News Review | ICANN EPDP Chair Quits After Vote on Final Report Delayed

Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2019-02-24) with analysis and opinion: Features • 1) ICANN EPDP Chair Quits After Vote on Final Report Delayed, 2) Other ICANN news: a. Namazi New GDD Sr. VP, b. New gTLD .AMAZON, and more, 3) a. Google's Extortionate Domaining, b. Booking.com Trademark Case, 4) ICYMI: Personal Data, Data Protection, Data Privacy, Access to Data, and more, 5) Most Read.

1) ICANN EPDP Chair Quits After Vote on EPDP Final Report (Phase 1) Delayed 

"For a set of personal and professional reasons, I am writing to resign my post as Chair of the EPDP for Registration Data. I was honored to be selected by the GNSO Council leadership for the post and attempted to live up to the position expectations and requirements at every moment since I began in July. I will stay on for as long as it takes to find a replacement Chair and smoothly transition the responsibilities ..."--resignation email from Kurt Pritz to GNSO Council Chair Keith Drazek, February 21, 2019, after deferral of the GNSO Council vote on the EPDP Final Report (Phase 1) (pdf) until March 4, 2019, as requested by the Business Constituency (BC) and supported by the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC).

Response from GNSO Council Chair Keith Drazek: Hi Kurt, Thanks for your email, and more importantly for your commitment, sacrifice and service over the last seven months. I will follow up with another email soon, but I wanted to acknowledge receipt of your message and express my gratitude and appreciation on behalf of the GNSO Council. I also appreciate and welcome your willingness to continue as Chair during the transition to Phase 2 and the next Chair. Best regards, Keith.

Prescient email Feb. 20, 2019, below, from EPDP team member Dr. Milton Mueller (NCSG - Georgia Tech), responding to an earlier email from EPDP Chair Kurt Pritz wherein Pritz stated: "I chose not to conflate the number of groups with the voting scheme of the GNSO Council. I think that is the province of the Council, i.e., discussion at the Council level and the voting scheme will come into play there as items with “Strong Support" are considered."

"Sorry Kurt, but that’s not your call. As chair you can designate consensus levels but you do not have the authority to redefine the groups upon which consensus determinations are based. The CSG [Commercial Stakeholder Group] and the NCSG [Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group] both have 6 members on this EPDP team because they are both equivalent stakeholder groups in the chartering process. This was a point of considerable discussion in the formation of the EPDP and the result is not something you can toy with. Doing so leaves you and the whole process subject to legitimacy and bias challenges. The fact that CSG’s 3 constituencies [IPC, BC, ISPCP] insist on independent representation is a choice they have made and can make but it does not change their status as a single SG, a single group for the purposes of consensus determinations. I am sure you don’t want our painstaking work product to be further delayed by procedural and legitimacy challenges, including an independent review process [IRP], but I assure you that is what will happen if you try to disenfranchise an SG by double or triple counting the constituents of another SG." (emphasis and link added)

EPDP Timeline (as of Feb 24, 89 days until the Temporary Specification expires 25 May 2019):

source: icann.org

Analysis & Opinion Editor's note: Kurt Pritz has a long history with ICANN according to his outdated bio on the ICANNwiki, having been appointed as a Vice President of ICANN in 2003. He was heavily involved in ICANN's controversial new gTLDs program as ICANN's Chief Strategy Officer, but suddenly resigned on November 15, 2012, due to an undisclosed conflict of interest. After he left ICANN he became Executive Director of the Domain Name Association, a domain name industry group principally representing the interests of new gTLD registry operators. He resigned from that position in 2015, and thereafter has been involved with various domain name industry firms, including Allegravita, and Architelos (which filed for bankruptcy after being hit with a judgment in a lawsuit brought by registry services provider Afilias), and most recently has been involved with the new gTLD .ART.

I have no idea why Pritz wanted to be EPDP Chair, nor why the GNSO Council appointed him in July, 2018, but I think Pritz saw the handwriting on the wall, and had the good judgment to realize he had already had enough of chairing the EPDP, a task for which he seemed ill-suited from the start. Pritz readily admitted he was far out of his depth, and as Chair, he failed to develop and follow a cogent work plan for Phase 1, apparently relying instead, on ICANN support staff who were as ignorant about the intricacies of the GDPR as he was. Last year, wasting weeks trying to "redline" the Temp Spec per Pritz's directions, EPDP team members repeatedly tried to steer the group back to functionality, with Thomas Rickert finally stating the obvious: "We are trying to fix a document (Temp Spec) that can hardly be fixed." 

It is actually painful to go back and read those transcripts from last year's EPDP meetings. Almost every meeting reeks of dysfunction and lack of direction, and many EPDP members knew it at the time, and often expressed their frustrations on the record. But that is all water under the bridge now. The EPDP Phase 2 will deal with difficult "access issues" and unfortunately, Phase 1 failed to fix or adequately address many core issues, such as controllership, upon which access policy decisions may be dependent. Ideally, the EPDP team needs a Chair who is both knowledgeable about the GDPR, as well as experienced in GNSO PDP consensus processes and procedures. Perhaps Co-Chairs, with one who is knowledgeable about GDPR, and the other experienced in GNSO PDP consensus processes and procedures.

More info: EPDP team mail list and wiki; GNSO mail list and calendar; EPDP Final Report (pdf); EPDP Charter (pdf); Bird & Bird legal memos; EPDP legal mail list; ICANN's controllership legal memo (pdf); last week's News Review. There will be no EPDP meetings until after the GNSO Council vote on March 4, 2019.

2) Other ICANN News

a. Cyrus Namazi promoted to Senior Vice President of ICANN's Global Domains Division (GDD), succeeding his crony, at Conexant and ICANN, former GDD President Akram Atallah, who resigned last year to become CEO of new gTLDs registry operator Donuts, Inc. The ICANN announcement indicates that Atallah's former title of "GDD President," (given to him by his crony, long-time friend and ICANN CEO, Fadi Chehade, in June, 2013) has been abolished. ICANN didn't disclose whether Namazi is receiving the same extravagant compensation package as Atallah did.

b. New gTLD .AMAZON UPDATE
21 Feb 2019 Letter from Achilles Zaluar* to ICANNBoard (pdf)--*Achilles Zaluar is Director, Department of Technological Promotion, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil--excerpt:

"We regret that our invitation to the ICANN CEO and his team to join Brazil and several other Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) member states in a video conference on 19 February on the “.Amazon” issue was not accepted. Our common goal is still to find a mutually acceptable solution for the “.Amazon” applications .... despite our best efforts, time seems to have ran out to work on a mutually acceptable solution before ICANN 64 in Kobe. We remain committed to do it in the coming months, with a view to develop a solution that fulfills GAC´s request to the ICANN Board. We therefore kindly request that the ICANN Board postpone a final decision on the .Amazon applications to ICANN 65, with a view to allow the eight Amazon countries and Amazon Inc. to find a mutually acceptable solution ..." 

Letter (pdf) from ICANN CEO Göran Marby to Secretary General PS/ACTO Alexandra Moreira:

See also 13 Feb 2019 Letter from Alexandra Moreira to Göran Marby.

c. IDNs: Letter from ICANN GDD Cyrus Namazi to Wang Wei et al. 15 Feb 2019, re: Root Zone LGR Generation Panels, excerpt:

".... The CJK GPs correctly note that visual similarity of strings causing confusability should be resolved by String Similarity Panels during TLD string evaluation, String Confusion Objection and String Contention Mechanisms ... an important part of the Procedure and helps ensure that the RZ-LGR satisfies the “Contextual Safety Principle” which asks to minimize the risk of malicious use of IDN labels. As well noted in your communication, the visually similar strings, which are not deemed identical, will continue to be evaluated by the String Similarity Review processes. Due to the independent nature of the working of the IP [Integration Panel], as stipulated by the Procedure, ICANN org suggests that the CJK GPs continue discussions with the IP in order to find a mutually agreeable solution based on the Procedure. ICANN org will organize a face to face meeting of the GPs and IP at the ICANN64 meeting in Kobe, Japan to continue to support this dialogue."

d. ICANN Notice of Breach to Registrar (pdf), excerpt:

e. 13 February 2019 Letter to ICANN (pdf), excerpt below, and ICANN response (pdf).

"... despite several attempts of communication with the reseller and registrar neither parties are responding to my requests. I act for Mr Khan as his IT consultant. I am unable to access the domain so I cannot prevent it from expiring and I cannot access my account or update nameservers or WHOIS information. This is causing me to suffer an immense loss of business. Please, can you get involved and somehow shake these rogue traders up so that they comply and cooperate?" (emphasis added)

f. Public Comments Close 5 Mar 2019 23:59 UTC on First Consultation on a 2-Year Planning Process | ICANN.org.

g. Technical Study Group (TSG) Advances Draft Model--icann.org: The Technical Study Group on Access to Non-Public Registration Data is developing a detailed draft of the Technical Model for Non-Public Registration Data. "... In the coming weeks, the team members, working together with ICANN org representatives, will further develop the draft Technical Model in order to share it with the community before heading to Kobe. During our face-to-face meeting, we also discussed how to present our work outside of the ICANN community, including to the European Commission. When we finish our work on the Technical Model after Kobe, we will send our report to ICANN President and CEO Göran Marby. We look forward to sharing these discussions with you in more detail at ICANN64 and invite you to a community engagement session we are planning ..."

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks

a. Google Does Domaining Like Big Time Extortion | i-programmer.info: "Google Domains has the rights to the .dev Top Level Domain and intends to make as much money from it as possible - $11,500 just for early access to the scramble to register the most desirable names." 

b. Trademark case of Booking.com v. USPTO (pdf) embed below,  decided Feb 4, 2019 (45 days for Petition for En Banc Rehearing). See also Unprotectable Generic Trademarks + Top-Level Domains = Protectable Trademarks--jdsupra.com, and Fourth Circuit Confirms Booking.com is Protectable But Company Must Pay the USPTO’s Fees on Appeal--jdsupra.com.

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 

Personal Data, Data Protection, Data Privacy, Access to Data:

• OpenSRS’ Tiered Access Directory: a look at the numbers--opensrs.com: "We have received more than 2100 data access requests since our Tiered Access system started last May, and of these requests ... 65% of all requests came on behalf of a single requestor; only 21% of these requests resulted in the provision of data, as the majority did not provide sufficient legitimate purpose, nor did the requestor respond to our request for more information. Perhaps surprisingly, 70% of data access requests are not fulfilled because the requestor did not respond to Tucows’ requests for additional information ..."

• WHOIS disclosure requests: Getting the facts--internetgovernance.org.

• Patients, health data experts accuse Facebook of exposing personal info--thehill.com.

• Access  to Data: What’s the Emergency? Keeping International Requests for Law Enforcement Access Secure and Safe for Internet Users--eff.org.

Copyright Law Versus Internet Culture--eff.org.

India: Not just porn, Indian users say telecoms are blocking access to many websites. Most of the complaints have come from Indians using Jio connections, followed by Airtel--scroll.in. See also India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship--NYTimes.com.

Press freedom organisations urge Nigeria to keep internet on during election period--ifex.org

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

1. News Review | GNSO Council Votes Feb 21 on ICANN EPDP 'Final Report'

2. Tech Review: 1) What Will Replace Facebook? 2) Jeff Bezos in 1999 (video)

3. Amazon $AMZN Biggest Tech Employer, Tesla $TSLA Employees Anxious

4. Inside the Gorilla Glass Factory of Corning $GLW (video)

5. Rivian Electric Pickups & SUVs Coming for Tesla $TSLA (video)

-- John Poole, Editor • Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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News Review: ICANN & GDPR, EPDP F2F Meeting in LA, Sep 24-26

Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2018-09-23 with analysis and opinion: Features •  1) ICANN & GDPR, EPDP F2F Meeting in LA, Sep 24-26, 2) ICANN New gTLDs CCT-Review Report, and more, 3)a.Canada's TM law, b. GoDaddy & new gTLDs, c. ccTLD .eu, and more, 4) ICYMI: Internet Freedom (EU,UK), Net Neutrality (US), 5) Most Read.

UPDATE Sep 24, 2018: ICANN said today it is considering (beyond its role as a WHOIS data 'controller' and its role in contractual enforcement), to "be acknowledged under the law as the coordinating authority of the WHOIS system ... shifting the liability for providing access to non-public registration data to ICANN and establishing a globally scalable unified solution for access to non-public WHOIS data," adding, "it will be important to engage with the European Data Protection Board to test with them whether the approaches and interpretations of the law may ultimately provide a feasible solution meeting the needs of stakeholders seeking access to non-public WHOIS." (emphasis added)

1) ICANN & GDPR, EPDP F2F Meeting in LA, Sep 24-26

ICANN EPDP Working Group Face-to-Face Meeting in LA Sep 24-26, 2018. Google Map of ICANN offices and hotel and logistics info (pdf). Non-members of the EPDP Team can follow EPDP meetings via Adobe Connect or audio cast via browser or application.

LA F2F Meeting wiki page: agenda with local (PDT) and UTC times, slides, documents, recordings. Meeting facilitators: David Plumb, Gina Bartlett and Toby Berkman of CBI.org.

Notes:

• ICANN CEO Goran Marby met with the EPDP working group Tuesday: Adobe Connect replay and MP3 audio replay.

• Data_Elements_Processing_Workbook_v0.4.4 (pdf) updated 9/25; 

• Purposes for processing registration data - 24 September 2018 V7 (pdf);

• Updated (9/25) worksheets for Purpose A (pdf), Purpose E (pdf), Purpose M (pdf).

• Adobe Connect replay (video) & audio MP3 links on the meeting wiki page.

• Meeting Transcripts' links on meeting wiki page and GNSO Calendar.

• Chat Transcripts: Day 1 (pdf); Day 2 (pdf); Day 3 (pdf).

UPDATE Sep 24, 2018, slides:

F2F agenda (subject to change), times shown are local PDT:

Editor's note: links to EPDP meetings' transcripts are posted (usually within 24 hours) on the GNSO calendar. See also EPDP Team wiki, mail list, Temp Spec, EPDP Charter (pdf), GNSO's EPDP page, & weekly updates to GNSO Council.

EPDP Highlights for the week ending Sep 22 (emphasis and links added):

GNSO Council mail list:

Sep 18, 2018: "The BC/IPC [ICANN Business Constituency and Intellectual Property Constituency] recently sent a letter [pdf] to ICANN org about the accreditation and access model. This letter seems problematic at this stage of the game. We discussed this issue ad nauseam during the EPDP Charter development and the Council has tasked the EPDP with addressing the Annex. To ask ICANN org to circumvent the EPDP undermines the policy development process and seems disingenuous to the Council's approval of the Charter. In addition, the EDPB's July 5 letter [pdf] states responsibility for designing an access model lies with ICANN and the registries/ registrars, not just ICANN as indicated in the BC/IPC letter. Will our BC and/or IPC councilors please shed some light on this?"--Darcy Southwell (RrSG).  

Sep 19, 2018: "Darcy has asked an excellent question. As an outgoing councilor, I guess I can afford to be blunt here. What is going on? I quit the RDS PDP after two years of soul destroying work because it was blindingly clear we were going nowhere, and the Board was already working on a temp spec to override anything we were doing. IS the same thing going to happen with the EPDP? I am deeply concerned about the integrity of the multi-stakeholder process. Sorry for being direct, but time is precious."--Stephanie Perrin (NCSG). 

Editor's note: the lone response from either BC or IPC councilors as of Sep 21, 2018, is here. 

EPDP Sep 18 meeting chat transcript (pdf):  Milton Mueller (NCSG): "... confusing access with purpose again .... and again .... and again" .... Farzaneh Badii (NCSG): "... gating questions have to be answered. We are not answering them. Every meeting has turned into an access meeting ..." Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "Another useful document on the DPIA process, endorsed by the Schleswig Holstein DPA (co-author) is available here ... targeted to GDPR compliance ... (file under
educational efforts, or what we ought to be doing at this point) ... Useful also in that it crosslinks to relevant standards." 

EPDP Sep 18 meeting transcript (pdf, 49 pp.):
Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Yes, Kurt [Pritz], these comments are primarily directed to you as the chair of this committee. We've just spent half of our meeting on an extraneous agenda item. I don't know how we got – how this got prioritized. I think it’s very evident from the discussion that it should not have been prioritized. And I’m – I really think that we need to have better management of our agenda. We have to focus on the things that are essential to the temp spec and that is what data is collected, what are the purposes and what data is going to be redacted in public Whois. It’s simply unacceptable for us to keep getting distracted from these fundamental issues onto things that are secondary and that may not even be controversial once we've decided what data elements are actually going to be collected and what are going to be disclosed. So can we get off Appendix C? Can we just drop it? It’s not getting us anywhere. It’s a waste of time and I think I still don't understand how we even got on this." p.19 
Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "Okay, Milton ..." 

[Editor's note: Kurt Pritz, the inept EPDP Chair appointed by the GNSO Council, is a major contributor to the EPDP working group's dysfunction. Maybe the LA F2F meeting facilitators (CBI) can ameliorate some of the effects of Pritz's dysfunction.]

Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "... In many ways Alan [Woods, RySG] has just made my point. We are going in circles, folks. I hope some people have now taken the training but unfortunately the training is, while it’s very good I think, for length of time that takes to do it ... it does not help us do a privacy impact assessment on the framework that we're dealing with. And the problem, as I see it, is that the bylaws to which Alan keeps referring ... require a privacy impact assessment. Everybody’s assuming that the bylaws as ICANN has set them up, are some kind of gospel. They don't comply with data protection law. We have been told by the DPAs point blank over years, that it's not up to ICANN to set itself up as a law enforcement data dump. I’m paraphrasing there ... the purposes of third parties are not the purposes of ICANN and ICANN cannot write itself bylaws that provide that ... If we’re going to be going in circles you might as well go back and do a privacy impact assessment of the entire registration data service because this isn't working ..." p.24

EPDP Sep 20 meeting chat transcript (pdf): Amr Elsadr (NCSG): "I'm in favor of attempting to answering the Charter questions, as opposed to redlining the temp spec." ...   Kristina Rosette (RySG):+1 Amr (answering charter questions and not redlining TS) ... Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Please, let's not redline Temp Spec" .... "our ultimate objective is to replace the temp spec with a real policy, have we forgotten that?" ... farzaneh badii (NCSG): "why are we thinking about section by section. lets think about charter questions, the data elements, answer questions and then see which sections of temp specc has to be revised." Milton Mueller (NCSG): "exactly, Farzy." Amr Elsadr (NCSG):@Farzi: +1 ....  Milton Mueller (NCSG): "An access method is outside the gating question" ... Ashley Heineman (GAC): "I agree Milton" ... Thomas Rickert (ISPCP): "Kurt - I think Milton made an excellent point when he said that you can only have a discussion about redaction once you know what you collect in the first place" ...  Ashley Heineman (GAC): "... I think the charter questions provide a good framework for our discussions" ... Milton Mueller (NCSG): "I am going to leave the call ... this is a waste of time" ... Thomas Rickert (ISPCP): "... Today, I am quite frustrated because we do not seem to be making any progress at all."

EPDP Sep 20 meeting transcript (pdf, 45pp.):
Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Yes I’m just – there’s some kind of strange process going on here but I

thought I had made the point [p. 35] that we cannot discuss access to nonpublic Whois data until we know what the data is and what is public and what is nonpublic. And here we are having a discussion of access to these data elements that we don't even know and we don't know what's public and nonpublic. Why is this happening? Did I miss something in the discussion? It seemed like you agreed with me, Kurt, that there was a logical order to the discussion of these elements. Are we discussing what we’re going to discuss when we’re in Los Angeles? Or are we having this discussion in a real sense? I’m just completely lost here." p.40

Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "Thanks, Milton. I think there are several topics in Appendix A, other than
redaction, that require discussion where redaction isn't necessarily on the critical path. And so what …" p.40

Milton Mueller (NCSG): "… redaction is not on the critical path when you're talking about access to nonpublic Whois data and redaction tells you what's public and what's not public? How can you say that?" p.40

Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "I wasn’t referring to access, I was referring to some of these other things that are in Appendix A ..." p.40

Mark Svancarek (BC): "... I really reject the idea that we must define all data elements to be redacted before we can talk about the concept of reasonable access ..." p.41 

James Bladel [RrSG]: "... I keep feeling like we just continue to get wrapped around the access issue and ... it’s unfortunately just not something we can take on in the scope of the time that we have. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why the GNSO Council designed the charter the way they did. So I think we just need to kind of note it, flag it, and move on. Thanks." p. 42

Editor's note: The continual diversions to access and 3rd party purposes and interests, particularly by Facebook's Margie Milam  and Microsoft's Mark Svancarek (BC EPDP members), together with the inept EPDP Chair's dysfunction, is fast sinking any chance of this EPDP working group addressing 3rd-party "access" to redacted WHOIS registration data, due to a lack of time, if nothing else. But again, that may be the strategy of the IPC (Intellectual Property Constituency) and BC (Business Constituency) in order to put more "pressure" on ICANN management and the ICANN Board to adopt and implement a "unified accreditation and access model" more to IPC and BC's liking, without input from this EPDP working group. See BC/IPC Sep 7 letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Goran Marby.

The EPDP working group wasted almost the entire month of August compiling a "triage report" for the GNSO Council that could instead have been simplified to a survey completed in the first week of August, followed immediately with the EPDP Team addressing the Charter's gating questions. Instead the inept EPDP "leadership team" assisted by ICANN staff, forced the EPDP working group to engage in temp spec redlining exercises:

“I came into this thinking that the fastest way home was to sort of redline the temporary specification"--Kurt Pritz, EPDP meeting Sep 20, 2018, transcript, supra, p.10.

In other words, Kurt Pritz thought he knew a better way than following the GNSO Council's EPDP Charter, which is why the EPDP team is behind schedule and "off track" as it arrives in LA this week for its face-to-face meeting. I have observed every meeting of this EPDP working group, and thus far, from all indications, it appears Pritz lacks the intellect, aptitude, and/or skills, to be an effective EPDP Chair. Until the Chair's dysfunction is addressed, this EPDP isn't likely to get much done.

More info and updates on last week's meetings in last week's News Review.

Definition of "train wreck" -- a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a peculiar fascination for observers.

Note also:
ICYMI ICANN Lost Again in the Appellate Court in Germany:

ICANN v. EPAG Domainservices, GmbH (a Tucows affiliate)

• UPDATE Sep 24 POSTPONED: ICANN org 1-hour webinar Wednesday, 26 Sep 2018, 15:00 UTC (11am EDT), on recent data protection/privacy activities of ICANN related to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), via Adobe Connect (dial-in info). More info here. The webinar will be recorded and published here according to ICANN.--Webinar to be rescheduled per ICANN.
• GNSO Council Meeting Thursday 27 September 2018 at 04:00 UTC. Agenda (pdf) Item 7: "Council Update – Temporary Specification for Registration Data Expedited Policy Development Process - Recurring Update (15 minutes)."
• EPDP Q&A re: EPDP on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data.

• What Domain Resellers Should Know About ICANN’s Temporary Specification | enom.com.
• Claimed Failure to Disclose GDPR’s Collateral Impact Leads to Class Action Against Nielsen Holdings--jdsupra.com.
• Hard Times With WHOIS? INTA Wants To Know--jdsupra.com.
• A Slice of GDPR in California?--jdsupra.com.

2) Other ICANN News

a. ICANN's Whitewash CCT-Review Report: Competition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice Review Team Final Report (pdf), re: new gTLDs: 

"the review team concluded that the New gTLD Program should be regarded only as a “good start,” and that a number of policy issues should be addressed before any further expansion of gTLDs."--Report, supra, p.6 (emphasis added)

Editor's note: a good start? Hardly! New gTLDs are (for the most part) a BIG #FAIL, but ICANN's CCT-Review Team was unable or unwilling to honestly assess and acknowledge ICANN's Mistakes, Fiascos, and Horrible Implementation which resulted in this disastrous new gTLDs program. Recommendation: Relegate this CCT-Review Report to File 13. But did anyone really expect anything different from this Review Team handpicked by former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé?

b.  Root KSK Rollover: ICANN Board approved (with dissent) to change or "roll" the key for the DNS root on 11 October 2018 (first time the key has ever been changed)--ICANN.org. See also What To Expect During the Root KSK Rollover (updated 17 Sep 2018)(pdf).

c. ICANN Webinars on Proposed Updates to Draft Operating Standards for Specific Reviews 04 Oct 2018: 16:00 UTC, and 05 Oct 2018: 00:00 UTC. More info here.

d. GNSO Project List (pdf) 19 Sep 2018.

e. New gTLD .Merck: Merck KGaA’s written Submission (pdf) in support of Oral Presentation to BAMC on 4 Sep 2018.

f. is for FAIL: ICANN Reviews | glassdoor.com--what ICANN employees are saying about ICANN: "Sinking ship ... Senior management don't seem to have a clue ... Highly political and run by SJW's with ego problems ..."

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks

a. Trademarks: changes to Canada's trademark laws will remove the use requirement, possibly opening up the trademarks register to a flood of speculation. The changes, set to come into effect next year, will also institute three international trademark treaties: the Nice Agreement, Singapore Treaty and Madrid Protocol--CanadianLawyerMag.com. Editor's note: forget about domain speculation, trademark speculation may be the speculators' new game of choice and Canadian trademark lawyers' equivalent of ICANN's new gTLDs program.

b. Domains: Top Registrar in World: Godaddy has only 5.8% of top 16.6 MILLION New GTLD Registrations! | ricksblog.com. Editor's note: GoDaddy $GDDY, the world's largest domain name registrar, manages 21% of all domain names in the world--expandedramblings.com--but new gTLDs' domain names comprise only 1% of all domain names managed by GoDaddy. Why? New gTLDs (for the most part) are a BIG #FAIL.

c. ccTLD .eu: Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains | register.co.uk.

d. Prepared especially for ICANN's Next Round? A Top Level Domain (TLD) Registry In A Box, don't you want your very own brand new gTLD?

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 

Internet Freedom
EU: "EU copyright rules would limit online freedom"--Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman of Mozilla, Mountain View, CA, US--ft.com. But see also "French applaud EU copyright reform vote"--euractiv.com.

Internet Freedom
UK: "Politicians are threatening our right to have private discussions - we must not let them ban secret social media groups"--telegraph.co.uk.

Net Neutrality
US: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Slams California Net Neutrality Bill--"The internet should be run by engineers, entrepreneurs, and technologists, not lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians," Pai said. Pai is also citing a recent federal court of appeals ruling as evidence states lack the legal authority to reimpose net neutrality.

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

1. News Review: GDPR, EPDP Dysfunction, ICANN's Flawed Temp Spec

2. Tech Review: Amazon $AMZN Platform Power, Startup Role Model?

3. HBO vs Netflix, LVMH vs Amazon, iOS vs Android (video)

-- John Poole, Editor • Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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News Review: GDPR, ICANN EPDP Dysfunction, & WHOIS Misuse

Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2018-09-09) with analysis and opinion: Features • 1) GDPR, ICANN EPDP Dysfunction, & WHOIS Misuse,  2)a. ICANN v. EPAG, b. SSR2, c. RDAP, and more, 3) a. Donuts, Domains, Fadi Chehade, Abry Partners & The Greater Fool Theory, b. Dumb Domainers, c.ICANN Survey, 4) ICYMI, 5) Most Read & Top Geolocations.

1) GDPR, ICANN EPDP Dysfunction, & WHOIS Misuse

Definition of "train wreck" -- a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a peculiar fascination for observers.

ICANN EPDP Team Meetings coming up: Tuesday Sep 11, and Thursday Sep 13, 13:00 UTC, 9am EDT. Non-members of the EPDP Team can follow the EPDP meetings via Adobe Connect: https://participate.icann.org/gnso-epdp-observers, or audio cast via browser or application.

Editor's note: links to the transcripts, Adobe Connect recordings, and MP3 audio, will be posted in UPDATES below (as made available by ICANN). Note that links to EPDP meetings' transcripts are usually posted on the GNSO calendar within 24 hours). See also EPDP Team wiki, mail list, Temp Spec, EPDP Charter (pdf), GNSO's EPDP page, & weekly updates to GNSO Council.

Thursday Sep 13, 2018, EPDP Team Meeting (wiki page); Agenda in slides embed below:

Notes:
a. 9/13 Meeting transcript (pdf), Chat transcript (pdf) embed below, Adobe Recording, and MP3.

b. 9/13 Notes & Action items (embed below), Action Items; re: agenda item 4 (Introduction to Appendix A), see DSI for Appendix A here; The data matrix for item 3 can be found here (under background documents).

c. EDPB Advice (pdf)(embed below):

Tuesday Sep 11, 2018, EPDP Team Meeting (agenda in meeting slides embed below).

Notes:
a. 9/11 Meeting Transcript (pdf)  Adobe Recording, MP3, Chat transcript (pdf) embed below; notes and action items;
b. 4.4. purpose overview by Thomas Rickert here and attachment; Google Sheet EPDP Team input (last 3 columns) by 19.00 UTC on Friday 14 September to allow the leadership team to work with Thomas and Benedict to prepare the subsequent discussion on this overview.

9/11 Chat transcript (highlighting added):

c. GDPR Training--Ayden Férdeline (NCSG) Sep 10: "This training is hopelessly inadequate and intended to ‘check a box’ rather than impart in EPDP members any new knowledge. The course is intended to take 45 minutes to complete and, from what I understand, has a retail price of £20 per user. The course offers no training on the powers of supervisory authorities, on how to perform a data protection impact assessment, or on privacy by design, among other obvious deficiencies in its curriculum. I was under the impression we were looking for a course that would take at least three hours to complete, if not one day. We cannot be taught too much in one day, but we could be taught a lot more than can be learned in this 45 minute course (which can be completed a lot quicker than that actually) intended for front-line employees. This is so disappointing and really does us a great disservice. This is not the training we needed, and it should have been obvious from the price alone it was not intended to be used by those who would be tasked with designing a GDPR-compliant policy or system." 
Chris Disspain: "Do you have an example of the sort of training to which your refer?"
Ayden Férdeline: "Yes, I would be looking to the catalogue of courses offered by the [International Association of Privacy Professionals](https://iapp.org). They have a number that I think would be sufficient for our purposes (some that looked suitable to me were those at the “train”, “GDPR ready”, “engage”, and “expertise” levels, but NOT “awareness”). We need to know how to implement the GDPR in a way that meets regulatory requirements while minimising risk to ICANN and the contracted parties, which is exactly what the 45-minute £20 course ICANN has found us does not help with (and was never intended by the provider to do)."
d. Triage Report 

Triage Report to be submitted to the GNSO Council Sep 11, 2018, excerpt: "The objective of this Triage Report is to document the EPDP’s level of agreement on specific provisions within the current Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data .... essentially no section of the Temporary Specification will be adopted without modifications. " (emphasis added)

* * * * * * *

Highlights from last week's ICANN EPDP Team meetings--excerpts from EPDP meeting Sep 6, 2018, transcript (pdf), references are to the transcript page number:

Kurt Pritz (the inept EPDP Chair appointed by the GNSO Council): "the triage report, you know, to me does not constrain us in any way in our future deliberations. I’m going to go ahead and [send] this [the triage report] to the GNSO Council ..." transcript, p. 4.

Kurt Pritz: "Can somebody from staff answer that? I think I know the answer but I’ve screwed up before." p. 5.

Alan Greenberg (ALAC): "I must admit I’m somewhat confused. Milton had suggested that we put together, you know, drafting teams, I think anyway, I think what he said is to not have competing individual positions suggested. I’ve heard that we have assigned or asked specific people to try redrafting. I haven't heard about any actual multi-group, multi-person teams being put together to try to find a consensus drafting which Amr sort of implied when in his intervention, and we are clearly getting competing proposals here. So I’d like some clarity on how are we supposed to move forward? We seem to be doing – going in three different directions at once and I’m not sure that’s really helpful." p. 12.

Mark Svancarek (BC): "Sorry for piling on with complaints about us having to review the last  document submitted last night as the first document to review this morning, but I just have to pile on. I really think this conversation has been pretty ineffective ..." p. 32.

Alan Greenberg (ALAC): "I have to say I find this whole thing surreal. We’re discussing this as if these are definitive changes and should we accept them or not but James has said these were largely drafted from registrar point of view ignoring other ICANN needs, so I’m not quite sure why we're doing this but I’ll continue ..." p. 36.

Thomas Rickert (ISPCP): "So I’m struggling with this entire discussion and I think that if we ask whether this group – what people think we're trying to achieve here we will probably get as many answers as we have participants on the call ..." p. 39.

More info and updates on last week's meetings in last week's News Review. Note also:

• The EPDP Team will finally get its requested GDPR training;

• Early Input from ICANN AC/SOs to EPDP Team;
• Comment on the 20 August 2018 “Draft Framework for a Possible Unified Access Model" from RySG & RrSG (pdf);
• 4 September 2018 Letter from ICANN CEO Göran Marby to Tucows CEO Elliot Noss (pdf) re: ICANN Registration Data Privacy, in reply to 7 June 2018 Letter from Elliot Noss to Göran Marby (pdf), embed below:

• Worth Reading Again: September 25, 2017 Memo (pdf) to ICANN's failed RDS WG re: Final responses to EU data protection questions re gTLD Registration Directory data.
•  Letter from ICANN CEO Göran Marby to GAC Chair Manal Ismail 04 Sep 2018 - Request for Guidance on GDPR and Providing Access to Non-Public WHOIS Data marby-to-ismail-04sep18-en.pdf [pdf, 305 KB].
•  Letter from Independent Compliance Working Party to ICANN (Jamie Hedlund), et al. 06 Sep 2018, re: ICWP Priorities, icwp-to-hedlund-et-al-06sep18-en.pdf [pdf, 132 KB].

• WHOIS Misuse Study:

WHOIS Misuse of Registrants' Data--from the EPDP mail list (emphasis and links added): "Piscatello’s blog post is almost pure fiction. For example, he claims that there’s no evidence that Whois affects spam, when systematic research commissioned by ICANN itself concluded: “The main finding of the descriptive study is that there is a statistically significant occurrence of WHOIS misuse affecting Registrants’ email addresses, postal addresses, and phone numbers, published in WHOIS when registering domains in these gTLDs. Overall, we find that 44% of Registrants experience one or more of these types of WHOIS misuse. Other types of WHOIS misuse are reported, but at a smaller, non-significant rate. Among those, a handful of reported cases appear to be highly elaborate attempts to achieve high attack impact.”"

Editor's note: the draft study (pdf) and final study (pdf) referenced above. Comments to the final WHOIS Misuse Study commissioned by ICANN are here. Of note are the comments submitted by the At-Large Advisory Committee (pdf): "The ALAC will support any useful measure to abate misuse," and the Noncommercial Users Constituency (pdf): "measures must now be taken to protect Registrants."  Excerpt below:

See also: https://whois.icann.org/en/file/misuse-study-final-13mar14-en.

2) Other ICANN News

a. ICANN v. EPAG Domainservices, GmbH--English Translation of ICANN's Response to EPAG's Comment on ICANN's Plea of Remonstrance  [PDF, 178 KB]. Original filing in German here (personal identifiable information was redacted by ICANN). More case documents here.

b. SSR2: The ICANN Security, Stability, and Resiliency of the Domain Name System Review Team (SSR2) finally re-started its work, holding an in-person meeting 22-23 Aug 2018, after being paused by the ICANN Board of Directors in October 2017. Read more here.

c. RDAP: Moving Forward with RDAP | ICANN.org (RDAP is an eventual replacement for WHOIS protocol).

d. KSK Rollover: Preparing for the KSK Rollover | verisign.com: the KSK rollover is currently scheduled for 11 Oct 2018, subject to final approval by the ICANN Board of Directors.

e. ICANN Board Genval Workshop: September 14-16, the ICANN Board will be convening in Genval, Belgium, a town just south of Brussels, to hold its fifth workshop of calendar 2018. More here. Also, the ICANN Board will be holding a public Board meeting in Genval, Belgium: 16 Sep 2018, 08:00 – 09:00 UTC / 4am-5am EDT (US), in English only, via listen-only Adobe Connect: https://participate.icann.org/opencommunity/
Participant Code: 5542211258; Additional access numbers here.

f. ICANN Global Domains Division (GDD) General Operations Handbook for Registrars in Chinese 面还提供其他语种：2018年8月21日registrar-handbook-21aug18-zh.pdf [pdf, 409 KB]

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks

a. Donuts, Domains, Fadi Chehade, Abry Partners & The Greater Fool Theory

FLASHBACK--US Senator Ted Cruz: ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade Is Misleading the United States Senate--"Chehade Should Recuse Himself From All ICANN Decisions That Could Impact The Chinese Government"--February 23, 2016.

Definition of "Donut" (American English) In informal speech the phrase is used to highlight stupidity, e.g., "You Donut"

1. An individual who is extremely stupid. Lacks intelligence and common sense.
2. An idiot. A mild insult often used in the work places of southern England.
3. Somebody who does something incredibly stupid. An idiot.

Editor's Analysis and Opinion: Fadi Strikes (Out) Again! The largest new gTLDs registry operator (more than 200 new gTLDs), Donuts Inc., announced Sep 5, 2018, that it had entered into an agreement "to be acquired by Abry Partners," a private equity firm in which former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade is now a partner. Terms and timing of the agreement were not disclosed, but Abry's investment is reportedly only for a majority stake in privately held Donuts, and does not provide any additional cash for the company, instead, it provides a way for original investors in Donuts to exit.

While still ICANN CEO, Chehade announced in May, 2015, he would leave ICANN in March 2016, long before his contract ended on June 30, 2017, and did not disclose his reasons for serving as ICANN CEO for only 3½ years, instead of his full term. In August, 2015, he announced that after leaving ICANN he would be a "Senior Advisor on Digital Strategy" at Boston-based Abry Partners, adding, "I expect to add other roles to my portfolio and will update you all as appropriate." Later in December 2015, Chehade announced from Wuzhen, China, that he would serve, after he left ICANN, as Co-Chair of an advisory committee to the government of China's World Internet Conference (WIC), described by Professor Milton Mueller as "[l]ike almost everything in China, the WIC is unabashedly state-driven ... a vehicle for the Chinese [Communist] Party-state’s policy agenda ..." 

As ICANN CEO, Chehade's pet project was the NetMundial Initiative, which "crashed and burned" when ICANN and the World Economic Forum stopped funding it in 2016. In February, 2015, at a DNA meeting during ICANN52, Chehade stated, "I need to understand it [the domain name industry] more and spend more time in it, no question."  While at ICANN, Chehade was known for hiring and promoting his cronies to management positions within ICANN. Chehade promoted, in June, 2013, his childhood friend and former co-worker, Akram Atallah, to the then second-highest paid position at ICANN, President of the Global Domains Division (GDD), which is now the highest paid position at ICANN at  $745,615.00 per the most recently available IRS 990 (pdf), p.56 of 81.

Perhaps it was for some or all of these reasons, that Abry Partners decided to venture into an industry where it has no experience--the domain name industry--despite what Abry says on its website, abry.com: "Abry invests in private equity, preferred stock and debt securities within our sectors of expertise."

The Abry-Donuts deal may be both getting out while the getting's good (for the original investors in Donuts) and an example of the greater fool theory. If so, it may be just another version of what is described in the article at the next link below, only at the TLD (top-level domain) level.

b. Domaining: The “Dumb Domainer” Industry and How it Operates | ricksblog.com.

c. Trademarks & Domain Names: Participate Now in the Sunrise and Trademark Claims Survey | ICANN.org. [Editor's note: I've already completed the survey, and I encourage all registrants to complete the survey which takes less than 15 minutes.]

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 

a. Why the Whole World Should Be Up in Arms About the EU's Looming Internet Catastrophe--eff.org:

"The link tax means that only the largest, best-funded companies will be able to offer a public space where the news can be discussed and debated. The censorship machines are a gift to every petty censor and troll (just claim copyright in an embarrassing recording and watch as it disappears from the Internet!), and will add hundreds of millions to the cost of operating an online platform, guaranteeing that Big Tech's biggest winners will never face serious competition and will rule the Internet forever."

b. California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 becomes effective on January 1, 2020. It includes some aspects of the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), such as the right to be forgotten, "but it raises the ante"--jdsupra.com.

c. New GDPR-Inspired Data Laws In Brazil And India--jdsupra.com.

d. Cyber Norms: A Farewell to Norms |  internetgovernance.org: "Exhibit A: Russian 'meddling'--The current hysteria about Russian influence operations in the U.S. is deserving of a Sherlock Holmesian title: “Russian Influence Operations and the Curious Case of the Inverted Norm."

e. Facebook: How Duterte Used Facebook To Fuel the Philippine Drug War | buzzfeednews.com: due to "heavy subsidies that keep Facebook free to use on mobile phones, Facebook has completely saturated the country. And because using other data... is precious and expensive, for most Filipinos the only way online is through Facebook ..."

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

1. News Review: 1) ICANN EPDP Struggles; 2) New gTLD .WEB Updates

2. Tech Review | Tesla $TSLA And Elon Musk's Wild August Ride (video)

3. Tech Review: 1) Apple $AAPL 9/12 Event; 2) Facebook $FB HQ Expansion

DomainMondo.com's readers by geolocation--top 3 countries--results the same for week and month:

1. United States of America (US)
2. People's Republic of China (CN)
3. Federal Republic of Germany (DE)

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

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