News Review: ICANN's Extortionate .BRAND Scam Failing

Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2017-07-09), with analysis and opinion:  Features •  1) ICANN's Extortionate .BRAND Scam Failing,  2)ICANN Collaborates with Moscow-Based PIR Center, 3) How Phony Are New gTLDs' Stats? 4) Most Read Posts This Past Week on Domain Mondo.

1) ICANN's Extortionate .BRAND Scam Failing

"ICANN is just a scam and the entire industry is based on monopolistic fraud with DC payoffs."--Mike Mann, domain name registrant, March 30, 2017.

ICANN's new gTLDs program, an "ill-conceived clusterf*ck" driven by greed, incompetence, cronyism, and conflicts of interest, grossly over-expanded the internet's generic top-level domains (gTLDs) from just 22 to over 1200 beginning in 2014. One of the key parts of the new ICANN program opening in 2012 was the ability of corporations to apply to control their very own "piece of the internet" (gTLD) by applying to use their own trademark(s) or brand name(s), e.g., .BARCLAYS, .BMW, .BNPPARIBAS (that's not a misspell), etc., as a new gTLD, something completely counter to the historic principles of the internet (see RFC 1591) as well as ICANN's (and the U.S. government's) position in the recent Weinstein case that TLDs are not property but global public resources. In addition, the .BRAND program has been criticized as contributing to the decline of the free and open internet by encouraging silos of TLDs controlled by profit-making enterprises who also control internet access and have no hesitancy in limiting access to only certain domains if not restrained by governments. Trademarks and corporations exist (and are limited) by virtue of sovereign laws. Some have said ICANN's unbounded desire to serve as the lap dog of a few big corporations in its capacity as the world's supranational policy-making authority and "coordinator" of the global internet DNS, led to the creation of .BRAND gTLDs. Finally, lawyers tell me there are also huge risks in making a trademark a generic top-level domain--ever hear of genericide? Which is why I guess some trademark lawyer wanted to change the word "generic" to "global" in GNSO at ICANN59.

Notwithstanding the above, ICANN proceeded to open the new gTLDs program in 2012 to this new sub-category of generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and by ICANN's standards, it was a big success--a total of 664 brands (34% of all applications) were conned into submitting applications to ICANN--although most applications were, and still are, purely "defensive." Read the U.S. Senate testimony (pdf) of Dawn Grove, corporate counsel for the parent of the manufacturer of  PING golf equipment. ICANN knows no shame.  

One complete list (updated as of 25 Jan 2017) of all the "dot BRAND" applications and their status is here. A review of that list indicates that the main beneficiaries (besides ICANN) of ICANN's dot BRAND program are principally just three companies which provide the bulk of the .BRAND back-end registry services): Afilias (whose Executive Chairman Jonathan Robinson became GNSO Council Chair in 2012, and whose CTO Ram Mohan has been on the ICANN Board since 2008); Verisign (which is also registry operator of .COM and .NET); and Neustar (note that ARI Registry Services is now owned by Neustar). ICANN Board member Becky Burr (2016-2019), a Washington, D.C., "revolving door lawyer" (Burr used to work for the U.S. Department of Commerce (NTIA) and FTC), has been employed by Neustar since 2012. In addition, the current GNSO Council Vice Chair Donna Austin, a former ICANN employee, works for Neustar.

Of course there are others--ICANN thrives on greed and conflicts of interest--including a menagerie of brand consultants, strategists (e.g., here and here), as well as an assortment of hucksters, lawyers, charlatans, and snake oil salesmen who thought they would get filthy rich off all the big "dumb" rich trademark holders who were told they must pay to defensively register their trademark as an ICANN .BRAND TLD or risk losing their "brand name" and trademark on the internet to other claimants. ICANN charged an initial $185,000 "shakedown" fee per brand name upfront, plus periodic fees thereafter for the "privilege" of operating the .BRAND TLD. Of course, that may be just a drop in the bucket compared to the fees charged by the consultants, lawyers, back end registry service providers, and others, including the aforesaid charlatans.

Despite the best efforts of ICANN, its "partners" Afilias, Verisign, Neustar, et al, and the menagerie of other hucksters, the dot BRAND program is failing with well-known global brand McDonald's recently throwing in the towel on their .MCD (pdf) and .MCDONALDS new gTLDs:

McDonald's back end registry services had been provided by Neustar. McDonald's had also been a client of Fairwinds Partners.  I guess greed and conflicts of interest have their limits.

2)  ICANN Collaborates with Moscow-Based PIR Center to Present a Collection of Articles on Cyberspace | ICANN.org. See also: PIRcenter.org: Global Internet Governance and Cyber Security: As Viewed by Russian Experts.

3) How Phony Are The Stats on New gTLDs' Domain Name Registrations? Nobody really knows. ICANN is too inept to collect and publish the true data. Update July 13, 2017: 

Above data courtesy ntldstats.com July 13, 2017: if the "millions" of new gTLD domain names 'owned' by registry operators were NOT shown above (see second tweet below), how much worse would the actual situation be? ICANN doesn't want to know and doesn't want YOU to know.

Top 5 #GTLD's now account for 50% of all Regs. 500 split/suck other 50%. The weak, getting weaker. #Domains https://t.co/8SrF9wBtW0

— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) July 3, 2017

Actually, 28% of all regs shared by 480 new #GTLD's. Look behind the numbers & you'll see regisrtries own MILLIONS! #Fake #Pityful #Domains

— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) July 3, 2017

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

1. News Review: ICANN59 Report; .NET Greed: ICANN + Verisign $VRSN

2. a16z VC Marc Andreessen On Tech Valuations and More (podcast)

3. Mobile Economy: Anindya Ghose Says Life Getting Even Faster With Tech 

4.  G20 Summit, July 7-8: A Push For More Restrictions on Internet Freedom?

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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DISCLAIMER

Domain Names, New gTLDs, DNS Abuse, ICANN as Chief Abuser

Why New gTLDs + IANA Transition May Be The Undoing of ICANN

Comments are now scheduled to close 20 May 2016 23:59 UTC (extended from May 13) on ICANN's Draft Report: New gTLD Program Safeguards to Mitigate DNS Abuse.You can read all comments submitted here.

Below is the comment submitted by the Editor of Domain Mondo, which is also here (pdf).

May 13, 2016

To ICANN:

As a domain name registrant, and editor of DomainMondo.com, I am submitting this comment to Draft Report: New gTLD Program Safeguards to Mitigate DNS Abuse.

For the new gTLDs mania, we are now entering the repudiation phase – a moment where “all the lies that had been built up alongside the excess are aired out in public.”

Your “draft report” misses the mark.

You claim your purported purpose was, and is, “to examine the potential for increases in abusive, malicious, and criminal activity in an expanded DNS and to make recommendations to pre-emptively mitigate those activities through a number of safeguards.”

Abusive, malicious, and criminal activity in an expanded DNS happens most frequently at the second level or registrant level, not at the first level or TLD which is controlled by the registry operator. Exceptions may be extortionate or other abusive practices, pricing, etc., by registry operators, which ICANN’s own Business Constituency and IPC can, and have, well advised you concerning, and which may be remediated through contractual terms and conditions, and effective Contract Compliance, which has been lacking at ICANN.

When ICANN unwisely decided to expand the global internet DNS and add more than 1000 new gTLDs (from just 22 gTLDs and 200+ ccTLDs), you exponentially increased the potential and actual opportunities for “abusive, malicious, and criminal activity“ in the global DNS without any safeguards for the global internet community which has suffered as a result, just so ICANN, and the domain name industry, could “make money.” You have not been a good steward of the global DNS.

In the absence of responsible stewardship of the global DNS by ICANN, you have left it to others, from sovereign nations like China (which essentially is now running its own DNS inside China via the ‘Great Firewall’ and legal requirements imposed upon registry operators, registrars, and registrants), to companies and individual consumers which are deploying TLD blockers on their own networks.

Contrary to what you apparently believe, less is often more, and excessive competition can be destructive, to markets, to companies, and to individual consumers.

Even worse, you have adopted the extortionate business model in-house at ICANN, by, in effect, forcing established trademark owners, to pay $185,000 plus annual fees, plus operating expenses, for a gTLD used primarily for defensive blocking, at the top-level, their trademark in the global DNS:

“ … closed and predominantly defensive .Brand TLDs account for roughly one-third of all new gTLD applications. Put another way, it would appear that .Brand TLDs are being disproportionately relied upon for ICANN revenue, even though they represent a tiny proportion of second-level domain names under management. For example, .Brand TLD registry operators, such as Apple Inc. or Yahoo! Inc. have activated only a mandatory minimum number of second-level domain names, yet they pay ICANN precisely the same fixed quarterly fees as certain open TLD registry operators, such as Vox Populi, which currently has over seven-thousand domain names under management.² It is the latter category of TLD registry operators that are more likely to be controversial and thus ultimately more costly to ICANN in terms of political, administrative, compliance and legal resources.³…” --IPC Comment on Draft ICANN FY17 Operating Plan & Budget and Five-Year OperatingPlan Update, p.2 (pdf)

Accordingly, the hard truth is that ICANN, itself, is today probably the chief “abuser” of the global DNS. Now that ICANN is irrevocably committed to this ever downward spiral of irresponsible management and stewardship of the global DNS, I, like many others, have pretty much given up on ICANN. As a registrant, I am now in a defensive mode in response to ICANN’s failed stewardship, and have little confidence that ICANN will survive long-term once the IANA transition is complete. Most likely, the model proposed by China and others, of a government-led multistakeholder institution to replace ICANN, will eventually prevail due to demands of the global internet community for safety, stability, and security of the internet, and responsible stewardship in the global public interest, of a global public resource.

Respectfully submitted,

John Poole

Domain Name Registrant, and Editor, DomainMondo.com

References:

• Usage Trumps Registrations: Why Past TLDs Failed and Why Many Will Follow in Their Path (CircleID.com)
• News Review [May 8, 2016]: ICANN, IANA, AFRICA, WSIS, XYZ, Chinese Speculators
• Blocking New gTLDs, ICANN's 'Shadiest' Top-level Domains, 'Wholesale'
• ICANN Damaged a Competitive Domain Name Market With Its New gTLDs
• Housing Bubble Like New gTLDs Mania? The Big Short Trailer (video)
• Tim Berners-Lee on ICANN, new gTLDs, public interest
• ICANN Insiders On New gTLDs: Mistakes, Fiascos, Horrible Implementation
• ICANN, DNS Abuse, New gTLDs: Bad Policy, Horribly Implemented
• News Review [May 1, 2016]: New gTLDs 'Nobody Cares About' - ICANN's Trash Problem
• ICANN, Esther Dyson, Becky Burr: The Historical Perspective
• Esther Dyson Told ICANN new gTLDs were a mistake in 2011 (video)
• ICANN's Boondoggle (MIT Technology Review | technologyreview.com)

UPDATE: see also Lack of Trust in Internet Privacy and Security May Deter Economic and Other Online Activities | Department of Commerce - NTIA: "NTIA’s initial analysis only scratches the surface of this important area, but it is clear that policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the Internet and the resulting chilling effects."

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