Showing posts with label ccNSO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ccNSO. Show all posts

2016-12-18

News Review: ICANN WHOIS Domain Name Data Accuracy Varies Widely

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

 What is WHOIS? "WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The WHOIS protocol is documented in RFC 3912."--Wikipedia.org. See also WHOIS Search | ICANN WHOIS: "ICANN's WHOIS Lookup gives you the ability to lookup any generic domains, such as "icann.org" to find out the registered domain owner."

Feature • ICANN published a report on syntax and operability accuracy of WHOIS data in gTLDs (generic top-level domains), which follows reports published in June 2016 and December 2015. Read the Report (pdf). ICANN developed accuracy tests to answer questions about the syntax (format and content) and operability (e.g., does an email sent to the email address provided in the WHOIS record go through?) of a sample of WHOIS records. Key Findings: (1) Nearly all WHOIS records contain information that can be used to establish immediate contact: In 97 percent of records, at least one email or phone number meets all operability requirements of the 2009 RAA; (2) Approximately 90 percent of email addresses, 72 percent of telephone numbers and 97 percent of postal addresses were operable.

Results by region:
source: ICANN.org
ICANN will host a webinar to review methodology and findings of the report: WEBINAR: WHOIS Accuracy Reporting System December 2016 Report | ICANN.org: Webinar Date: 12 January 2017; Time: 16:00 - 17:00 UTC; Join via Adobe Connect; View Dial-In Information; The webinar will be conducted in English. Recordings will be published in the knowledge center of the WHOIS website at: http://whois.icann.org/en/knowledge-center.

Results in the report have been provided to ICANN's Contractual Compliance team, which will assess the types of errors found and follow up with registrars on potentially inaccurate records. ICANN will begin work on the next WHOIS ARS report in January 2017, with a targeted publication date of early June 2017.

Other Internet Domain News:

 •  ICYMI this past week on Domain Mondo:

•  Trouble brewing? You’ll never find the right answers if you’re asking the wrong questions--
ICANN's WS2 jurisdiction subgroup is struggling over whether to ask a question--
"What are the advantages or disadvantages, if any, relating to ICANN's jurisdiction*, particularly with regard to the actual operation of ICANN’s policies and accountability mechanisms?"
*“ICANN’s jurisdiction” refers to (a) ICANN being subject to U.S. and California law as a result of its incorporation and location in California, (b) ICANN being subject to the laws of any other country as a result of its location within or contacts with that country, or (c) any “choice of law” or venue provisions in agreements with ICANN.

•  Must Read: SSAC Response to ccNSO Comments on SAC084 (pdf) highlighting added:


See also: SSAC Comments on Guidelines for the Extended Process Similarity Review Panel for the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process (pdf):
● Conservatism Principle: Because the root zone of the global DNS is a shared resource, the decision to add a label to the root should be governed by a conservative bias in favor of minimizing the risk to users (regardless of the language or script they are using and whether the label will be a gTLD or a ccTLD) and minimizing the potential for the need to make decisions that later must be changed or overridden in painful or incompatible ways. In order to minimize risk, doubts should always be resolved in favor of rejecting a label for inclusion rather than in favor of including it.
● Inclusion Principle: A TLD label should be added to the root zone only if it is known to be “safe” in terms of usability and confusability. This is particularly important for labels whose form as normally presented to a user contains non-ASCII characters because the number and kinds of possibilities for usability and confusability problems is much greater.
● Stability Principle: The list of permitted labels in the root zone should change at a rate that does not negatively impact the stability of the root of the DNS, and usually only in the direction of permitting an addition as time and experience indicate that inclusion of such a TLD label is both safe and consistent with these principles.

•   How Search Engines Are Killing Clever URLs [New gTLDs] | TheAtlantic.com: "... Although investors scrambled—and shelled out up to $185,000 a pop—for the chance to snatch up the new [generic top-level] domains and profit as gatekeepers, uptake among end-users has been underwhelming ..." See also: New gTLD Domains, the Walking Dead and Dying, ICANN FY15 Results | DomainMondo.com 02 July 2015.

 •  Analyzing IGF 2016 transcripts:
Source: Final Report from the 11th Internet Governance Forum | digitalwatch.giplatform.org (pdf)
•  55% of  domain names [in India] are .COM, management firm study finds| NewIndianExpress.com: "Among all Top-level domains (TLDs), .com extension is still the most popular extension in India, as 55 per cent of domain names are on the extension."

•  Why Russia's LinkedIn Ban Is Not About Internet Freedom | Forbes.com: "In line with many countries, Russia updated its requirements relating to personalization of local data with a new law that came into effect on September 1, 2015. This law, which requires local storage of personal data relating to Russian citizens to be stored on servers physically located within the Russian Federation, is analogous to similar laws which have been passed in many countries over the last few years. LinkedIn is one of the major international companies to fail to comply with this law, and as such the courts have ordered it be shut down until such time as it complies."

•  Home routers under attack in ongoing malvertisement blitz | ArsTechnica.com: DNSChanger causes network computers to visit fraudulent domains.

•  New gTLD .MUSIC: December 15, 2016, Letter (pdf) from Dechert LLP Attorney Arif Hyder Ali re: DotMusic Limited’s Reconsideration Request 16-5: the Council of Europe (CoE) Report DGI (2016)17--"... The CoE Report provides additional support for the BGC to accept DotMusic’s Reconsideration Request 16-5 and approve DotMusic’s application for .MUSIC. Given the Council of Europe’s global nature and remit and its participation in the GAC, we submitthat the BGC must seriously consider the report’s findings in relation to .MUSIC ..." 

• ICANN Public Comment Periods that close in January, 2017:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2016-03-09

ICANN55 Wednesday Recap, GNSO & ccNSO Approve CCWG WS1 Report

A recap of Wednesday at ICANN55 in Marrakech, Morocco, via the twittersphere of the talented and observant tweeter @sgdickinson:

Tomorrow is the final day of ICANN55 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco. Links to the public forum and public ICANN Board of Directors meeting scheduled for the last day can be found at: ICANN 55, Marrakech, Morocco, March 5-10, Info, Links, Twitter Feeds. Livestream videos (Live and Replay Archive) can be found here.




DISCLAIMER
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

2016-03-08

ICANN55, Marrakech, Tuesday Recap via Twittersphere

ICANN55, Marrakech, Tuesday Recap via Twittersphere:
See on DomainMondo.com: 
Also see: Livestream ICANN55 videos (upcoming & replay/archive)




DISCLAIMER
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2016-02-14

IANA Stewardship Transition, New ICANN CCWG Accountability Timeline

UPDATE 23 Feb 2016--CCWG-Accountability Resolves ICANN Board's Concerns with Threshholds, Final Proposal Sent to Chartering Organizations for Approval--Chartering Organization Approval - Final Report (23 February) - Enhancing ICANN Accountability--

After a 1:00-3:00 a.m. ET meeting today (Feb 23), at which CCWG-Accountability members and participants were polled, the CCWG Co-Chairs announced "broad support" for removal of the language which caused the Board's concerns (see Steve Crocker's post below), "As such, the updated Paragraph 72 [in Annex 02: https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=58723723&preview=/58723723/58725520/Annex%2002%20-%20FINAL.pdf] language is:

"The CCWG-Accountability also recommends that in a situation where the GAC may not participate as a Decisional Participant because the Community Power is proposed to be used to challenge the Board’s implementation of GAC consensus advice and the threshold is set at four in support, the power will still be validly exercised if three are in support and no more than one objects, with the following exception: Where the power to be exercised is recalling the entire Board for implementing GAC advice, the reduced threshold would apply only either after an IRP has found that, in implementing GAC advice, the Board acted inconsistently with the ICANN Bylaws, or (1) if the IRP is not available to challenge the Board action in question. If the Empowered Community has brought such an IRP and does not prevail, the Empowered Community may not exercise its power to recall the entire the Board solely on the basis of the matter decided by the IRP. It may, however, exercise that power based on other grounds."

 "... We will now proceed and send the finalized report, without (2), to the Chartering Organizations for approval."--CCWG Co-Chairs Tue Feb 23 18:13:48 UTC 2016.

The Chartering Organizations will have 15 days (through March 9, 2016) to approve the Final Report so it may be submitted to the ICANN Board for transmittal to the NTIA on March 10, 2016 (at ICANN55), see updated timeline below.

 UPDATE 20 Feb 2016: CCWG-Accountability Final Proposal further delayed--a "glitch" in the timeline process occurred on Friday, February 19, 2016--posting to the CCWG maillist on Saturday, Feb 20, at 00:19:15 UTC 2016:

Dear all,
As you are aware, we intended to publish our Final Report today (19 February 2016) for Chartering Organization consideration. We are ready to do so, except for one issue where we would like to consider options as a full group.  
There is, still, ongoing discussion on the issue of thresholds for Board removal in Recommendation #2, which raised concerns in our report after we came to a compromise on Board consideration of GAC Advice (Recommendation #11). Since then, we have tried to propose compromise text that would be acceptable by different groups (c.f. the 12 February and 17 February drafts, posted at https://community.icann.org/x/iw2AAw).  
We received comments on this issue, and in some cases, minority statements, from members and participants in the ALAC, GAC, GNSO, and the Board. Earlier today, ICANN Chairman, Steve Crocker, posted a *note [see below], apparently on behalf of the ICANN Board, outlining Board concerns with the latest attempt at compromise text proposed on 17 February: http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2016-February/011056.html.
While these last minute interventions are deeply disappointing for those of us who worked extremely hard, within the group and within their respective communities, to build bridges and promote compromise, our main target and duty remains to achieve a stable level of consensus, respecting the bottom-up, multistakeholder nature of the process.
It is fortunate that the Board provided this input before we published the report, since it enables us to assess the potential consequences of a Board disagreement later in the process.
We believe this issue must be discussed before sending our Final Report to Chartering Organizations. At the very least, we would like the opportunity to discuss a way forward and process as full group on next Tuesday’s CCWG-Accountability call at 06:00 UTC. There are many options and directions the group can take at this stage, each with different implications and considerations, and these options should be discussed as a group.
Until the Tuesday call, let’s keep open channels of communication on our mailing list and work towards a solution. We will also reach out to the Chartering Organizations to inform them of the change in our schedule.
As co-chairs, we renew our call upon every Member, upon every Participant, our call upon community leaders especially in the ICANN Board, in the GNSO and in the GAC to step away from confronting each other, to engage constructively and recognize each other’s value to the multistakeholder model. If you believe that the multistakeholder model can deliver, now is the time to act accordingly.
Thank you,
Thomas, León, Mathieu
CCWG-Accountability Co-Chairs
(emphasis added)

*Posting by ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker on Friday, Feb 19, 2016:

CCWG Colleagues, 
The Board has a serious and continued concern about the issues being raised that may result in the reduction of the GAC’s ability to participate in community decision making. This is most noticeable in the question of thresholds for board removal, however this is not an issue about removal or even thresholds, it is one part of the community being (or perceiving that it is being) sidelined. The Board’s concerns with this issue are not about Board removal, but about maintaining the balanced multistakeholder model. 

The Board is against any changes to the long established equilibrium and fairness among the different stakeholders within ICANN. The Board has long supported a threshold of four participants for Board removal in the ultimate escalation method proposed by the CCWG. Selecting one portion of the ICANN community and removing them from the equation - just through the ability to say that the community is unhappy with the acceptance of GAC advice that is within ICANN’s bylaws - raises significant concerns about how the multistakeholder model, and the ultimate stability of ICANN as an organization, can be maintained. This carved out exception undercuts the established role of governments within the multi stakeholder process, and could introduce new issues with the acceptance of ICANN’s model undermining the work of the CCWG. 
We understand that there are concerns with this path from within other parts of ICANN community, including members of the GAC and ALAC. The best course, in our opinion, would be a careful and objective discussion of the whole matter of how advice from ALL parties is appropriately considered within ICANN. If there is a graceful way to remove this matter from the immediate pressure of the deadline of submitting this proposal and make it a priority matter for either the implementation phase or Work Stream 2, we think there will be a solution which is genuinely good for everyone. 

We encourage you to share the CCWG’s proposal with the Chartering Organizations while the dialog on this outstanding point continues. 

Thank you, 
Steve Crocker Chair, ICANN Board of Directors


IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Process
IANA Stewardship Transition--new ICANN CCWG-Accountability Timeline--

Note: There is no public comment period for the final draft proposal -- You can view the full final draft of the proposal on the CCWG's Wiki (https://community.icann.org/x/iw2AAw). The documents are displayed in a table format, you can download each section as you read through, or download a zip file of all documents by going to the "download all" link at the bottom of the page. Also note "the compromise on Board removal liability mitigation in Recommendation 4 has not been properly reflected" as of February 12 and the CCWG Co-chairs indicated it will be corrected on or before February 18. UPDATE: The timeline has been further revised as indicated below:
  • 12 Feb — Report sent by 22:00 UTC to the CCWG Leadership Team and CCWG Legal Counsel for review with all materials posted on the Wiki (https://community.icann.org/x/iw2AAw) for everyone to view.
  • 15 Feb — Report updated (if needed) to incorporate edits from CCWG Leadership Team and Legal.
  • 16 Feb 17 Feb — Report sent to CCWG for 48-hour review (and posted on the Wiki at https://community.icann.org/x/iw2AAw).
  • 17 Feb 18 Feb at 17:00 UTC – Minority statements due for incorporation into Final Report.
  • 18 Feb 19 Feb further DELAYED (see UPDATE above) Final Report sent to Chartering Organizations* for consideration and approval on February 23, 3016.
  • 25 Feb – CWG-Stewardship sign-off letter delivered to Chartering Organizations, then to ICG.
  • By 9 Mar at the latest** – Sign-off on Final Report by Chartering Organizations* at ICANN55 in Marrakech (in time for the Board to consider).
  • 10 Mar – Public ICANN Board of Directors Meeting (final day of ICANN55, Marrakech), hand over from ICANN Board to NTIA.
**the Chartering Organizations will have 15 days (Feb 24-Mar 9) to read, review, discuss and approve the CCWG-Accountability final draft proposal on Work Stream 1 (WS1) enhancements to ICANN accountability necessary in order to transition the IANA stewardship from the U.S. government to ICANN.

*Chartering Organizations:
GNSO Generic Names Supporting Organization
ALAC At-Large Advisory Committee
ccNSO Country Code Names Supporting Organisation
GAC Governmental Advisory Committee
ASO Address Supporting Organization
SSAC Security and Stability Advisory Committee

CCWG-Accountability Meetings schedule here | online via Adobe Connect (open to silent "observers") icann.adobeconnect.com/accountability/

CCWG ACCT Meeting #84Tuesday, 16 February06:00 - 08:00 UTC
CCWG ACCT Meeting #85Tuesday, 23 February06:00 - 08:00 UTC

Time conversion 06:00 UTC is 1:00 AM ET (US)

A look back:  CCWG-Accountability Presentation - 8 Dec 2014:



See also on Domain Mondo:



DISCLAIMER
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2015-11-06

Verisign's Keith Drazek: GNSO, IANA, ICANN, WHOIS, New gTLDs (videos)



Video above: Verisign's Keith Drazek reflects on his forthcoming term on the GNSO Council, his experience within ICANN including his previous experience on the ccNSO Council, as well as WHOIS policy, and the new gTLDs Reviews. (source: ICANN; Published on Oct 30, 2015)

Video below: Keith Drazek discusses his representation of the gTLD Registries on the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) during the group’s first meeting in London, 17-18 July 2014. Topics mentioned include Verisign's Role as Root Zone Maintainer as well as Registry operator for .COM and .NET. (source: ICANN; Published on Jul 25, 2014)

Keith Drazek is Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations at Verisign, Inc., operator of the .COM and .NET domain name registries, Internet Root Zone Maintainer pursuant to an agreement with the US Department of Commerce (NTIA), as well as operator of  two of the world's 13 Internet root servers. Keith has been active in the ICANN community for more than a decade, including his most recent role as Chair of ICANN’s GNSO Registry Stakeholder Group. Prior to joining Verisign in 2010, he worked for ten years at the U.S. Department of State, and ten years in the domain name industry - 2 years at a registrar and 8 years at a registry (Neustar). His experience in the domain name industry includes business development, channel management, government relations, external affairs, and Internet policy development. He studied International Relations at George Washington University in Washington, DC. (primary source: ianacg.org)

See also on Domain Mondo: Verisign, ICANN, Internet Root Zone, Risk Factors to the Root Domain Oct 26, 2015




DISCLAIMER
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2015-10-20

ICANN 54, Dublin, Tuesday Livestreams, LIVE and Replay Videos

ICANN 54, Tuesday, October 20, 2015, on Livestream (see videos below):
IST is Irish Standard Time:
Morning:
08:30 to 09:30 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board and the At-Large
09:45 to 10:45 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board and the ccNSO
11:00 to 12:30 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board and the Commercial Stakeholders
Afternoon:
14:15 to 15:15 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board and the Registries
15:30 to 16:30 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board & the Registrars
16:45 to 17:45 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board & the NRO / ASO
18:15 to 19:15 IST Joint Meeting of the ICANN Board & the SSAC

Full ICANN 54 Schedule here (with links to sessions having remote participation online).
See also: ICANN 54, Dublin (Oct 18-22), schedule links, info, and twitter feeds here






DISCLAIMER
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2015-05-01

IANA CWG Chair Tells ICANN 2nd Draft Proposal Incomplete, Needs Work


On 25 April 2015, the ICANN Board held a panel discussion during its Workshop in Los Angeles on the IANA Stewardship Transition proposals from the three communities designated by the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) pursuant to the ICANN convened process as directed by the U.S. Department Commerce's NTIA in its March, 2014 announcement (audio above, edited transcript further below):

Numbering Resources (CRISP Team) RIRs "Numbers"
Protocol Parameters (IANAPLAN Working Group) IETF "Protocols"
Domain Names (CWG-Stewardship) ccNSO, SSAC, GNSO, ALAC, GAC "Names"

Numbers and Protocols submitted their respective proposals in January, 2015, as requested by the ICG timetable. However the Names proposal is still "a work in progress"--its 2nd draft proposal was posted for comment last week (comment period ends May 20). Complicating things further, the Names proposal has "dependency" on the outcome of work now underway by another separate group within ICANN-- CCWG-Accountability--which is developing its own separate proposal for "enhancing ICANN accountability."

CWG-Stewardship and CCWG-Accountability have been working "overtime" to meet unrealistic deadlines and timetable imposed by ICANN (note comments of Jonathan Robinson below about "exhaustion") even though Larry Strickling of NTIA has said there is no September 2015 deadline and "the community should proceed as if it has only one chance to get this right." Instead, both working groups, CWG-Stewardship and CCWG-Accountability, are "rushing" to meet the ICANN Board/Staff-imposed timetable so the IANA contract, which terminates in September, does not have to be renewed with NTIA. Apparently ICANN is extremely fearful of the Republican-controlled U.S. House and Senate, as well as the possibility of a Republican winning the Presidency in 2016. Or perhaps it is the possibility of international intervention that has them "spooked." In any event, note below the continuing inquiry of the Board: "what can the Board do to help to keep the project on time?"

Participating in the discussion from the respective communities via remote were:
- Andrew Sullivan, (IAB) (Protocols)
- Jonathan Robinson, Co-Chair, CWG-Stewardship & GNSO Chair (Names)
- Jari Arkko, ICG Member and IETF Chair (Protocols)
- Izumi Okutani, Chair, CRISP Team (Numbers)
- Axel Pawlik, NRO Chair (Numbers)

Sally Costerton, Senior Advisor to the President, Global Stakeholder Engagement moderated the discussion.

ICANN Board Workshop–Community Panel Discussion on IANA Stewardship, April 25th: (transcript edited, emphasis added)

Andrew Sullivan: ".... the IETF is pleased to welcome everybody else into the same sort of arrangement that we've had. We've got an arrangement that has never involved the NTIA, and it's running and it's working...."

Jonathan Robinson: "... from a CWG [CWG-Stewardship] transition perspective. And you know that this week we put out a substantially coherent proposal for public comment, 28-day public comment. It's got some rough edges, so that worries me a little. It's not entirely complete. There does need to be some work. And the concern with that is that it depends how those responding to that decide that the refinements both that the group undertakes and that the public comment expects the group to undertake, whether those are deemed to be not so material as to require another public comment. So that's clearly the big issue. Whether or not from a timing point of view we can deal with one public comment, process those public comments, put them into a revised proposal, get them out to the community ahead of Buenos Aires, and then get chartering organization support for that proposal ... Another one [issue] is that one or more chartering organizations feels that they simply haven't had the opportunity to digest the process and deal with the content and the ramifications of it. I think that would be tough because the organizations have had a lot of prior exposure, both through membership of the CWG and repeated communications and output of the group. And then the third issue that we face is this dependency and linking with that of the accountability track.So for me, those are the three challenges. And the challenge with the third one is that group had begun their work a little after the CWG on the stewardship, and yet there is a strong linking between the two. And so that will provide us with potential challenges if there isn't a belief that that work is sufficiently mature from the CWG
on accountability ... I think the Board can help by giving insight into timing. There's some push-back from the community, with good reason in part, from exhaustion and effort and, you know, requirement to commit. So I think to the extent that the timing pressures can be explained and understood, that's helpful."

Sally Costerton: "... one of the questions that came up was the impact of any delay in submission to the NTIA ..."

Jonathan Robinson: "I'm not sure I understand the question. I can speak broadly to timing and timing related issues or...."

Sally Costerton: "The question is whether you had any observations about the impact of any delay, if there is a delay, from the dates that have been stated by the NTIA."

Jonathan Robinson: "I don't think I want to speculate as to the impact of the delay ...."

Izumi Okutani: [CRISP proposal] "... One of their points that we observed as -- caused a misunderstanding about our proposal is that the numbers community want to move away from ICANN as the IANA operator. And concerns have been expressed that this might cause instability in the IANA function. And I really want to encourage them that this is not true ... But at the same time, we find it is very important that our community has the ability to choose the IANA operator, which is actually (indiscernible) already stated in the NTIA's contract with ICANN on the IANA function today. So NTIA has the ability to choose the IANA operator, and we're just replacing the
NTIA with the RIR, which is representing the numbers community. And this is very much in line with the requirements that the NTIA had put in transitioning this stewardship to the open global multistakeholder community...

Sally Costerton: "... I turn this over now to the ICANN board members. And I'm happy either for
you to address a general comment to the room or to the individual -- to the individual participants.
Would anybody like to kick off?... Never have I ever seen us so quiet here..."

Erika Mann: "... I just have a very, very simple question. How do you see the -- if there would be
progress made so that we could have a -- could move forward with the transition period as we ideally hoped in September. So what I would really love to hear from your point of views and the different views and communities you are reflecting on, if you could highlight maybe the major barriers in achieving this and what would have to be done, if at all possible, from the side of the Board and management to help you achieve this?

Sally Costerton: "Thank you, Erika. So who would like to answer Erika's question, which what can the Board do to help to keep the project on time?
If at all. 
Who would like to comment on that?
Nobody would like to comment on that.
Okay. ..."

(read the complete transcript here)

Also, apparently ICANN is now having second thoughts about the proposals from Numbers and Protocols.




Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2014-09-17

ICANN Meetings, Domain Name Registries, and Dirty, Filthy Registrars

For those of you going to your first ICANN meeting next month (LA, October 12-16), I thought I'd give you a bit of foretaste of what it's like from a London ICANN 50 transcript (emphasis added)--

ccNSO Meeting in London - Audio & Transcripts | Country Code Names Supporting Organisation:
LONDON – ccNSO Members Meeting Day 2 transcript: Wednesday, June 25, 2014 – 09:00 to 15:30 ICANN – London, England:

BYRON HOLLAND: There’s Oscar. This is the first test of the panel to see if they can actually sit in the order of their pictures and self‐organize. Okay, good morning, officially, to Wednesday, day two of the ccNSO meeting. Our first panel of the day certainly promises to be a very interesting one, no doubt lively. For registries and registrars, can we standardize? Can one size fit all? I’m sure there are no strongly held opinions on that whatsoever. With that, I will hand it over to Crystal Peterson, who will be moderating this panel. Thank you.
CRYSTAL PETERSON: Thank you, Byron. Good morning, everyone. It’s very nice to see you on
this lovely Wednesday morning. My name is Crystal Peterson, as Byron mentioned. I’m the Director of Global Sales and Channel Marketing for the .co registry. I would like the rest of my panel members to introduce themselves, if they will, right before we get started here.
OSCAR ROBLES‐GARAY: Hi, good morning. I’m Oscar Robles, General Director of .mx, ccTLD for Mexico.
GIOVANNI SEPPIA: Good morning. It’s Giovanni Seppia, External Relations Manager of .eu.
HENRY CHAN: Hi, good morning. Henry Chan from .hk, Business Development Manager for the ccTLD for Hong Kong.
MICHELE NEYLON: Michele Neylon, Founder and CEO of Blacknight, a dirty, filthy registrar based in Ireland. I’m also the Chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group within the ICANN GNSO and Chair of the .eu Registrar Advisory Board.
PETER LARSEN: My name is Peter Larsen. I’m also a registrar, a dirty registrar.
MICHELE NEYLON: Dirty, filthy registrar. Do it properly.
PETER LARSEN: Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m also on Advisory Board for .eu. I’m Chair of the Danish Registrar Union and Board member of the Swedish and the Norwegian, by the way. I’m based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
TOBIAS SATTLER: Good morning. My name is Tobias Sattler. I’m from United Domains as a
Chief Information Officer. I’m not part of any other things like other registrars – just trying to be nice.
CRYSTAL PETERSON: Thank you, gentlemen.
MICHELE NEYLON: Are you still drunk from last night?
CRYSTAL PETERSON: We are here today to talk a little bit about how can we standardize amongst registries and registrars, taking into account the fact that, as ccTLDs, we may have local policies that need to be in play from our local governments in order to run... I’d love to pose a question to our registrar guests first of what are some of the things that you would love to see from the ccTLD community, from a potential technical standpoint, to help standardize – I see all kinds of smiles here – from a technical standpoint of how can we help you work with ccTLDs better? Go
MICHELE NEYLON: I’ll go first, because the two of them are still half asleep. At the moment, one of the main challenges from the registrar perspective is that practically every single ccTLD has its own technical implementation... I feel, at times, that my technical team have to sacrifice small animals in order to integrate with some ccTLDs – and gTLDs, by the way. The gs are using EPP, but they keep on adding weirdness to it. Just if everybody were just to keep it simpler, life would be so much nicer.
CRYSTAL PETERSON: You’re saying basically it’s being able to standardize around one type of
platform system, like [inaudible]
MICHELE NEYLON: Not so much platform. It’s more to do with the standards themselves. In the gTLD space, everybody’s using EPP. The problem is that some people have weird extensions. In the ccTLD space, you’ve got EPP, EPP’s bastard son, EPP’s bastard cousin. You’ve got e‐mail‐based systems. You’ve got systems based around Curl. You’ve got stuff using various APIs. You’ve got things which are web‐based systems with no APIs. You’ve got registries that understand the concept of a registrar. You’ve got registries who don’t understand what the hell a registrar is. You’ve got ones who think they understand what the registrar is but don’t really understand what a registrar is, so they go, “You’re a registrar.” “Well, no, actually, you’re not.” “Yes, you are.” “No, you’re not.” Oh God, help. It’s this kind of mish‐mash of in some cases crazy, in other cases, I know it’s legacy. I mean, as a guest in the ccNSO, I’m trying to be polite about it.
CRYSTAL PETERSON: Yes, it’s early in the morning. We’re polite for the first 30 minutes....

[It's all downhill after that--here are some excerpts below]

MICHELE NEYLON: At times, we find it quite frustrating dealing with ccTLD operators,
because for a lot of you – not all of you, admittedly. Looking across, I look at Oscar, who’s definitely on the more business‐y side I think – at least, he wears nice suits. For a lot of you, you don’t approach running your country code as a business. You approach it as something else. I’m not too sure exactly what, but it’s not being run with that kind of commercial view. It’s being run as something else. I do appreciate and I do understand that those of you who’ve dealt with
me in the past know I am sensitive to it....

[On the subject of registries who also operate registrars]--
MICHELE NEYLON: ... It just depends on how much blood we want to leave in the room after this one. Okay. I’ve always had very mixed feelings about registries playing the role of registrar. Now, in the gTLD world, we’re now seeing more and more new TLD operators that are vertically integrated. There’s some very valid reasons why vertical integration can make sense. I’m not totally opposed to it. What causes issues is when the vertically integrated entity or the registrar arm of the registry gives itself an unfair advantage. For example, if you have a nice set of policies that you apply to everybody except to yourself, well, then, as far as I’m concerned, that’s just plain wrong. That’s the kind of thing that causes headaches. Also, as well, generally speaking, most registries that try to act as registrars kind of suck at it, anyway. I don’t worry too much about it.... unfortunately, in the ccTLD space, you don’t have a lot in place, a lot of the time, to handle registrar failure. You don’t have proper escrow set up in many cases. You don’t have any of those kind of things...
MICHELE NEYLON: Just one other thing as well is registries should be registries. You shouldn’t try to start offering all sorts of crazy extra services... Stick to running what your registry. Don’t go throwing on extra stuff just because you think it’s a “good idea.” It probably isn’t....they [registries] probably would be better off investing their resources elsewhere. I’m kind of wary of that, when you’re looking at some of these things. From our side, on the registrar side, all of these things, it’s like, “Yes, crap, there’s no real demand for it.”  What there is demand for a lot of the time is a quick and easy ability to register a damn domain name, get a website, e‐mail, and other things up and running quickly and easily, without having to hand over a blood sample and a sliver of my kidney.....
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing to add.
MICHELE NEYLON: He’s very happy just to sit there and just agree with us. And be honest, Crystal, we didn’t coordinate this, okay? For the record, we didn’t have a pre‐meeting to coordinate what the registrars were going to say. We’ve been saying the same things for years. This is not news.
CRYSTAL PETERSON: Fair point, fair point. Yes?
GIOVANNI SEPPIA: Okay. First of all, I like to point you to the lights in the corner of the room, because anytime that Michele says a bad word, they turn into almost red – pink or red. I think they are some sort of emotional lights. Those close to [inaudible]. They are changing and I just noticed that anytime he says something really nasty, they were completely red. I think they are emotional lights. They help to --
MICHELE NEYLON: No. Giovanni –
GIOVANNI SEPPIA: Thank you, Michele. It’s my turn, thank you.
MICHELE NEYLON: No, Giovanni, nasty? Hold on, there. Critical.
GIOVANNI SEPPIA: Critical.
MICHELE NEYLON: Critical.
GIOVANNI SEPPIA: Constructively critical.
MICHELE NEYLON: Not always constructive.
GIOVANNI SEPPIA: Okay. That [inaudible]....

[Well, enough of the transcript, I think you get the idea--so go, and enjoy!]
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Domain Mondo archive