our second research question is: Can we expect that the delegation of more new gTLDs will degrade the stability or security of the root DNS system in the future?" ("Draft Report" 27 Oct 2016, p.2).
"The ONLY thing the authors of the Draft Report can definitely state is: "We did not find any degradation of the stability or security of the root DNS system in this period that we could attribute to the new gTLDs." (Draft Report, p.2)

"That finding is hardly reassuring given the admission the authors of the Draft Report make on p. 3:
"our conclusion is limited to the results of the analyses that we designed and executed and is confined by the imperfections of the available measurement data."
"In addition, both ICANN and the authors of the Draft Report have been careless and negligent in failing to acknowledge and address the substance of the comments of Daniel Karrenberg Chief Scientist RIPE NCC, (speaking individually, not on behalf of the RIPE NCC)--CDAR Study Cannot Predict Stability of the Root Server System--https://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-cdar-study-plan-02dec15/msg00001.html dated 26 Jan 2016, which stated in part:
"Our main comment and advice to ICANN is: do not expect the study to predict the absence of instabilities in the DNS root name server system including absence of instabilities that may be wholly or partly caused by root zone expansion. ICANN therefore must make proper contingency plans for the unpredictable cases where root zone expansion causes or contributes to instabilities in the DNS root server system." (emphasis added)
"ICANN has a long history of being foolish, careless, incompetent, and grossly negligent, when it comes to coordination and management of the internet, including root zone, in adding new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs)--see e.g., News Review: ICANN Used 'Junk Science' Firm to Justify New gTLDs.

"Having already made the worst mistake in its organizational history in the way it implemented the new gTLDs program, ICANN appears content to continue in its misguided ways until it wrecks the internet and/or domain name system, global public resources over which ICANN is not, and never has been, a good steward."

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2016-09-30

IANA Transition: What the U.S. Government Is Really 'Giving Up'

UPDATE Oct 14, 2016: Plaintiffs State of Arizona et al filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (pdf) ending the litigation referenced below.

 UPDATE Sep 30, 2016: U.S. District Court Judge George C. Hanks Jr. has denied (pdf) the plaintiffs' application for "Declaratory and Injunctive Relief." The IANA stewardship transition will become effective October 1, 2016, EDT.

original post:
As of tomorrow, October 1, 2016, the IANA Stewardship Transition will be complete unless a federal judge in Texas intervenes today:
DomainMondo.com [News Review]: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, and Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt, have filed a lawsuit (pdf) in a last minute attempt to stop the IANA stewardship transition, in the U.S. District Court, Galveston, Texas, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, including a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction ... U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr. (who was appointed by President Obama in 2015) has set a hearing for 1:30 pm CDT Friday in Galveston, Texas.
What the U.S. government is "giving up"--at least one legal scholar finds the Plaintiffs' (Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada) arguments unpersuasive: Why the Attempt to Enjoin the IANA Transfer is Baseless | Discourse.net--
The US is letting go of a contractual right to veto alterations to the data in a computer file (the root zone file) held on a privately owned machine.  There is no intellectual property right because the contents of the file are in the public domain, and US law would not recognize this as a compilation copyright.  What’s at issue in the IANA transfer is the loss of the US government’s right to veto authoritative changes to the file, not to own the contents.
However, just as important as "letting go" of the "right to veto alterations" in the root zone file, and completely overlooked by Professor Froomkin and others, the U.S. government is also "giving up" or abandoning its right to select the IANA functions operator, at least for the Top-Level Domains (TLDs). ICANN has no right to create or recognize any new TLDs, whether generic (gTLD) or country code (ccTLD), and delegate them into the internet root, except by virtue of being the IANA functions operator pursuant to the contract with NTIA. In 2012, NTIA, the U.S. government sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce which is the counter-party to ICANN in the IANA functions contract, almost pulled the contract away from ICANN:
Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies | NYTimes.com March 18, 2012: "The Commerce Department said this month that while it was temporarily extending a contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to manage the allocation of computers’ Internet protocol addresses — and the .com and .net names of Web sites associated with them — it warned the organization that it needed to tighten its rules against conflicts of interest or risk losing a central role. ICANN, as the company is known, has filled that role since 1998. The Commerce Department said it had received no suitable bids for the contract, and was temporarily extending ICANN’s services for six months." (emphasis added)
As of tomorrow, October 1, 2016, the U.S. government will have relinquished its right to select the IANA functions operator for the TLDs in the internet root zone as configured by the 13 authoritative name servers operated by 12 different managers (Verisign operates 2). Who will have that right as of tomorrow? Technically, the "names community" which is a fictional title given to those ICANN stakeholders (dominated by Registry operators and registrars, but also including other recognized special interest groups within the "ICANN community" who are not  representative of the "global internet community" a/k/a "global multistakeholder community"--e.g. most domain name registrants are excluded from effective representation within ICANN) but excluding the numbers and protocols communities which select their own "IANA functions operator" (currently ICANN). As of tomorrow, ICANN will contractually be the IANA functions operator for the numbers and protocols communities, and PTI (the old IANA department within ICANN but now a separate affiliated entity of ICANN) will be the IANA functions operator for the "names community."

Does the above constitute a "federal property right" or otherwise give credence to any other claim in the Plaintiffs' complaint and motion for TRO? We may find out today what a federal judge in Texas thinks.

Addendum:
State of Arizona; State of Texas; State of Oklahoma; and State of Nevada v. National Telecommunications and Information Administration; United States of America Department of Commerce; Penny Pritzker; and Lawrence E. Strickling

Court Order Denying Plaintiffs' Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction [PDF, 298 KB]
Motion of Internet Association, Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Internet Society, Computer & Communications Industry Association, NetChoice, Mozilla, Packet Clearing House, ACT|The App Association, American Registry for Internet Numbers, Information Technology Industry Council, Access Now, Andrew Sullivan, Ted Hardie, Jari Arkko, and Alissa Cooper for Leave to File Brief of Amici Curiae in Opposition to Application for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction [PDF, 33 KB] 30 September 2016

Exhibit A – Brief of Amici Curiae Internet Association, Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Internet Society, Computer & Communications Industry Association, NetChoice, Mozilla, Packet Clearing House, ACT|The App Association, American Registry for Internet Numbers, Information Technology Industry Council, Access Now, Andrew Sullivan, Ted Hardie, Jari Arkko, and Alissa Cooper Supporting Defendants and in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Temporary Restraining Order [PDF, 95 KB] 30 September 2016

Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order or Preliminary Injunction [PDF, 177 KB] 30 September 2016

Declaration of John O. Jeffrey [PDF, 357 KB] 30 September 2016

Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief and Application for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction [PDF, 363 KB] 28 September 2016

Exhibits A to F [PDF, 4.1 MB] 28 September 2016


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2016-09-18

News Review: After Cruz Attack, What Now For ICANN & IANA Transition?

Shining A Light: © DomainMondo.com Domain Mondo's weekly review of the news, analysis, and look ahead [pdf]: 

 UPDATE Sep 22, 2016:  IANA Transition: Dead or Alive? High drama in D.C. TheHill.com reports that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has "dopped a provision championed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and backed by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to block the Obama administration from ceding oversight of internet domain names to an international body." POLITICO.com confirms that: "Gone is the so-called ICANN provision, an internet-domain issue that had become a top priority for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other GOP senators and just got the seal of endorsement from GOP nominee Donald Trump." However, NYTimes.com reports the short-term spending bill that Congress is set to pass next week "will most likely include a provision championed by Senator Ted Cruz ... While many Democrats oppose the [Cruz] provision, it is not clear how many care enough to make it stop" (emphasis added). POLITICO.com does concede Cruz is urging allies in the U.S. House of Representatives to fight on and stop the IANA transition. We may not know for sure until next week.

UPDATE Sep 21, 2016: It appears the pro-transition lobbyists have either dropped the ball or didn't come to the game ready to play:
  1. Trump enters the arena on ICANN | TheHill.com; Press release of September 21, 2016: Trump Opposes President Obama's Plan to Surrender American Internet Control to Foreign Powers | Donald J Trump for President | DonaldJTrump.com by Stephen Miller, National Policy Director for the Trump Campaign; TheHill.com also reports FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly now also want to delay the IANA transition;
  2. Senate leaders say they are close to deal to prevent government shutdown: "The latest GOP offer also included a provision sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would delay plans for the U.S. government to give up control over a global nonprofit that oversees the internet domain system. Cruz told reporters that he is “cautiously optimistic” that it will be included in the final package."--WashingtonPost.com [Domain Mondo Editor's Note: read the WaPo article and one is left with the impression that Democrats are now willing to "trade away" their stance on the IANA transition for something else.]
UPDATE Sep 20, 2016: U.S. Senate lays groundwork for spending deal--"It's not [time for] a big debate for talking about how we change the internet forever ... It's not a time to try to satisfy Cruz because he doesn't get along with the caucus and they're trying to shut him up."--U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority Leader in TheHill.com.
________
Original post of Sep 18, 2016:
Feature •  After Cruz Attack, What Now For ICANN & IANA Transition? For more than a week U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been dominating the news related to the IANA stewardship transition scheduled to be completed October 1, 2016 (after expiration of the IANA functions contract on September 30). From September 9th's US Senator Cruz Attacks ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, IANA Transition (video) through yesterday's Sen. Cruz Questions NTIA's Strickling, ICANN's Marby & Witnesses (videos), Domain Mondo's coverage has included a daily posting on this topic almost every day.

But now with less than two weeks left before September 30, the chance that Republicans in the House and Senate will actually derail the IANA transition is unlikely, for the following reasons:
  1. The fact that this is an election year works in favor of the IANA transition--Republicans are looking to leave Washington soon to return to the campaign trail, reports TheHill.com.
  2. The IANA transition is not a hot-button issue in this campaign season. Most Americans don't even know who or what ICANN is, much less the IANA transition, and don't care. The headline in the Washington Post sums it all up: Ted Cruz has made an obscure Internet agency his first post-presidential crusade. In Election 2016, it's about the economy, stupid:
    3. Election 2016 top issues in search by state, past week (graphic)
    Election 2016 top issues in search by state, past week | Google Trends 
  3. Ted Cruz is a pariah even in his own party. Cruz was invited and spoke at the Republican Convention in July but refused to endorse the Republican Party's Presidential nominee. Subsequently he was deemed persona non grata at the GOP gathering and even barred from entering GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson's suite at the Convention hall.
  4. Cruz's grandstanding this past week may have been the "kiss of death" to the effort to delay the IANA transition. Although four key House and Senate Chairmen have indicated a preference  to extend the IANA functions contract for one year, how much political capital will they be willing to expend when it comes down to the wire?
  5. Washington runs on lobbying money. I noted Friday that "preventing a 'competing' internet root may be the most compelling reason to not delay the IANA transition despite misgivings about ICANN or the IANA transition plan." None of the tech giants in the world, including those in China, want a competing root and everyone is looking to the U.S. tech giants (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) who are hardwired into K Street to "get the job done" (i.e., get the IANA transition completed).
  6. Trump has no love for Cruz and now Trump is leading in the Presidential Race according to several polls: Trump cracks the Electoral College lock | POLITICO.com Sept. 15, 2016: "A new round of state polls shows Donald Trump suddenly has a path to 270 electoral votes [to win the Presidency] ... state polling averages, which can be lagging indicators, are beginning to show Trump in the lead."  Trump has never stated his position on the IANA stewardship transition and there is no reason for him to now. As I have previously noted, the Trump campaign's lawyer is Jones Day Partner Don McGahn (Jones Day is also legal counsel for ICANN). Perhaps even more important, Trump's go-to guy on tech matters is Peter Thiel who certainly doesn't want a competing internet root. If asked, Thiel would probably say ICANN, after 18 years, must have reached minimal viable product stage, so don't delay the IANA transition--see Can Monopolies Save The Internet? | BigThink.com at Harvard's Berkman Center: Peter Thiel vs. Jonathan Zittrain on globalization, monopolies, internet, Facebook, etc. (April 13, 2009). See also: Bilderberg People: Elite Power and Consensus in World Affairs | books.google.com. Under this reasoning, if ICANN falters post-transition, the U.S. government has an implied right to step back in as "historic steward of the internet" and do whatever is necessary to "right the ship." A key to this may have been the testimony of NTIA's Larry Strickling at the Cruz hearing that the U.S. did not want a registry agreement with ICANN for either .MIL or .GOV because the U.S. government did not want to concede or give up its "sovereignty" in those TLDs (top-level domains).
  7. The most powerful person in the Republican Party right now may be Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). The Trump campaign's national finance chairman (and likely future Secretary of the Treasury should Trump win) is Steven Mnuchin who has a lean staff but is using the RNC and all of its resources to raise money, not only for Trump, but for the Republican Party and all its candidates in all 50 states. While Hillary Clinton's campaign is running a separate huge fundraising operation out of the campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, Trump's fundraising flows through the RNC in Washington, D.C. They know all of this on Capitol Hill, and as Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” For that reason, you may continue to hear "noise" about the IANA transition but the real question is: "To whom should we make the checks payable?" See U.S. technology companies lobby for ICANN transition | SeekingAlpha.com.

 Other ICANN, Internet Governance, and Domain Name News:

 •  The Catalyst For The IANA Stewardship Transition: New Film Tells the Story of Edward Snowden; Here Are the Surveillance Programs He Helped Expose | TheIntercept.com.

•  DNS Forum | InternetPolicyForum.com: On September 14-15, Public Interest Registry, CENTR, LACTLD, i2Coalition, and ISOC-DC brought together a diverse group of experts to discuss the impacts of policy on DNS (domain name system) technical operators.  Panelists and audience members discussed the implications of privacy, security, and content policies for these technical operators and how the technical community can best engage in the evolving multistakeholder model of Internet governance. For complete agenda, video replay, and more information, go to the link above.

•  Verisign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) reported this week that at the close of Q2 2016 (June 30, 2016):
  • The total number of registered domain names rose to 334.6 million worldwide across all top-level domains, of which new gTLDs (ngTLDs) domain names comprised only 22 million or 6.6% of all TLDs' domain names, and the top 10 ngTLDs represented 61.5 percent of all ngTLD domain name registrations.
  • 7.9 million domain names were added to the Internet in Q2 2016: • This increase globally equates to a growth rate of 2.4% over Q1 2016 • Domain name registrations have grown by 38.2 million, or 12.9 percent, year over year.
  • The .com and .net TLDs reached a combined total of approximately 143.2 million domain names in the domain name base in Q2’16 • The base of registered names in .com equaled 127.5 million names, while .net equaled 15.8 million names • Verisign processed 8.6 million new domain name registrations for .com and .net, as compared to 8.7 million domain names for the same period in 2015.
  • Verisign’s average Domain Name System query load was 130 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 179 billion.
  • Total ccTLD domain name registrations were approximately 149.9 million in the first quarter of 2016, with an increase of 1.4 million domain name registrations, or a 1.0 percent increase compared to the first quarter of 2016. ccTLDs increased by approximately 11.7 million domain name registrations, or 8.5 percent, year over year. Without including .tk, ccTLD domain name registration growth quarter-over-quarter was 1.2 percent and growth year-over-year was 10.7 percent. 
  • The top 10 ccTLDs, as of June 30, 2016, were .tk (Tokelau), .cn (China), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .br (Brazil), .eu (European Union), .au (Australia) and .fr (France).
  • As of June 30, 2016, there were 292 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 67.3 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations. 
Verisign had previously reported that at the close of Q1 2016 (March 31, 2016), the base of registered names in .com equaled 126.6 million names, while .net equaled 15.9 million names. Accordingly, .net registrations decreased by about 100,000 (net) in Q2 2016, while .com registrations increased by about 900,000 domain names (net) in Q2 2016. For more information, copies of the Q2 2016 DNIB, or to view past reports, go to VerisignInc.com/DNIB.

•  ICANN's new consolidated page for community feedback on various issues: Operational Consultations | ICANN.org.

•  ICANN published its Global Registrant Survey Final Phase Results (pdf). More information here. Results may be questionable based upon methodology alone:
ICANN Global Registrant Surveywave 2 | AUGUST 2016, p. 5
Apparently ICANN commissions these kinds of studies to generate a mostly useless report in an attempt to justify ICANN's mistakes or reinforce existing policies. Vendors, like Nielsen, usually understand this. Manipulation ("adjustment") of methodology and data are well known techniques. In this case, the report did confirm a few things we already knew:
  • Reported registration of new gTLDs is highest in the Asia Pacific region.
  • ".COM continues to be the most favored legacy domain name among registrants. Declines are seen for several of the less common gTLDs but these already have very low reported registrations." (p.22 of 182)
  • Many would-be registrants choose alternative identities (e.g., social media handles) over domain names.
  • About 17 percent of the respondents said they did not renew a domain in favor of using an alternative method for managing an online identity.
•   TheDomains.com reports Frank Schilling's North Sound Names is dropping 230,000 new gTLD domain names from its portfolio, which probably accounts for the decreases we are seeing in Uniregistry's new gTLDs' registration numbers like .FLOWERS and .PROPERTY.

•  No Comments close this coming week at ICANN.

Tech News:
  1. Fans cheer, but iPhone 7 gets a subdued welcome--Reuters.com. See also Apple Japan unit ordered to pay $118 million tax for underreporting income: media | Reuters.com.
  2. Coaltion for Better Ads (IAB, Google and others), formed as a direct response to ad blocking, the coalition will act as a "kind of regulator for internet ads"--BusinessInsider.com.
  3. The Internet’s Own Instigator | BackChannel.com: "Malamud can’t abide 112's waffling on the copyright issue, saying that “to the extent the material is subject to copyright protection, the agency must get authorization…for public access to that material.” To Malamud, if the standard is part of the law, there can be no copyright. Period."
  4. Project Sand Hill: Google’s Unknown Campaign to Track the World’s Hottest Startups | WIRED.com. See also: Thoughts on Alphabet, one year in | BusinessInsider.com: So far it's been a BIG Loser but see The Wall Street Veteran Who's Helping Google Get Disciplined | Fortune.com.
  5. The blockchain industry is either hugely under-resourced or hugely over-optimistic. Probably both--Blockchain's Numbers Don't Add Up | Bloomberg.com.
  6. GM Bolt vs Tesla Model 3? Metrics Make The Difference | SeekingAlpha.com.
    • Deal of the Month: HP Enterprise [US] strikes $8.8 billion deal with Micro Focus [UK] for [HPE's] software assets | Reuters.com.
    • Yahoo Inc. ("RemainCo") after the Verizon sale? Cash + marketable securities + shares in Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, other minority equity investments + IP assets held in Excalibur, AND it will be a company with a new ticker.--SeekingAlpha.com 

     Four most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this week on DomainMondo.com:
    1. News Review [11Sep]: IANA Transition Drama in D.C. and ICANN & Zika
    2. IANA Transition Hearing: Implications of Ending US Oversight of the Internet
    3. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz vs ICANN and IANA Transition: Veni, Vidi, Vici ?
    4. US Senator Cruz Attacks ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, IANA Transition (video)

    Macro view:
    1. Deutsche Bank will most likely be bailed out by the German government or the ECB. It will not be allowed to topple and shatter the global financial system but its shares and CoCos will be “bailed in” before taxpayers get hit.--Deutsche Bank’s CoCo Bonds Speak of Fear of the Worst | WolfStreet.com
    2. Federal Reserve policy affecting elections is hardly a novel concept. At the recent central banker’s summit in Jackson Hole, former Democrat Congressman Barney Frank, told the Fed, “Don’t raise rates before the election.”--Why The Fed Destroyed The Market Economy | ZeroHedge.com
    3. Tax Avoidance Is Part of the Recipe for National & Global Income Inequality: 1) The less affluent must pay their payroll taxes and income taxes in full; 2) The more affluent utilize tax avoidance schemes conveniently provided by governments, that also allow corporations to utilize offshore companies to "hide" or "transfer" profits to low-tax and no-tax jurisdictions; 3) Total effect of the taxation system is regressive, even without adding the inherently regressive effects of sales and value-added taxes. "The phenomenon of rising inequality in affluent societies may not need much additional explaining – and it hardly matters if those were tax-avoidance or tax-evasion trillions."--Hidden assets from the Panama Papers | the-tls.co.uk.
    4. Central Bankers, Savers & Investors: Martin Lück, strategist at Blackrock: the ECB's actions are having the opposite effect of the spending spree intended. Falling interest rates cause people to save more rather than less in order to secure their pensions, while investors, including insurers and pension funds, have to enter ever higher risks to secure ROI.--Deutsche Bank CEO Warns Of "Fatal Consequences"...| ZeroHedge.com

     4 Other Reading Recommendations:
    1. Peter Thiel in the WashingtonPost.com: "The establishment doesn’t want to admit it, but Trump’s heretical denial of Republican dogma about government incapacity is exactly what we need to move the party — and the country — in a new direction. For the Republican Party to be a credible alternative to the Democrats’ enabling, it must stand for effective government, not for giving up on government."
    2. "Two basic principles of management, and regulation, and life, are: 1. You get what you measure. 2. The thing that you measure will get gamed ... "--Wells Fargo Opened a Couple Million Fake Accounts | Bloomberg.com.
    3. Why One Hedge Fund Is Once Again Preparing For The End Of The Euro | ZeroHedge.com
    4. What successful and happy people focus on: "They don’t let anyone limit their joy. When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own happiness."--weforum.org

    -- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

    feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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    2016-09-16

    Tweets and Post-hearing Notes re: Cruz Hearing on IANA Transition

    For background see on Domain Mondo: 

     Selected tweets from the twittersphere and commentary by Domain Mondo:
    Dysfunctional ICANN leadership (e.g., former CEO and Board of Directors) together with lack of transparency are among the core reasons ICANN is not trusted by some members of the global multistakeholder community.

     Yes, in the IANA Transition plan, governments get a limited increase in power, but post-transition all governments (including U.S.) are equal inside ICANN, i.e., it takes just 1 government to prevent GAC consensus advice. But, by virtue of ICANN's corporate domicile (California) and ICANN's election as an IRC §501(c)(3) non-profit, California and U.S. law will have precedence in most ICANN legal disputes (see, e.g., Domain Mondo's ICANN Litigation Status Update).

     Potential liability under U.S. antitrust law may be one of the most important, and powerful, accountability measures on post-transition ICANN.

     Preventing a "competing" internet root may be the most compelling reason to not delay the IANA transition despite misgivings about ICANN or the IANA transition plan.
    feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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    2016-02-05

    ICANN New gTLD Program Plays Roulette With Internet Root Zone Stability

    "CDAR Study cannot predict stability of the Root Server System"--Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist, RIPE NCC, infra
    "It [ICANN's CDAR Study Plan] may not be enough to ensure that 'a [new gTLDs] first round did not jeopardize the security and stability of the root zone system.'" --Business Constituency comment, infra
    Comments closed 3 Feb 2016 at 23:59 UTC on ICANN's "Continuous Data-driven Analysis of Root Server System Stability (CDAR) Study Plan" --"This study has been commissioned to examine the technical impact of the New gTLD Program on the root server system. As the first step, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and its partners SIDN and NLnet Labs are publishing the draft study plan for public comment. Feedback from the larger DNS community is critical to ensure a comprehensive approach to data gathering and analysis. Comments may be incorporated into the final study design." (source: ICANN.org, emphasis added)

    For background on how ICANN has jeopardized the stability and security of the Internet Root Zone by launching hundreds of unwanted and unneeded new gTLDs into the internet root read:
    Now ICANN, as required by a previous commitment based on advice from ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee [PDF, 276 KB], has undertaken a study as described at the first link above.

    Three comments were received, one of which appears to be a spam comment. Here are excerpts from the other 2 comments, which are illuminating (emphasis added):

     First, from Daniel Karrenberg (pdf), Chief Scientist, RIPE NCC, (not speaking  on behalf of the RIPE NCC)--"CDAR Study Cannot Predict Stability of the Root Server System ... The DNS root name server system is a complex system with hundreds of servers, tens of thousands of clients and millions of users all connected by the open Internet and subject to unpredictable use and abuse. The proposed core methodology of the study is a "quantitative model" based on measurement of past behavior of the DNS root server system. Models of complex systems are by their nature simplifications. Well constructed models may indeed be very useful to predict possible instabilities in the real-world systems. However these models cannot predict the *absence* of instabilities in complex real-world system with any useful level of confidence. In other contexts this is referred to as "past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results". Our main comment and advice to the researchers is to carefully avoid any perception that their results predict the absence of instabilities in the DNS root name server system unless the results solidly support such claims. Our main comment and advice to ICANN is: do not expect the study to predict the absence of instabilities in the DNS root name server system including absence of instabilities that may be wholly or partly caused by root zone expansion. ICANN therefore must make proper contingency plans for the unpredictable cases where root zone expansion causes or contributes to instabilities in the DNS root sever system."

    Second, from the ICANN GNSO "Business Constituency" (pdf)--
    "1) Page 4, Introduction: Root server scalability and possible impacts on performance attributable to zone file growth due to new gTLDs are of focus of this study. New gTLDs also may impact root server system stability and security in other important ways, such as the ability to successfully mitigate DDoS or other attacks that span a much larger DNS ecosystem, or vulnerabilities that may be introduced by newly deployed systems that interface with root servers. While measuring performance to verify that root server scalability risks have been managed is a good start, it may not be enough to ensure that "a first round did not jeopardize the security and stability of the root zone system." It is therefore important for this entire study plan to more clearly indicate what the study can and cannot accomplish. For example, on page 4, bullet a) should refer specifically to “root system stability” and bullet b) should not include security.
    2) Page 5, Objective: The plan states: “The main objective of this project is to assess the impact of the new gTLD program on the security and stability of the DNS root system, up to the current point in time and beyond.” This objective may not be feasible; the limitations of this study should be acknowledged. This study will establish an important baseline against which future measurements can be compared to analyze trends, so it is important that the limitations of effectively measuring past root server system performance (before first application round new gTLD delegation began) be noted.
    3) Page 7, Approach: The plan states: “This set of relevant parameters will be validated with the DNS community (ICANN, DNS OARC, etc.).” This validation is critical to ensure that the study focuses on the most relevant parameters to be measured and analyzed. However, it also may be appropriate to seek broader community input on parameter priority, feasibility, and usability so that the study can start with parameters that will have the greatest impact on preserving root system scalability and, importantly, identifying possible risks that must be mitigated to enable additional growth.
    4) Page 8, WP-1: In addition to the organizations listed here, it may be appropriate to include measurement and modeling experts within the larger DNS community, including those who use and rely upon the DNS for day-to-day business operations. Notably, many global enterprises have deployed even larger distributed systems and may have valuable contributions to offer here.
    5) Page 9, WP-2: The plan states, “…measuring the root security and stability from the new gTLD registry perspective are still an unexplored area.” The BC suggests evaluating the value of examining stability from the new gTLD registry perspective, to determine if this perspective should also be gained. This may be key since registries grow more numerous and diverse as a result of new gTLDs. It appears that only scalability can be analyzed from the measurements identified in WP-2. Please expand on the measurements to ensure that security and stability are adequately addressed.
    6) Page 10, Root Stability Parameters: The BC recommends that the parameters be clearly defined with respect to gTLDs, ccTLDs, new gTLDs and other groupings within the DNS, and also geographic boundaries. Questions the study does not yet answer (but should) include: Will this study gather measurements across all TLDs, or only new gTLDs? Will it be able to differentiate between first round new gTLDs and subsequent round new gTLDs? Will it be able to differentiate between gTLDs and ccTLDs? Will it be able to break results down geographically? The BC also recommends soliciting community feedback on the parameters selected prior to implementing the study.
    7) Page 11, WP-3: The BC would like to see a list of the questions that the DNS community hopes to answer when reviewing study results. For example, is there a correlation between latency and number of TLDs? If so, why. Also, will the study provide sufficient data to examine potential contributing factors to enable risk mitigation?
    8) Page 13, WP-5: Reviewing preliminary results with the community to refine the approach and findings is extremely important. However, we note that additional work packages will likely be needed, following public comment, prior to project completion, to allow for the “more measurements and complementary analysis” mentioned.
    9) Page 13, WP-6: The timeline given on page 10, especially the period for draft study report presentation to the community, appears optimistic. WP-1 has not yet begun and timelines for WP2/3/4 may well be too short to permit statistically significant results. We recommend that TNO et al specify a minimum length for WP-3 and WP-4, to allow sufficient time for collection and analysis to yield statistically significant results.
    10) Additional note: The BC would like the new gTLD impacts on addresses as well as names to be considered as a topic of study (e.g. growth in reverse DNS queries, resolving IP addresses to new gTLD domain names), if not by this study, then by a future study building on the same methodology. Both identifier systems are potentially impacted by the significant growth attributable to new gTLDs."

     Caveat Emptor!



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    2015-05-01

    Why ICANN Is Fighting for Permanent Control of IANA

    In the last few days, the chatter, email "mail lists," and news in the IANA stewardship transition process (convened last year by ICANN as directed by the US government's NTIA), has been swirling around Professor Milton Mueller's postings--see: ICANN wants an IANA functions monopoly – will it wreck the transition process to get it? --about ICANN wanting permanent control of the IANA functions:

    So why would ICANN care about "monopoly" or permanent control of IANA a/k/a the "IANA functions"?

    For the answer, Domain Mondo recommends reading Controlling Internet Infrastructure: The "IANA Transition" and Why It Matters for the Future of the Internet, Policy Paper, April 30, 2015, by Danielle Kehl and David Post (pdf)--excerpt below, emphasis added--

    "... NTIA could (and did) extract specific, contractually-enforceable promises from ICANN concerning its governance and decision-making structure and operations, and it included those in ICANN’s “Statement of Work” under the contract. More importantly, because the contract was for a limited period of time (subject to extension by mutual agreement of NTIA and ICANN), NTIA retained the option of re-opening the procurement and awarding the contract to some other party if it was unhappy with ICANN’s performance. NTIA’s ability to re-open the IANA contract procurement was a serious and credible threat to ICANN’s central role in DNS management. It was a serious threat because it would have had severe, and probably fatal, consequences for ICANN. ICANN’s power ripples downward from the Root through the DNS hierarchy. Without the ability to specify the contents of the Root Zone File, ICANN could no longer guarantee TLD operators that their domains would continue to exist in the DNS; those TLD operators could therefore no longer guarantee to 2nd-level domain operators that their domains would continue to exist in the DNS; and so on down the line. And if that were the case, why would a TLD registry operator choose to comply with any ICANN policies or directives, or pay ICANN a fee?... nobody can say for certain how ICANN would have behaved had NTIA not retained ultimate authority over the IANA Functions and the leverage that provided—precisely the question that now occupies center stage..." (Id. at p. 23)

    This is precisely why the editor of Domain Mondo proposed an external Trust solution to the CWG-Stewardship which it unwisely discarded in favor of an internal solution based on a model of which one of its own authors admitted:  "While I personally hate the idea of splitting IANA, and think it is a disastrous thing to do, it remains possible in this model as was foreordained by the ICG." (emphasis and link added)

    The ICANN stakeholders, in their three separate proposals--Names [now in public comment stage], and Protocols and Numbers as submitted to the ICG--IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group--all incorporate the same "ICG foreordained" disastrous outcome: separating or splitting the IANA functions. Of course, in that eventuality, under each of the three proposals, the wider global multistakeholder community has no standing or voice if and when the IETF ("Protocols"), RIRs ("Numbers"), or ICANN's "Names" (domain names) stakeholders, each decide to separate and/or split IANA or the "IANA functions" or who or what organization(s) end up with the "prize"--control of the Internet Root. What happens then? What prevents "capture" of one or more of the "IANA functions" under that scenario? Who will then control the Internet Root? Where will they be located, under what laws will they be subject, which TLDs will be recognized, and which TLDs will be dropped from the DNS?

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