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

Domain Mondo's weekly review of the news, analysis, and look ahead [pdf]: 

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

UPDATE Sep 21, 2016: It appears the pro-transition lobbyists have either dropped the ball or didn't come to the game ready to play:

1. Trump enters the arena on ICANN | TheHill.com; Press release of September 21, 2016: Trump Opposes President Obama's Plan to Surrender American Internet Control to Foreign Powers | Donald J Trump for President | DonaldJTrump.com by Stephen Miller, National Policy Director for the Trump Campaign; TheHill.com also reports FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly now also want to delay the IANA transition;
2. Senate leaders say they are close to deal to prevent government shutdown: "The latest GOP offer also included a provision sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would delay plans for the U.S. government to give up control over a global nonprofit that oversees the internet domain system. Cruz told reporters that he is “cautiously optimistic” that it will be included in the final package."--WashingtonPost.com [Domain Mondo Editor's Note: read the WaPo article and one is left with the impression that Democrats are now willing to "trade away" their stance on the IANA transition for something else.]

UPDATE Sep 20, 2016: U.S. Senate lays groundwork for spending deal--"It's not [time for] a big debate for talking about how we change the internet forever ... It's not a time to try to satisfy Cruz because he doesn't get along with the caucus and they're trying to shut him up."--U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority Leader in TheHill.com.

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Original post of Sep 18, 2016:
Feature •  After Cruz Attack, What Now For ICANN & IANA Transition? For more than a week U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been dominating the news related to the IANA stewardship transition scheduled to be completed October 1, 2016 (after expiration of the IANA functions contract on September 30). From September 9th's US Senator Cruz Attacks ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, IANA Transition (video) through yesterday's Sen. Cruz Questions NTIA's Strickling, ICANN's Marby & Witnesses (videos), Domain Mondo's coverage has included a daily posting on this topic almost every day.

But now with less than two weeks left before September 30, the chance that Republicans in the House and Senate will actually derail the IANA transition is unlikely, for the following reasons:

1. The fact that this is an election year works in favor of the IANA transition--Republicans are looking to leave Washington soon to return to the campaign trail, reports TheHill.com.
2. The IANA transition is not a hot-button issue in this campaign season. Most Americans don't even know who or what ICANN is, much less the IANA transition, and don't care. The headline in the Washington Post sums it all up: Ted Cruz has made an obscure Internet agency his first post-presidential crusade. In Election 2016, it's about the economy, stupid:



Election 2016 top issues in search by state, past week | Google Trends 

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

Other ICANN, Internet Governance, and Domain Name News:

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

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

•  Verisign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) reported this week that at the close of Q2 2016 (June 30, 2016):

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

Verisign had previously reported that at the close of Q1 2016 (March 31, 2016), the base of registered names in .com equaled 126.6 million names, while .net equaled 15.9 million names. Accordingly, .net registrations decreased by about 100,000 (net) in Q2 2016, while .com registrations increased by about 900,000 domain names (net) in Q2 2016. For more information, copies of the Q2 2016 DNIB, or to view past reports, go to VerisignInc.com/DNIB.

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

•  ICANN published its Global Registrant Survey Final Phase Results (pdf). More information here. Results may be questionable based upon methodology alone:

ICANN Global Registrant Surveywave 2 | AUGUST 2016, p. 5

Apparently ICANN commissions these kinds of studies to generate a mostly useless report in an attempt to justify ICANN's mistakes or reinforce existing policies. Vendors, like Nielsen, usually understand this. Manipulation ("adjustment") of methodology and data are well known techniques. In this case, the report did confirm a few things we already knew:

• Reported registration of new gTLDs is highest in the Asia Pacific region.
• ".COM continues to be the most favored legacy domain name among registrants. Declines are seen for several of the less common gTLDs but these already have very low reported registrations." (p.22 of 182)
• Many would-be registrants choose alternative identities (e.g., social media handles) over domain names.
• About 17 percent of the respondents said they did not renew a domain in favor of using an alternative method for managing an online identity.

•   TheDomains.com reports Frank Schilling's North Sound Names is dropping 230,000 new gTLD domain names from its portfolio, which probably accounts for the decreases we are seeing in Uniregistry's new gTLDs' registration numbers like .FLOWERS and .PROPERTY.

•  No Comments close this coming week at ICANN.

Tech News:

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

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

1. News Review [11Sep]: IANA Transition Drama in D.C. and ICANN & Zika
2. IANA Transition Hearing: Implications of Ending US Oversight of the Internet
3. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz vs ICANN and IANA Transition: Veni, Vidi, Vici ?
4. US Senator Cruz Attacks ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, IANA Transition (video)

Macro view:

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

4 Other Reading Recommendations:

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

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER

News Review: IANA Transition Drama in D.C. and ICANN & Zika

Domain Mondo's weekly review of the news and look ahead [pdf] starting with a macro view:

 •  "There is a sense that markets are waiting impatiently as various macro risks loom on the horizon"--David Folkerts-Landau, Group Chief Economist at Deutsche Bank--Central Banks Around the Word are Dovish | ritholtz.com.

•  Crude Oil Freight Rates Plunge to Record Lows | WolfStreet.com: "Overcapacity is the result of misallocation of resources by investors and/or governments that have been fooled by their own optimism, twisted policies, and central bank promises that their QE and a flood of cheap money would actually create real-economy demand. And overcapacity is now also sinking the oil tanker market." See also: The Great Debt Unwind Beneath the Surface: US Commercial Bankruptcies Soar | WolfStreet.com.

•  Markets: Gathering Clouds?

From August 10 to September 9: US benchmark S&P500 -2.19% and UK benchmark FTSE100 -1.30% 

•  Julian Assange Vows Huge Wikileaks Dump on Hillary, Just Before the Debates | SantaMonicaObserver.com: "No fan of Donald Trump, Assange really hates Hillary Clinton. Release may come on eve of 3d [final] debate."  Presidential Debates: 1) Sep 26; 2) Oct 9; and 3) Oct 19. Election Day: November 8, 2016. The USC Dornsife / Los Angeles Times tracking poll shows the race between Clinton and Trump tied (within margin of error). See Trump closes in on Clinton's projected electoral lead: Reuters/Ipsos Poll: "A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely voters showed an 8-point lead for Clinton has vanished since the last week of August." See also Democrats wonder and worry: Why isn’t Clinton far ahead of Trump? | WashingtonPost.com  and Hillary's speech full of invective Friday night.

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Feature • IANA Transition Drama in D.C.: Less than three weeks to go before the IANA Stewardship Transition is complete on October 1, 2016, and Republicans in Washington, D.C., have multiple forays underway in a last-ditch effort to delay the transition and extend the IANA functions contract which will otherwise expire September 30, 2016. Meanwhile ICANN and pro-transition forces in Washington are countering. For more see on Domain Mondo:

• Senate & House Chairmen's Letter to Attorney General & Commerce Sec.
• US Senator Cruz Attacks ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, IANA Transition (video)
• ICANN Answers Questions About The IANA Stewardship Transition

This coming week U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will hold a subcommittee hearing entitled "Protecting Internet Freedom: Implications of Ending U.S. Oversight of the Internet,"--United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary | judiciary.senate.gov: Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, Wednesday, September 14, 2016, at 10:00 AM EDT, in Dirksen Senate Office Building 226, Washington, D.C., Chairman Cruz presiding.

See also ICANN fight intensifies ahead of Cruz-called hearing | POLITICO.com: Jamie Hedlund, VP of strategic programs in ICANN's Global Domains Division, argued in an interview with POLITICO.com that opposition was coming from individuals "who don't understand fundamentally what's at issue."  

and The ICANN Debate: 6 Things You Need to Know | heritage.org: "... six key points you need to know on this issue from Heritage expert Brett Schaefer ... 'the Obama administration has allowed political concerns to trump prudence and U.S. officials have downplayed and dismissed the many legitimate concerns that people have raised about the transition because it wants the transition to occur before it leaves office.'..."

Feature • ICANN and Zika--tweets from #ICANN57 this past week:

• If you need a 1 hour webinar and two blog posts to explain how to get to the #ICANN meeting, maybe you picked the wrong location. #ICANN57
• @ICANN said on #ICANN57 webinar today, #zika has been endemic to India since 2013. Why, then, was this mtg moved from Puerto Rico to India?

For more see CALENDAR and LINKS | DomainMondo.com:

• ICANN 57 | Hyderabad, India, 3-9 Nov 2016 (ICANN57 was moved from Puerto Rico due to the Zika virus. See: Relocating ICANN57 | ICANN.org and cdc.gov/zika/).

and ICANN Public Meetings:

• WEBINAR: ICANN57 Hyderabad
• Download Presentation [PDF, 432 KB] | 
• Adobe Connect Session Recording
• ICANN57 Hyderabad: What You Need to Know (Part 2)
• ICANN57 Hyderabad: What You Need to Know (Part 1) 

___________

Other ICANN, Internet Governance, and Domain Name News:

•  The South China Morning Post has suddenly shut down its Chinese-language website | Quartz | qz.com: "... the Chinese-language website [domain: nanzao.com] of Hong Kong’s main English newspaper, the South China Morning Post, is gone ... The South China Morning Post was acquired by Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men and the founder of e-commerce platform Alibaba, in December 2015. Joseph Tsai, the executive vice-chairman of Alibaba, told the New York Times then that the decision to purchase the newspaper was made in order to provide coverage of China that was untouched by the “negative” bias of the Western media. In 2013, Jack Ma was reportedly furious at the Chinese language website of the South China Morning Post after it ran an interview with him, in which he said that the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square was “the most correct decision.”..."

•   New gTLD Registry Operator and Registrar Rightside (eNom.com, Name.com), CEO Taryn Naidu, and CFO Tracy Knox, will be conducting one-on-one institutional investor meetings at the 2016 Deutsche Bank Technology Conference on Tuesday, September 13, 2016, at the Encore at Wynn Las Vegas. A copy of the investor presentation will be available in the Investors section of Rightside's website. Rightside shares (NASDAQ: NAME) have declined -32.86% since August 10th:

•   New gTLD Registry and Registrar services provider Centralnic Group PLC (LON: CNIC) reported first-half 2016 results this past week: adjusted pre-tax profits of £948,000, though after tax the group had a £1,306,000 loss. $CNIC shares have declined -13.33% since August 10th (see chart above). Centralnic CEO's Statement: "The domain name industry is undergoing a period of disruption and consolidation ..."

•   Trump Org. Beats Defamation Claim From Domain Name Pitchman | NewYorkLawJournal.com: "... Brooklyn federal Judge Eric Vitaliano said the complaint in Stephens v. Trump Organization, 15-cv-2217, failed in every respect. Vitaliano said, "It is inconceivable that Stephens could, as the silence in his papers emphasizes, plead any facts that would entitle him to co-opt the Trump name" or "that any words used by the Trump defendants to denounce cybersquatting (in all its forms) would be defamatory."..."

•  John McAfee, creator of antivirus software, sues Intel for right to use his name: "McAfee  joined digital gaming company MGT Capital Investments Inc as chairman and chief executive, and plans to rename the company 'John McAfee Global Technologies Inc.'''--domain-b.com. Intel acquired the McAfee trademark (mcafee.com, @mcafee) in 2010, and utilizes the name in connection with its cybersecurity unit called "Intel Security." See also Intel Sells a Majority Stake of Cybersecurity Unit to TPG | NYTimes.com: "Under the terms of the deal, [the spinoff] will borrow money to pay out a roughly $2 billion dividend to Intel, which will retain a 49 percent stake in the business. TPG will pay $1.1 billion in cash for a 51 percent stake. The business, currently called Intel Security, will again adopt the McAfee name when the deal closes, which is expected in the second quarter of 2017."

• Internet in Russia freer than in US, claims top Kremlin official | rt.com: "Volodin was giving a press conference in the central Russian city of Tambov, where a local reporter asked him to comment on the possibility of introducing a rule that would require social networks to obtain ID from their users “so that people could know who is on the other side of the internet.” The official replied that unlike many countries, Russia has chosen self-regulation on the internet and he saw no need to change this."

•  Open Internet Advocates Claim Victory in Europe Net Neutrality Fight: "The BEREC guidelines state that internet users “have the right to access and distribute information and content, use and provide applications and services, and use terminal equipment of their choice, irrespective of the end-user’s or provider’s location or the location, origin or destination of the information, content, application or service, via their internet access service.”"--Motherboard.Vice.com.

•  Facebook’s satellite went up in smoke, but its developing world land grab goes on | Emily Reynolds | Opinion | TheGuardian.com: "The whole point of the internet – the joy of it, the endlessly radical possibilities that are part and parcel of it – is that it’s open, that it’s neutral, that its users are free to say, do, and read almost anything they want on it."

•  How internet pirates became a political force in Iceland | newstatesman.com: "In 2013, five months after its founding, the Pirate Party won three of Iceland’s 63 parliamentary seats – the only one of the world’s thirty or so officially registered Pirate Parties with a presence in a national legislature – and it is expected to gain between 15 and 20 in the elections later this year. It has been quite a rise for an activist movement that initially focused on internet freedom and copyright reform."

•  Comments close this coming week at ICANN on Proposed Renewal of .TEL Registry Agreement: Close Date 13 Sep 2016 23:59 UTC.

Tech News:

1. World's fastest optic undersea cable now links U.S. to Japan and Taiwan: "... in June, the six-member FASTER Consortium began beaming light through the FASTER cable [which] connects the United States and Japan ... we [Google] invested in a cable that links FASTER in Japan on to Taiwan, where our largest data center in Asia ..."--googleblog.com. See also: FASTER Cable System | NEC.com and FASTER | Wikipedia.org.
2. "Amazon.com Inc. is pursuing video rights to a wide range of sports, including the French Open tennis championship and professional rugby, as the company looks for ways to draw new customers to its online TV service"--Bloomberg.com
3. Apple's new iPhones: 'The Thrill Is Gone'--if what I have already is good enough why should I upgrade?--See "'Good Enough' theory could be taking hold"--SeekingAlpha.com. See also Samsung out as much as $1 billion for Note 7 recall, will reportedly stop using its own batteries--9to5Google.com.
4. IoT: A Zion research report indicates the commercial telematics market is set to grow from $20.42 billion in 2015 to $55.14 billion by the end of 2021, at a CAGR of more than 18% between 2016 and 2021.--ConnectedCar-news.com
5. Google to acquire Apigee | cloudplatform.googleblog.com: "The addition of Apigee’s API solutions to Google cloud will accelerate our customers’ move to supporting their businesses with high quality digital interactions."  See also: Google given more time to reply to EU antitrust charge on Android | Reuters.com. 
6. Can Uber Make A Profit? "... unclear whether Uber is a sustainable long-term business that justifies its current valuation. Ride services are fungible and thus competition will drive down prices to the point of marginal supply."--SeekingAlpha.com
7. Tech Startups Face Dwindling Funding | WSJ.com: "China’s technology startups were red-hot for years. Today, the catchphrase among some in the industry to describe the funding environment is “deep winter.”"
8. Tax Avoidance Schemes: How Apple—and the Rest of Silicon Valley—Avoids the Tax Man | WIRED.com: "... By selling intellectual property rights to sock-puppet subsidiaries, tech giants shift profits to low-tax nations like Ireland. But that’s just a start. Sublicense the IP to a second Irish unit that books global sales, have entity B pay onerous royalties back to A (wiping out its earnings), then show that A is headquartered in the Caribbean, making its royalty income untaxable in Ireland ..." See also: Brussels calling: tech firms add lobby strength as EU gets tough | Reuters.com.

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

1. News Review [4Sep]: Threats to the Open Internet and ICANN Culpability
2. ICANN Litigation, Cooperative Engagement, and IRP Status Update
3. US Senator Cruz Attacks ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, IANA Transition (video)
4. Senate & House Chairmen's Letter to Attorney General & Commerce Sec.

4 Other Reading Recommendations:

1. The High Cost of Honesty in a Sea of Low-Cost BS | CharlesHughSmith.blogspot.com.
2. Shopping Malls in Crisis: "[L]andlords are essentially making the case that Aeropostale is better off with only a fourth of its brick-and-mortar locations, ideally in the best-performing malls where traffic trends haven't been pummeled. The company can then pursue growth through online sales, as well as licensing pacts and wholesale contracts in the U.S. and abroad -- much as Authentic Brands is trying to do with Juicy Couture."--Bloomberg.com
3. Fundamental Attribution Error, Why Predicting Behavior Is Hard--FarnamStreetBlog.com
4. A Farewell Guide to Political Journalism | TheAtlantic.com by Ron Fournier: "A reporter’s job isn’t to make friends. It’s ... to hold powerful people accountable. Remember the Balz lesson: Your sources are more likely to respect you if they’re a little afraid of you. Don’t cede power to the powerful."

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER

News Review: ICANN Wins Appeal on ccTLDs But Castigated in IRP Loss

"… the BGC [ICANN Board Governance Committee] admittedly did not examine whether the EIU or ICANN staff engaged in unjustified discrimination or failed to fulfill transparency obligations.  It failed to make any reasonable investigation or to make certain that it had acted with due diligence and care to be sure that it had a reasonable amount of facts before it.--Dot Registry IRP Declaration--see this week's FEATURES further below.

Domain Mondo's review and look ahead [pdf], starting with the macro view:

•  “The artist Christopher Wool has a word painting, 'Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids.' That’s exactly how I feel – sell everything. Nothing here looks good ... The stock markets should be down massively but investors seem to have been hypnotized that nothing can go wrong."--Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital. See also: Goldman Turns Outright Bearish: Says To "Sell" Stocks Over Next 3 Months | ZeroHedge.com.

• China's Liquidity Trap: "For months now, those allied with the [China] central bank have warned that an ever-increasing reliance on looser liquidity is failing to juice the economy, arguing that monetary policy has reached its limits and abusing it would only cause consumer- and asset-price inflation ... China’s monetary policy ... [has] fallen into a “liquidity trap.” The term refers to an economic scenario where cash injections fail to reduce interest rates or generate more investments. Chinese companies were just hoarding the additional liquidity in the banking system instead of using it to expand investment ..."--WSJ.com

• Angela Merkel condemned: 'Germans have had enough' - thousands of people took to the streets of Berlin to protest against the German Chancellor’s open door policy - Polish experts claim 'Europe is dead' - Europe 'at the end of its existence' following a summer of terror and the EU’s free movement policy.  An ex-Polish counter-terror officer has warned 'the whole Balkans are flooded with weapons, and from the Balkans have come two million people. Together with them came arms dealers, gangsters, drug dealers. Buying a Kalashnikov in Bosnia and Herzegovina is as it was with us after the war. You can buy one for peanuts.' --DailyExpress.co.uk.

•  Rio 2016 Olympics not going to bump Brazil economy: "... Goldman Sachs' Alberto Ramos wrote in a note on Monday ... 'Furthermore, due to a number of large macroeconomic imbalances that have grown and permeated the economy and the severe drop in confidence indicators, total investment spending has actually been contracting uninterruptedly for 2.5 years. Gross Fixed Investment has now declined for ten consecutive quarters ... retrenched by a cumulative 27.0% between 4Q2013 and 1Q2016, and is now at the same level as 2Q2009.'"--BusinessInsider.com. See also: Carpet Cleaner Sues For Its Right to Tweet About the Olympics | gizmodo.com.

•  While easing interest rates to 0.25 percent (ECB is at -0-), Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said Britain could “handle” Brexit and insisted there was no danger of a recession. Referring to the outcome of the EU referendum, he spoke of the resilience of the British people and said the economy would continue to grow instead of stalling like much of the EU economy. The London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 ended the week UP 1% to close at 6,793.47 (see chart below). See Don’t blame Brexit for this rate cut. Blame Project Fear | telegraph.co.uk and Britain will succeed after Brexit insists Bank of England boss Mark Carney | Daily Express | express.co.uk. 

London Stock Exchange FTSE100 now UP 7% since Brexit vote

London Stock Exchange FTSE250 now UP 1% since Brexit vote

See also: Experts and the future | Matt Ridley | rationaloptimist.com: "The expert pollsters told the hedge funds Remain would win right up till when it lost, so the pound and the FTSE 100 rose, then crashed. The expert financial forecasters then told investors the FTSE 100 would fall further, but it quickly recovered all its lost ground and more. The expert analysts told us we should watch the FTSE 250 plunge instead, but that has now returned to the level it was at a week before the referendum (see chart above) ... there are no experts on the future. Explaining the present and the past requires expertise: “it’s your carburetor/prostate”. In forecasting the future, experts are generally no better than everybody else. They might be worse."

•  FEATURES: It was the best, and worst, week for ICANN

The Good: More than six months after oral arguments were heard, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on August 2, 2016, issued its opinion affirming the U.S. District Court that the ccTLDs of Iran, Syria, and North Korea, were unattachable, thereby granting a victory to ICANN and the global internet community. Read more at US Court of Appeals Decision re: ICANN & Iran, Syria, North Korea ccTLDs. A post-decision discussion on the CCWG-Accountability (Weinstein v. ICANN) mail list, including ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker, Professor Milton Mueller and others, includes this from an attorney (from the U.S.):

"I have no real opinion on the case generally or the ccTLD/ICANN dispute.  But I think this is mistaken – of course if a registrar subject to an order chooses to resist the order and/or destroy the registry he can do that.  But subject to a lawful order, there is no reason to think that rebuilding the registry would be necessary – the court would simply order its transfer to the new registrar and an compliant loser would make the transfer ..."

Apparently, CCWG participant(s) do not know the difference between a registrar and registry operator!

The Bad: "... the [IRP] review panel findings cast heavy doubts on ICANN’s competence to manage without oversight."--ICANN can't: independent review finds group incompetent | TheStack.com. The Dot Registry IRP Declaration posted by ICANN on August 2, 2016, received critical commentary this past week, see ICANN IRP, Dot Registry New gTLDs INC LLC LLP, Tempest in a Teapot? The declaration (pdf) was a split decision (2-1), but included severe criticism of ICANN staff and the ICANN Board of Directors, including its Board Governance Committee (BGC).

While I have also been, and continue to be, a critic of the ill-advised and misbegotten new gTLDs program, both the policy and its implementation, as well as failures of ICANN leadership, in fairness, it should be noted the IRP (Independent Review Panel) declaration not only was a split decision, but the dissenting opinion stated, correctly I think, "The 'communities' proposed by Dot Registry ... do not demonstrate the characteristics of 'communities' under any definition" and therefore Dot Registry should not have passed the CPEs (Community Priority Evaluations) for .INC, .LLC, and .LLP.

And yet the continuing internal operational problems of ICANN (see also the .AFRICA IRP) are troubling. As I stated in my comment to ICANN, July 20, 2016 (pdf):

"September 30, 2016, is fast approaching, and ICANN management and staff, particularly at the “Global Domains Division” (GDD) seem ill-prepared--still engaging in unprofessional, incompetent, inept or opaque practices ... Hopefully the ICANN Board and new ICANN President & CEO, in the near future, will reorganize ICANN’s corporate operational structure, and staffing, abolish the GDD completely (a GDD President is one too many “Presidents” for ICANN), and move “Contract Compliance” into a separate division or department that includes consumer trust and protection, as well as domain name registrants’ remedies and advocacy, reporting directly to the ICANN President & CEO, and the ICANN Board." 

The problems within ICANN's legal staff and the ICANN Board of Directors, as noted in the IRP Declaration, may be at the root of ICANN's problems. ICANN has had a weak, mostly passive, Board of Directors, e.g., the Board willingly enabled the former CEO's dysfunctional leadership, which brought about mission creep, conflicts of interest, and all of the inappropriate actions and omissions detailed in the Dot Registry IRP Declaration. Other than replacing current Board members with better, more independent, experienced, and competent Directors, perhaps ICANN could as I suggested last year:

"ICANN has quite a history of conflicts of interest, lack of accountability and transparency, secrecy, rewarding insiders including ICANN officers even after resigning due to "conflicts of interest". None of this comes as a surprise since Chehade's tenure as ICANN CEO has the worst record on conflicts of interest, appearances of impropriety, and "cronyism" in the history of ICANN--see Domain Mondo's RPMs comment (pdf). Complicating all of this is the ICANN Board's apparent dysfunction and failures in competent corporate governance, including its inability to have "in place" and "enforce" an effective code of conduct for all ICANN officers and staff. The Board appears to be in a constant "reactive" mode trapped between stakeholders (mostly "lobbyists") and ICANN officers/staff. CCWG-Accountability should have concentrated on core competencies including the selection, orientation, training and continuing education of ICANN Board members, ICANN officers and staff, as well as stakeholders. Anyone involved in ICANN needs to have at least a rudimentary understanding of California non-profit corporate law, ethics in the public non-profit corporate sphere, applicable U.S. law, and the common law system. Jurisdiction matters. A good joint project for ICANN legal, Jones Day, and CCWG's independent legal counsel, post-transition, would be to develop and publish an orientation and training program accessible to all online, which should be required of all ICANN directors, officers, and staff, as well as anyone choosing to stand for election or appointment to the ICANN Board. Good corporate governance is hard work and not easy--witness the scandals at organizations as diverse as FIFA and the American Red Cross." (emphasis added)

I would now change the reference to "ICANN legal, Jones Day" above, to a new independent outside counsel to the ICANN Board of Directors solely for the purpose of advising and educating ICANN directors of their duties under California and other applicable law, and providing independent legal advice concerning issues that come before the Board. ICANN legal staff and Jones Day are conflicted, representing corporate management and staff, and the corporation, respectively. The IANA transition end date, September 30, is only weeks away, and the Dot Registry IRP Declaration makes it clear the ICANN Board, ICANN management and staff, are not ready.

• Comments close this coming week at ICANN on:

• PTI Governance Documents: Close Date 7 Aug 2016 23:59 UTC
• Draft PTI Bylaws: Close Date 11 Aug 2016 23:59 UTC
• Public Comment on Proposed Amendment to .COM Registry Agreement: Close Date 12 Aug 2016 23:59 UTC
• Modifications to GNSO Operating Procedures Relating to Motions and to the Chair and Vice-Chair Elections: Close Date 14 Aug 2016 23:59 UTC

•  ICANN Quarterly Stakeholder Report – Register for the FY16 Q4 Call on 18 August‬‬ | ICANN.org: The FY16 Q4 (ended June 30, 2016) Stakeholder Call, will take place on 18 August at 1500 UTC. The call will focus on how ICANN has implemented the community's policies for the quarter ending 30 June 2016. More info at the link above.

•  IANA Stewardship Transition Implementation Planning Update (Volume 4) - ICANN:

Implementation Timeline (source: ICANN 15 Jul 2016)

•  Request for Proposal Announcement - DNS Abuse Study - ICANN: "A number of safeguards were built into the [new gTLDs] Program that were intended to mitigate rates of abusive, malicious, and criminal activity in these new gTLDs, such as phishing, spam, malware distribution, and botnet command-and-control. ICANN is currently engaged in a review of these safeguards and their effects on rates of DNS abuse, and is seeking a provider to conduct a study examining rates of malicious and abusive behavior in the global DNS." Participant RFP proposals due by 25 August 2016 by 23:59 UTC. More info at link above.

•  Future Rounds of New gTLDs: Almost Free Domains for Almost Everyone | CircleID.com by John Levine: "My plan is simple: next time the application fee is nominal, say $1000. But if there are several applications for the same name, they all go to auction, and the auction income pays for the rest of the program ... This approach may seem cynical and venal. It is. But in practice is it any more so than the current approach? It may be cynical, but it's a lot simpler and a lot more transparent."

•  Why Registry Service Providers Should be Accredited by ICANN | CircleID.com: "... it is equally apparent that the downward spiral of Registry Service Provider pricing will lead to cut corners. The result will be a failure ..."

• Trend in Naming & Branding:  Band Names Without Vowels: Why Artists Are Ditching Those Letters | Billboard: "From brands that shorten their names or use letters that don't go together to make names more easily trademarked, Cashion said the trend has spread across the business world and into pop culture. "In the short term, the challenge I tell clients is that the name might be less intuitive from a pronunciation point and in the short term it might be harder to find, but in the long term the ownability of it is higher." There's actually a name for it -- disemvoweling -- and a few years ago Wired wrote an obituary for the letter "e," in light of how many technology companies had decided to drop the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet."

•  Other News:

• If you can't beat 'em ...:  Uber China, Didi to merge in $35B deal - Uber (Private:UBER) | SeekingAlpha.com and The Uber-Didi deal is straight out of Peter Thiel's playbook - Recode.net: "Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away. The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear: If you want to create and capture lasting value, don't build an undifferentiated commodity business."
• Apple Isn't Making It in India | Bloomberg.com: "... sales in India of iOS-enabled smartphones, meaning iPhones, fell 35 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. What's worse, that decline left the U.S. company with just 2.4 percent of a market that grew 19 percent."  See also: Android Captures Record 97 Percent Smartphone Marketshare in India in Q2 2016 | strategyanalytics.com.
• China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech | NYTimes.com: "The U.S. often copies China,” said Ben Thompson, the founder of the tech research firm Stratechery. “For the Facebook Messenger app, for example, the best way to understand their road map is to look at WeChat” ... Facebook and smaller rivals like Kik are trying to replicate what has emerged in China: dominant online platforms where users will spend much of their time. Much of that effort is focused on chat. See also: China Online Retail Market To Reach Saturation Levels | ChinaInternetWatch.com: "81% of China population in tier-1 cities shop online ..."
• Amazon Prime airplane debuts after secret night flight | geekwire.com: "... The Boeing 767-300 jet is part of what will eventually become a fleet of 40 planes, transporting cargo between Amazon’s distribution centers for delivery to customers. Clark said the planes will mesh with Amazon’s network of 4,000 branded truck trailers, the Uber-like Amazon Flex delivery system ..."
• Donald Trump touts Twitter (NYSE: TWTR): Donald Trump said tweets are a far more effective means of information dissemination than press releases ... Lamenting that when he put out a "beautiful, long, perfectly scripted press release like I did [Sunday], nobody puts it out,” Trump said. “If I put out a 140-character tweet, they go crazy. 'We have breaking news!' They break into every story. So you gotta use it, you gotta use it.” --Politico.com

•  Q2 2016 Earnings Season ends this week on Domain Mondo with Rightside $NAME on August 9, and Alibaba $BABA which reports on August 11--Note: as now indicated on Domain Mondo's Stock Links page, beginning next quarter, Q3 2016, coverage of  quarterly earnings releases and webcasts of Yahoo $YHOO, Alibaba $BABA, and Web.com $WEB will no longer be provided by Domain Mondo.  Yahoo's core assets are being sold to Verizon, Alibaba is under scrutiny by the SEC and also subject to increasing control or manipulation by the government of China, while Web.com is in transition from domains to services with higher profit margins. This will leave 5 tech companies: Alphabet (Google); Amazon; Apple; Facebook; Twitter; and 4 domain name industry companies: GoDaddy; Neustar; Rightside; Verisign; on the quarterly earnings coverage list.

•  Five most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this week on DomainMondo.com:

1. News Review[Jul31]: Verisign's Big Win of gTLD WEB; ICANN Litigation Report
2. GoDaddy $GDDY Q2 2016 Financial Results & LIVE Webcast, Flare App
3. US Court of Appeals Decision re: ICANN & Iran, Syria, North Korea ccTLDs
4. Fintech: Financial Digital Disruption (infographic)
5. Web.com $WEB Earnings Release, LIVE Webcast, August 4, 5pm EDT

• 10 Other Reading Recommendations:

1. ICYMI: "... the European Banking Authority released the stress test results on Friday [July 29]. Deutsche Bank didn’t fail in part because there was no way to fail. No bank could fail, not even Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena which is in full collapse-and-bailout mode at this moment ... Tier 1 capital ratio after in the “adverse scenario” made it possible to rank the banks. At Deutsche Bank, that ratio dropped to 7.8%, making it the 10th riskiest bank among all European banks in the stress test. Commerzbank, the second largest German bank ... was the 8th riskiest bank, ahead of Societe Generale in 9th place and behind Barclays in 7th place. Then came Irish, Italian, and Spanish banks. In third place was the Austrian cooperative banking group Raiffeisen-Landesbanken. In second place, Allied Irish Banks. And of course, the winner, Monte dei Paschi ..."--WolfStreet.com
2. Donald Trump Warns Americans To Get Out Of The Stock Market As The Dow Falls For A 7th Day In A Row | washingtonsblog.com: "In Europe ... a “too big to fail” crisis is rapidly unfolding across the entire continent, but most Americans are totally oblivious to what is going on over there.  Instead, our major news outlets are feeding us an endless barrage of negative headlines about Donald Trump and a steady stream of positive headlines about Hillary Clinton. I wonder who they want to win the election? Of course I am being sarcastic.  The days when the mainstream media at least pretended to be “independent” are long gone."
3. Keep An Eye On: Google has sold 30 million Chromecasts, 5 million in the past 2 months | 9to5Google.com.
4. Dinosaur Watch: Another Retailer Leveraged Buyout Bites the Dust | WolfStreet.com. "... malls are getting hit as previously “pent-up” real-estate demand from retailers is expected to “fizzle.”... Mall Owners Begin to Feel the Pain of Brick & Mortar Retailers"
5. The Paradox of Quant | thereformedbroker.com: "Once crowded, there are a few choices for practitioners of a given investing discipline: pretend it’s not over; adapt and move on to the next thing; leverage up; sell out to a competitor."
6. Time to reevaluate blockchain hype: "Hong-Kong based Bitfinex exchange is short 119,756 bitcoins after being hacked on Tuesday, though nobody can be sure what’s really happened because ‘hacking’ is a loose term and can encapsulate almost anything, including an internal security breach ... mark-to-market value of the stolen coins is roughly $70m, but again who can really tell their true worth. Bitcoin is an asset class where the liquidation of 119,756 (approximately 0.8 per cent of total bitcoin circulation) can move the market more than 20 per cent, suggesting a certain fantastical element to the valuation."--FT.com
7. Geopolitical Watch I: EU ‘unsustainable in its current form’| EurActiv.com: S&P Global Ratings added its voice to the growing number of politicians and analysts calling for change. “... the EU, as it’s currently constructed and operates ... [is] unsustainable in its current form,” S&P said ... A clear response is needed to address uncertainty about the future of the EU and to make it relevant to citizens ..."
8. Geopolitical Watch II: For Post-Brexit British Vacationers, Staying Home Now Seems Appealing | NPR.org: "... Just off a beachfront carousel, Matthew Kirk's little boy squeals for ice cream. His dad says British resorts, some of which have seen better days, could rebound amid all this. Kirk says he's happy to help the local U.K. economy. "It'd be nice to see them making a living and thriving"..."
9. TCO - Total Cost of Ownership: How Much Do Car Maintenance Costs Increase with Mileage? | YourMechanic.com: "The average car costs $1,400 to maintain up to 25,000 miles, then costs rise rapidly until 100,000 miles. Toyota wins as the cheapest car to maintain."
10. Zika vaccine: NIH begins testing investigational Zika vaccine in humans | National Institutes of Health | NIH.gov and Zika vaccine gives complete protection and is ready for human trials, say scientists | telegraph.co.uk.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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News Review: ICANN Secretly Colludes With New gTLD Registry Operators

Domain Mondo's review and look ahead [pdf], starting with a macro view:

• Another terrorist act in France, this time in Nice, on Bastille Day;
• A failed coup attempt in the European Union's (EU) next member state: Turkey. Soothsayer award to AEI (Michael Rubin) & Newsweek: Will There Be a Coup Against Erdogan in Turkey? | Newsweek.com 24 March 2016: "... President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is out of control. He is imprisoning opponents, seizing newspapers left and right and building palaces at the rate of a mad sultan or aspiring caliph. In recent weeks, he has once again threatened to dissolve the constitutional court. Corruption is rife. His son Bilal reportedly fled Italy on a forged Saudi diplomatic passport as the Italian police closed in on him in an alleged money laundering scandal ... Turks—and the Turkish military—increasingly recognize that Erdogan is taking Turkey to the precipice ..."  Sounds like Turkey will be a fine addition to the EU after the UK leaves. Note: Istanbul is one of ICANN's 3 "hubs" (other two: LA and Singapore), a reminder of ICANN's empire-building, free-spending former CEO, Fadi Chehade, who was given a pad of blank checks by ICANN's Board, and who also told the French Senate that the ICANN Board had given him a "green light" to reincorporate ICANN as a "parallel structure" in Switzerland, and then suckered in Brazil, the World Economic Forum, U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and others, into his "NETmundial Initiative" before it crashed & burned after he found out global internet community members, Internet Society et al, were not as easy pushovers as ICANN Board members.
• Speaking of the EU, the new UK Prime Minister has named her Brexit team, and in a stroke of genius, named the Tory Party's (and Leave Campaign's) favourite pit bull, Boris Johnson, as UK's new Foreign Secretary. His counterparts in France and Germany have already freaked!  If you haven't read Boris Johnson's poem about Turkey's President Erdogan, it's a "must read!"
• The bulls are still running on U.S. markets, and the London Stock Exchange is still roaring, defying all the "Chicken Little" forecasts by "sloppy thinking" economists (graphic below). Even the Bank of England defied pundits and did not cut interest rates on Thursday.  

US (NYSE & NASDAQ) benchmark index S&P500 UP 2.29%, and
UK (London Stock Exchange) index FTSE100 UP 5.22% since Brexit vote on June 23

"... the arguments for big short-run damage from Brexit look quite weak ... Indeed, the rebound in British stocks, which are now above pre-Brexit levels, is already causing some backlash against conventional economists and their Chicken Little warnings. Sorry, people, sloppy thinking is always a vice, no matter what cause it’s used for." -- Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, June 30, 2016, NYTimes.com

•  FEATURE: ICANN Secretly Colludes With New gTLD Registry Operators

"ICANN has always been and will continue to be subject to antitrust laws" --Larry Strickling, NTIA, July 14, 2016,  ICANN, NTIA, IANA Transition, Fundamental Problems, the Macro View | DomainMondo.com

On July 12, 2016, I emailed ICANN, asking several questions about the Proposed Amendments to Base New gTLD Registry Agreement, public comments to which now close 20 Jul 2016 at 23:59 UTC (extended from 13 July 2016).

In last week's News Review I noted:

"If you are a domain name registrant (particularly a new gTLD domain name registrant), read the comments already submitted by George Kirikos here and here, and submit your own comment by the deadline. All comments submitted may be read on the comments forum. Also note that ICANN said it would hold a webinar in June on the proposed amendments, but that turned out to be just another broken promise by the dysfunctional ICANN, confirming once again, that for ICANN, domain name registrants are just a resource for exploitation in the form of gTLD name registration and renewal fees, as well as exploitation by ICANN's contracted parties (gTLD registry operators and registrars). Always remember that ICANN leadership (former ICANN President & CEO Fadi Chehade, and his crony, ICANN Global Domains Division President Akram Atallah), referred to new gTLD registry operators as the true "customers" and "partners" of ICANN. Caveat Emptor." 

Below are excerpts from the questions I emailed (italics) and the responses I received from ICANN's Cyrus Namazi, together with my note follow-up comments:

Questions:
On 31 May 2016, Cyrus Namazi, ICANN Vice President, Domain Name Services & Industry Engagement, Global Domains Division, wrote a blog post on the ICANN.org website titled "Amending the New gTLD Registry Agreement" https://www.icann.org/news/blog/amending-the-new-gtld-registry-agreement stating:

"After nearly 18 months of discussions, the revisions proposed by the RySG that ICANN agreed to have been made available to the community for comment today ... ICANN plans to hold a webinar in June 2016 to review the proposed changes in detail and provide an opportunity for community members to ask questions. Stay tuned for an announcement with more information."

1. When and where was the ICANN webinar in "June 2016" held to "review the proposed changes in detail and provide an opportunity for community members to ask questions"?

2. What is the URL of the webpage where notice of the webinar, including its date and time and means of attending, was given to the ICANN community, or the global internet community of domain name registrants (who are directly and detrimentally impacted and affected by the proposal), which Mr. Namazi indicates was negotiated in secret ("discussions") over a period of eighteen (18) months, between ICANN and ICANN's Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG), representing ICANN's contracted parties which are each granted exclusive worldwide monopolies by ICANN (itself a soon-to-be "unregulated global monopoly")?

ICANN response: ICANN hosted a webinar using Adobe Connect titled, “Amending the New gTLD Registry Agreement” on 14 June 2016 at 16:00 UTC.  The webinar was publicized via direct email, sent  9 June 2016, to new gTLD applicants and gTLD registries subject to the amendment process. 

My note: In other words, domain name registrants are not part of the "ICANN community" and were not invited, received no notice, and were not allowed to attend ICANN's webinar to "review the proposed changes in detail" nor given an opportunity "to ask questions."

Question:

9. Is it the policy or customary practice of ICANN that domain name registrants, and their interests, are to have no representation in "negotiations" or "discussions" concerning material changes to Registry Agreements which directly and detrimentally impact or affect domain name registrants worldwide?

ICANN response: "Regarding your questions about the negotiations, ICANN was represented by its lawyers and a cross-functional team of staff members from its Global Domains Division, Contractual Compliance department, and Office of the Chief Technology Officer. Registries were represented by a working group appointed by the Registries Stakeholder Group, as specified in the base New gTLD Registry Agreement. Meetings took place about once per month and were conducted both telephonically and in-person at ICANN meetings."

My note: In other words, ICANN, the California corporation, had representation, as did new gTLD Registry Operators. Domain name registrants were not represented, although they are directly and detrimentally affected and impacted by the proposed amendments, and suffer from the continuing incompetence and hostility of ICANN management and staff towards domain name registrants. As noted last week, for ICANN, domain name registrants are just a resource to be exploited, financially and otherwise. For registrants, here is a resource for private antitrust actions--[http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/content/private-enforcement-antitrust-law-united-states-handbook]--yes, in the USA, unlike most of the world, private antitrust actions are allowed and encouraged. Also check out this introduction to "cartels and collusion." At this rate, some plaintiff antitrust law firms are going to get rich off arrogant ICANN and its new gTLD "partners," after September 30, 2016. And I'm sure Jones Day will gladly defend ICANN, to its last dollar! 

• Comments also close this coming week at ICANN on Reference Label Generation Rulesets (LGRs) for the Second Level: Close Date 18 Jul 2016 23:59 UTC.

•  "Over 50% of [new gTLDs] will be operating at a loss for the next year"--New Top Level Domain Industry First Half 2016 Analysis & Insights (Infographic) | circleid.com.

•   90-day Root Zone Management System "Parallel Testing" Period Ends Successfully [6 July 2016] | ICANN.org: "The authorization process step performed by NTIA will be removed upon the successful completion of the IANA Stewardship Transition, currently projected for 30 September 2016. Until then, the authoritative root zone file will continue to be produced by the production RZMS that contains the authorization step performed by NTIA."

•  Five most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this week on DomainMondo.com:

1. News Review [10Jul]: EU & Brexit, IANA Transition, ICANN & Cruz, $NSR, $NAME
2. ICANN, NTIA, IANA Transition, Fundamental Problems, the Macro View
3. Theresa May's First Speech As UK Prime Minister, Brexit, The Way Forward
4. Brexit Impact On Tech Startups, Business & Global Economy (videos)
5. Fintech Mobile Banking Startups: Number26, Bank Mobile, Simple

Most Domain Mondo readers this past week (top 3 countries): U.S.; Germany; France.

• Other Reading Recommendations:

1. Keep calm and Brexit on: History suggests leaving Europe is great for Britain — Quartz | qz.com: " Do you think it reasonable that the United States should have to become a member of the EU and adopt all the EU laws and regulations in order to have free trade with it? Or, alternatively, that the EU should become a state of the United States?"
2. “Algorithms are noise-free. People are not.”--Daniel Kahneman’s Strategy for How Your Firm Can Think Smarter | knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu: "... human beings are unknowingly hamstrung by overconfidence, limited attention, cognitive biases and other psychological factors which inevitably cause errors in judgment. These factors affect everything from how we invest in stocks, to how we respond to marketing offers, to how we choose which sandwich to buy for lunch. “We’re fundamentally over-confident in the sense that we jump to conclusions — and to complete, coherent stories — to create interpretations,” said Kahneman. “So we misunderstand situations, spontaneously and automatically. And that’s very difficult to control.”  Furthermore, he said, much of human error is not even attributable to a systematic cause, but to “noise.” “When people think about error, we tend to think about biases…. But in fact, a lot of the errors that people make is simply noise, in the sense that it’s random, unpredictable, it cannot be explained.”
3. Keep an Eye on the [US$] Dollar: It’s More Important than Ever | WolfStreet.com: "... In a world where the debt of several major economic powers is trading at negative yields (you actually have to pay to hold German and Japanese government debt, for example), the dollar offers at least some return for those looking for a safe haven for their capital. That makes it an even better “fear indicator” than usual, and movement in the dollar is therefore likely to have an exaggerated effect on oil, where global demand is more important than local conditions..."
4. Geopolitical Watch: China's claims over South China Sea rejected by Hague Tribunal | Shanghaiist.com
5. Dinosaur Watch: Microsoft: Windows 10 won't hit 1 billion devices by mid-2018 | ZDNet.com: "Since April 2015, the bottom has fallen out of the Windows Phone market, with Microsoft officials conceding that Windows Phone isn't much of a focus for Microsoft in calendar 2016."

Keep up with U.S. Election 2016 coverage, including the Trumpvention in Cleveland this coming week, on Domain Mondo's election page.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

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