Ainsi donc, l’ICANN tiendra une réunion à Bruxelles en juin 2010. Toutes mes félicitations à Marc Van Wesemael et l’équipe d’Eurid.

Lors de la conception du projet de la réunion ICANN à Luxembourg qui se déroula en 2005, j’avais un temps envisagé de l’organiser à Bruxelles, tant il me semblait logique que la capitale de l’Europe accueille une telle manifestation. Le contexte était cependant différent.

A l’époque, le coût de la manifestation était entièrement supporté par l’organisateur local et ses partenaires. Le fractionnement institutionnel de la Belgique, avec ses multiples niveaux de pouvoirs aux compétences redondantes et en concurrence directe rendait tout simplement la participation des pouvoirs publics impossible. De nos jours, l’ICANN a compris qu’elle ne pouvait plus compter sur des tiers pour ouvrir leur portefeuille et finance elle-même la majeure partie des coûts.

Il n’en reste pas moins qu’il sera intéressant de voir qui seront les orateurs lors de la séance inaugurale. Aura-t-on un ministre fédéral ? Les télécoms sont une compétence largement régionalisée. On pourrait donc avoir un ministre bruxellois. Oui mais, Bruxelles est aussi la capitale de la Flandre. Aura-t-on peut être un ministre flamand ? Le responsable  du protocle va s’arracher les cheveux.

Many software applications rely on validation routines to check the validity of domain names. By validation, I mean here to test the string submitted by the user and see if it matches a pre-defined pattern. A typical example are web forms that need to validate e-mail addresses.

This is by no means a new issue. It first appeared with the introduction of the .info TLD. Before that TLDs were only two or three letters long, and many validation routines could not cope with the 4 letters of .info. At the time, ICANN had developed a testing tool which allowed developers to test if their code took into account the requirement for 4 letters. Still, you find today on the Internet tons of library routines that do not support 4 or more letter TLDs.

Some of these routines also rely on a hard-coded list of TLDs. Even today, I sometimes find that some web sites cannot deal with my .eu domain, which was introduced 4 years ago.There are hundreds of thousands of these routines written in Javascript, PHP, Perl, ColdFusion, ASP and just about any programming or scripting language you can think of.

In the Draft Applicant’s Guidebook to new gTLDs, ICANN has clearly indicated that it does not guarantee universal acceptance of the new TLD, and rather place the burden on the registry operator to educate its customers. This made sense during the previous new TLD rounds, where there were only a few added, one at a time and with long intervals between them.

With the new gTLD round, ICANN plans to add a lot of TLDs, potentially at very close intervals, if not at the same time. The figure most often heard is 500. That is a quantum leap forward. All those hard-coded lists deeply buried in software will need to be updated. It will not happen overnight. It may take years. This time also, we are throwing into the mix TLDs which could be long strings, like .coca-cola. We are also adding IDN (internationalized Domain Names) in non-ASCII characters, which will be a real issue with all environments that do not process double-byte strings. There are tons of legacy applications that do not support that, and some never will.

The good news is that programmers do not need to worry about their job. There is plenty of work ahead. The bad news is that most of them are not aware of these upcoming TLDs, let alone the implications it will have on the code they wrote, or the code they use and written by someone else.

So, it does not make sense now for ICANN  just to say it is someone else’s problem. If the new gTLDs cannot be processed on the client platforms, this will mean their acceptance by the user community will be low. This means less revenue for registries, registrars and finally ICANN. This would also mean a partial failure of the whole new gTLD program, for which ICANN will be accountable for. It could cost ICANN much of its credibility, because it would not be the failure of one specific TLD for which the registry could be blamed, it would mean the failure of several, all for the same reasons.

Hence, I suggested today to ICANN to plan a workshop at the Seoul meeting to help identify these issues, so that clear guildelines can be given to the software community and an awareness campaign can be launched. It is absolutely crucial to identify the issues, the amount of work they represent and the time it will take to fix the code before the introduction of these new top level domains.

The ICANN IRT working group has published its final report, which I decided to analyze a bit further. I already made a few comments last month, both in the At-Large Advisory Council framework and on my own.   There are several issues raised by the recommendations of this report. The URS is one.

Reliance on e-mail

Among the issues is the fact that most of the URS process relies on e-mail for notifications to the registrant, to the registry operator, etc.  Let’s face it: e-mail has become unreliable for critical applications. With more than 90% of e-mail being catalogued as spam, identifying the one important e-mail that you are not expecting is like searching a needle in a haystack.  Some techniques like DKIM, S/MIME signing, etc might help getting through the spam filters, if only the latter are well-configured. Most users do not have fine-grained control on the configuration of their spam filter, and none at all on the one used by their ISP.

Where this matters is that “A Registrant has fourteen (14) calendar days from the date of the initial email notification to submit an Answer“.  If the e-mail was caught by your spam filter, or if you are on vacation, travelling or more simply not reading your e-mail on a regular basis, you are out of  luck. You might lose your domain name without you even noticing it before it is too late.

The language issue is also an important one. It may be that English is the lingua franca of the business community. However, it may not be a language understood by the domain name registrant and he may, in good faith,  discard the notification message.

Collateral damage

The IRT working group is focusing on  the web. To provide evidence, the complainant “must include PDF copies of [...]  the website showing the alleged violation(s)“.  If the domain name is indeed found to infringe on someone else’s IP rights by the third-party complaints examiner,  “The third-party provider will post a standard page on the domain name“. No mention is made of other services, although, as one of my friends says “there are 65534 other ports”.

The URS proposal does not explain how other services, like e-mail, DNS, etc would be treated. E-mail is  problematic in this context. There could be a privacy issue with the third party provider intercepting correspondence originally addressed to the domain name registrant. Or, if the registrant had indicated a contact e-mail address under the domain name being suspended, he might not receive any notifications on his case any more.

DNS is another issue.  If the suspended domain name was running a DNS server for other, unchallenged domain names, those other domain names may not be accessible anymore.

What the IRT group is proposing is technically close to the controversial  Sitefinder “service” , and this proves again that the IRT group would have benefitted to have a broader base of participants, especially from the technical community, in this case.

Legal uncertainty

The fact a registrant has successfully passed a URS examination does not mean he is certain to keep his domain name. He could still face a UDRP complaint and a legal action. There is not much that can be done to prevent a legal action. However, one could expect the complainant to have to choose between a URS complaint or a UDRP complaint, but not both.

On other factor is that the registrant should be guaranteed some peace of mind regarding the use of his domain name. A URS complaint can be filed at any time.  If the registrant has been using a domain  name for several months or years, he could still face a URS complaint. This creates a high level of uncertainty. Would you dare to launch an  Internet-based business if your domain name can be taken down at any time ?

The extensive use of  e-mail in the URS process creates a real issue regarding the production of  legal evidence in law suits following URS cases.  Like it or not, most judicial system use written evidence to examine civil cases, and do not consider e-mails or faxes as legal evidence.

Individual domain name registrants

The IRT proposal does not make any difference between domain names registrants which are either  businesses or individuals. Unlike businesses which are “open all day”, individuals cannot be expected to be glued to their computer screen waiting for an  e-mail regarding a potential issue with a domain name they have registered. As mentioned above, the 14 day period for answering after the  notification may be impossible to keep for an individual, especially if he is not well-versed into the intricacies of the IP framework regarding domain names.

The language issue mentioned above is even more problematic for individuals.

Potential suggestions for improvement

I am told I should suggest possible improvements rather than just whining. So:

• Use certified/registered paper mail for notification. This is expensive, yes, but will provide indisputable evidence to both parties. Further, because of the cost involved, it will help eliminate frivolous complaints only designed to hurt competitors.
• Draft notifications in the registrant’s native language. This is expensive, again, but will make sure that the registrant actually understands what is going on.  And again, it will greatly help in possible later law suits.
• Differentiate between individual private persons and legal entities. The process applying to the former would be more relaxed in terms of  time schedules.
• Make the suspended domain names unresolvable by the DNS. Web users, will get a 404 error. E-mail users will get a non-delivery receipt. This would be RFC-compliant and solve the privacy issues.
• Put a time limit on the introduction of a URS complaint, for example 3 months. After that time, the domain name owner should be guaranteed he will not face a URS complaint anymore.
• In line with the above, a complainant should be requested to elect for a URS or a UDRP but not both.  This will guarantee that the domain name registrant will not be harassed.

The IRT has released a draft report.  The composition of the  team is strongly biased towards North American intellectual property interests. Unfortunately, individuals were not represented.  Neither were potential new gTLD operators.  There was only one US-based registrar present and only one incumbent US-based registry.  In summary, this report is partial, both because it does not cover the whole picture and because it is strongly biased towards the interests of a specific group.

Quite confusingly, it was published on 24th April, with a 30 day comment period. However, one needs to comment before 6 May if it wants the IRT to consider the comments. Strange tactics.

As others have pointed out, the effective 7 day comment period over this draft report is way too short. It may be wise that the ICANN board does not consider this report before the community has had a real opportunity to comment.

I totally support Michele Neylon’s comments on the whois model  contemplated by this report. It would be in breach with many privacy regulations throughout the world. Further, if the ability to comply with the whois recommendations, as set forth in this report, would become one of the evaluation criteria for the new gTLD applications, this would favour registry operators located in countries with little or no privacy laws. This would put at a competitive disadvantage those businesses which need to comply with local laws. Questions to the IRT:

• Did the IRT consider if their recommendations regarding the whois were actually compliant with relevant legislation throughout the world ?
• Will the ability to comply with the whois recommendations, as set forth in this report, be a part of the evaluation process of new gTLD applications ?

Regarding the IP clearinghouse, it is stated that “The recommendation should not result in unnecessary or undue costs, either to trademark owners or to legitimate users and consumers”. Does this mean that the registry operators will have to bear all the increase of their operating costs for protecting third parties interests? The net effect of this is that operators will need to shift the increasing cost among all their customers, including those who have no IP rights to protect. This will mean raising the unit price of domain names for every customer, making the TLD less attractive and potentially be a cause of registry failure. In the case of community-based TLDs that focus on a limited market through a not-for-profit model, this may simply mean that the potential costs  and legal risks may be disporportionate for them to bear.

There is a major concern that different levels of protection for marks may put the registry operator in a position to have to arbitrate between second level domain name  applications and become legally involved in disputes between third parties. Unlike trade marks, which can be multiple according to industrial sectors and geography, domain names are by nature globally unique. As technical operators, registries should have no business in deciding who is the legitimate intellectual right owner.

If such IP clearinghouse system is put in place, it should, at a minimum:

1. Be automated and implementable at a marginal cost by registries and registrars
2. Exempt the registry operators from further legal consequences if it has demonstrated that it queried the database at registration time.

In addition to the above, I think it would be only fair that whatever policies are decided as a consequence of this process are also made mandatory for the existing gTLDs. The new entrants should not be the only ones having to bear the weight and costs of these policies.

These are the comments I sent today to ICANN

Unfortunately, this second draft version of the applicant’s guide does not yet address major concerns in the process.

As stated in the previous comments round, it is fundamentally wrong to assume that all new gTLD applicants will use the .com model of mass market approach for domain names. Both the amount of the application fee and the yearly registry fee imply that the registry will need to sell as many domain names as possible, favouring numbers over quality. This is the wrong approach with regard to community-based TLDs.

The amount of the application fee should be reduced, as it may discriminate against less financially resourceful applicants, such as communities. While I understand ICANN may want to prevent frivolous applications with a high application fee, it nevertheless excludes from the process a lot of potential serious applications targeting a limited community.

It is unfair that only the applicants of the first round would have to cover the past costs of the new gTLD development program. On the other hand, it is difficult to guess how many applications will be submitted on each round. Because these costs have already been expended and that ICANN clearly states that whatever is recovered will be transferred to a reserve fund, it is therefore suggested to simply drop the $26,000 that represents the incidence of gTLD development program cost on each application.

Note that this request for a large up-front investment in the application process is orthogonal to the expectation of ICANN for the applicants to demonstrate the availability of continuation funding. Whatever capital will be invested in submitting the application will not be available in the future. Hence, ICANN’s financial expectations at the application stage may plant the seed of future registry failure.

Further, payment of the application fees in several installments should be offered to TLD applicants. For those applicants that need to submit a strong business plan to their investors, having a pay-as-you-go fee through the application process will make it easier to convince investors.

ICANN should also consider postponing for two or three years the collection of the annual registry fee, to allow new gTLD operators to start operating in a financially sound context, with no loans and other debts that may compromise the start-up of their activities. On the short and medium term, this help new registries to become more solid and will be beneficial for the the long term stability of the DNS space.

The fact that ICANN only allows for payments to be made in USD places a high risk on the business plans of those applicants that work in other currencies. As suggested elsewhere, ICANN should accept payments in other
currencies, at a rate fixed at the time the applicant’s guidebook is published.

There is still a fundamental contradiction in using an auction model as a last resort for community-based applications. By definition, community-based applications will target smaller communities and use a cost-recovery model, rather than a purely commercial one. For the winner of the auction, this will mean recovering its costs through increasing the gross price of registrations. As a consequence, the number of domain names sold may be reduced and the newly launched registry may not meet its business plan. Ultimately, auctions may also be a cause of registry failure.

As reported last July, there is a proposal from some Flemish politicians to create a .vla top level domain under the new gTLD process launched by ICANN. The proposal further elaborated that the Flemish government would have to cover the costs.

Not so fast, says the Flemish government. According to this press article, it wants to be sure the market is large enough to justify pouring all that money into the ICANN process.  They will hire a consultant to study the market and come up with a business case. Or not.

In this period of economic downturn, even wealthy communities like Flanders want to avoid expensive and risky investments.  ICANN does not yet understand the message that it has to adapt its RFP to the actual economic context.

Some possible ideas:

• stop dreaming about recovering past expenses on the gTLD program;
• fractioning the payment of the application fee in several installments, which would make it easier to negotiate with investors;
• postpone for two or three years the collection of the annual registry fee, to allow new gTLD operators to start operating in a financially sound context, with no loans and other debts that may compromise their existence.

I am well aware the above-mentioned article is quite misinformed in that it mixes up registry operators with registrars. Still, the core element of the cost vs risk of the new gTLD process is symptomatic of the concerns I heard from  several wannabee registry operators.

I was appointed to the ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee recently and I am very proud of that. This group of esteemed security experts are a crucial element of the ICANN community, because their task is to identify threats to the good working fo the Internet and suggest possible remedies. This is not a glamourous position, but rather behind the scenes work in the interest of the Internet user community at large.

On a similar note, I had the pleasure to co-chair the At-Large working group on DNS security issues, with came up with a statement we were reasonably happy with.  The best part was actually today, where we received kudos from other parts of the community, which tend to view the At-Large more as a political obligation of ICANN that a really useful component.

I hope this will both help the recognition of the At-Large as serious players in the ICANN context, but also motivate the At-Large members, who are often depicted as jerks and end up believing they are.

It’s not every I make it to You Tube, so I wanted to share with you this shameless self promotion.

One of my relatives moved into a new house the other day. No big news, except he is a registrant of a generic domain name.

He spent a lot of his time to inform utility companies, banks, insurance companies, administrations, etc of his address change, BUT he did  not tell his registrar.

You see, his registrar sends him every two or three years an e-mail asking to pay for the renewal. He then gets the invoice through e-mail. No postal mail is sent at all. That is all he knows about the domain name he uses. Other than that, it just works. E-mail to his domain gets delivered,  his web site is reachable. What else should he care about ?

As it stands, he should really care about updating his records with his registrar. A whois query on his domain name now returns a false postal address. This honest citizen now has the crowds of those hideous people who leave false information in the whois. Surely, law enforcement authorities may think of him as a terrorist covering his tracks. Intellectual property lawyers may think he is stealing somebody’s trade mark. According to term 3.7.7.2 of the ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement, he risks seeing his domain cancelled.

The sad truth is that this nice guy actually does not even know his $10/year domain is at risk. In the unlikely event his domain name gets cancelled, pleading the good faith will not help a lot. He may not notice it until he gets a phoen call telling himl the e-mails to him are undelivered.  It will be too late to react, because human errors by uninformed customers are not taken into account in ICANN policies. So, before he says  “I should have known” maybe I should tell him.

Commentaires envoyés à l’ICANN concernant les nouveaux noms de domaines

Comme de nombreux autres intervenants, je m’interroge au sujet du coût lié tant à la soumission qu’à l’exploitation d’un TLD attribué dans le cadre de cet exercice.

De fait, les coûts figurant actuellement dans le cahier des charges induisent le choix politique de gTLD vendant les noms de domaine en nombre. Il n’y a pas de place dans le processus actuel pour des gTLD visant une communauté limitée. Il semble difficilement imaginable qu’un registre vendant moins de 200.000 noms de domaine par an puisse survivre, compte tenu de la concurrence sur les prix entre TLD.

Par ailleurs, il peut s’écouler plus d’un an entre la soumission du dossier et le lancement de l’exploitation commerciale du TLD. Cela implique une lourde charge financière, qui suppose que les soumissionnaires disposent d’une solide trésorerie. Ce n’est pas le cas des start-ups. Cela pose donc une barrière à l’entrée qui favorise les acteurs historiques, qui ne devront pas supporter de tels coûts, puisqu’ils disposent déjà de tout le nécessaire: personnel, infrastructure et revenus réguliers

Ailleurs dans le document, il est demandé de présenter dans le dossier de candidature les comptes annuels d’exercices précédents. Cela implique à nouveau que des start-ups, ou des sociétés non-encore légalement formées ne pourront pas soumissionner.

Notons également que la nécessité de présenter dans le dossier de candidature l’infrastructure technique qui sera utilisée.  La conséquence est que le soumissionnaire devra choisir, dès le départ  un gestionnaire technique (backend registry services provider).  Du point de vue commercial, il serait pourtant avantageux que la mise en concurrence des prestataires techniques puissent se faire après la première ou la deuxième phase du processus d’acceptation du dossier par l’ICANN. Cela offrirait une position de négociation plus avantageuse au soumissionnaire.

Dans le contexte économique et financier actuel, il est plus que probable que de nouveaux entrepreneurs ne seront pas en mesure de concurrencer les opérateurs établis et donc d’offrir de véritables alternatives si l’ICANN ne révise pas fondamentalement à la baisse tant le droit de soumission que la contribution annuelle.

A ce titre, je soutiens la proposition citée dans les commentaires de dotCities ( http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-guide/msg00086.htm ) et ajoutant que cela peut s’appliquer à de nombreux cas de TLD visant des communautés limitées en nombre.

Il convient également d’éclaircir et de chiffrer le montant du remboursement possible si le soumissionnaire décide de retirer son dossier.  Il est important pour tous les candidats qu’ils soient en mesure de présenter un plan financier clair à leurs bailleurs de fonds. Dans ce domaine, le cahier des charges doit être limpide, y compris, et surtout pour les différentes phases d’évaluation que l’ICANN fera sous-traiter auprès de consultants externes, que les candidats devront rémunérer directement.

Concernant la problématique de la “moralité et de l’ordre public”, il est nécessaire  d’insister sur le fait qu’en cette matière l’ICANN doit strictement se limiter à la chaine de caractères constituant le TLD. Toute présomption concernant les domaines de second niveau qui pourraient être enregistrés sous ce TLD, ou sur le contenu de sites web utilisant ce TLD, seraient clairement en dehors du mandat de l’ICANN.

I have not submitted any comments on ICANN’s new gTLD process, mostly because many other people have said more diplomatically what I think, but I thought I could blog about it.

My main concern from the beginning was that the process should allow any serious candidate to run with a reasonable chance to be able to actually start running a gTLD. This includes small and medium sized communities and startup companies with little seed money.  This also includes registry models that may not favour mass registrations. For all these, the current model is flawed.

Communities based on values, whether cultural or ethnic are by definition limited in scope. So are communities based on geography, although they could larger.  These communities could get their TLD, if they have strong political support and  the attached financing. It this case, the short term profits are not the registration fees themselves, but the prestige linked to a community having its own TLD. I bet the application for the  .VLA TLD will succeed, because it has the strong political support of a wealthy community.

For the startup registries wishing to enter the gTLD arena and compete to a certain degree with the incumbents, the skies are cloudy, to say the least. First and foremost: you need money. A lot of it. Anthony Van Couvering  at Names@Work has a timeline, which details the associated costs. However, a lot of the costs are not appearing. My personal estimation is that the whole process, up to the contract signing ceremony with ICANN,  is USD 1 million at the very minimum. More realistically, you need  50% more to be on the safe side.

400K will go to ICANN and its subcontracted  evaluators. The associated costs with the evaluations can quickly add up.  At this stage, there is no way to know exactly how much they will cost, because there are many parameters.  ICANN tells you these costs will be payed directly to the evaluators, not through ICANN.  This will make it even more opaque.

The rest needs to cover consultants,  lawyers, salaries, ICANN meeting sponsorships, meetings with your community leaders to gain support for your application (and everything that goes with it: profits sharing, gadgets, gourmet dinners, escorts, you name it) and travel to ICANN meetings for you and your staff.

On top of that, ICANN wants you to be able to guarantee the operation of the TLD for 3 years, even if your TLD is not a success.

Note that this will not guarantee at all that your application will succeed.  But at least it will guarantee one an a half year of hard work and travel to exotic places for two or three people, and others on a as-needed basis.  Now go out and tell your banker, if he has not gone bankrupt already.

If you are lucky enough to reach the contract signing stage, the real work begins: hire staff, build an infrastructure, convince registrars to carry your TLD, set up a sunrise period . These are another four or five months without a single cent falling on your bank account.  In conclusion, this whole new gTLD process will be most profitable for established actors, who will not have to cover many of the above-mentioned costs, or have the reserves to cover them.

Even if ICANN revises parts of their RFP, I am not sure it will attract the 500 applications it expects. This RFP should have been published 8 years ago, at the height ofthe Internet bubble, when everything related to the Net received full funding. Now, in this recession period, investors and bankers are cautious. It will not be easy to find partners who are willing to potentially loose USD 1.5 million, if it cannot be demonstrated with certainty they can recoup their investment in less than two years.

Good luck. May the farce be with you.

It has been three months now I have been elected to ICANN’s At-Large Advisory Committee.  The 15 of us do not always share the same view and that is healthy. All these unpaid volunteers deserve, I think, a lot of respect for their commitment. Unlike other people in the ICANN circus, most of them are not into Internet governance issues as a part of their day job. However, the fact they are not full time Internet policy professionals is also the root cause of the ALAC’s theething problems.

There is a lot happening within the ICANN community. It ranges from technical issues to legal and political ones. Obviously, no-one can pretend to be an expert in all  matters. Still, the ALAC is presumed to be able to have an opinion on any matter. The amount of documents to read is daunting. It is by itself a half time job to process  them all, further complicated for those who do not have a fluent English reading.

One of the great features of the ICANN process is the possibility to submit comments. It of course takes time to read the documents, understand them, reach out to the At-large community, summarize point of views, reach consensus and finally draft a statement. All this within 30 days.  Often, the ALAC misses the deadline.

This is further complicated by the global nature of the community. There is no way one could identify a convenient time slot to hold teleconferences that would suit all participants.  The inconvenience is shared. For those in the Asia Pacific region, they need to call when they should actually go to bed. Europeans and Africans have to call during business hours. North Americans need to wake up early and arrive late at work.  However, at the end of the day, people look at who is signing  their paycheck. And it is not ICANN or a company that has a business interest in participating.  This may explain why some people cannot attend all meetings, however committed they are.

Some of the above issues are part of the report on the  review of the ALAC currently going on. If the board addresses the recommandations in the report, it will greatly help making the ALAC more efficient.

I once objected to seeing the ICANN board members compensated for their time.  I changed my mind on this. This is a real, full time, job.  I would think that Veni Markovski’s statistics on his time spent on ICANN board business are under-estimated, based on conversations I had with current board members.

On a similar subject Stéphane Van Gelder echoes his experience as a GNSO councillor and asks how long such a model built on volunteering can last. This is indeed a good question, because when volunteers will no more be able to participate effectively, only those who are ICANNing for a living will be able to call the tune.

ICANN has just published a paper from its contractor PowerAuctions LLC, regarding the use of auctions to award new TLD strings in case of contention.

I can understand what ICANN wants to avoid. In the past, it has been criticized for using the “beauty contest” model with the redelegation of the .net TLD. It was finally “redelegated” to its incumbent operator, although it was obvious to many industry observers that other bidders were as good, if not better on several points. There was a large part of subjectivity in the decision, simply because beauty criteria are a very personal matter.

However, the auction model is based on the idea that whoever wins the auction will be able to recoup its investment on the sale of domain name, and that the goal of the gTLD operator is to sell as many names as possible. It also promotes a capitalistic model, where only those with the most money will be granted generic strings, regardless of other considerations. There is no room for gTLDs wishing to remain purposely small.

It is not clear yet if the auction model will be the only one used by ICANN for all new gTLDs. It would be unfortunate if it were, because there are different TLD models and communities. Not all potential gTLD operators are looking to “get rich quick”. Some may even care about the community they wish to serve, and actually put societal values before profits. How naive they are. What will matter is not how you are going to serve your community, but how much you are willing to pay ICANN for it.

By announcing it will go to an auction model, ICANN is actually creating potential for contention. After all ,it may be a wise investment decision for wealthy copycats to simply watch what early proposers of new gTLD strings are doing and how much support their proposal gets. Those early proposers have spent a lot of time and money over the last two years in participating in ICANN processes to launch this new TLD round. They have done all the dirty work.  In the meantime, copycats have been silently watching.  Once the auction opens, early proposers will have burnt all their cash and will not be able to compete with the copycats.

Advice to those early proposers: keep some cash to pay your lawyer’s fees and get some undisputable proof your came up with the idea first. There’s going to be blood, sweat and tears. Those who are going to steal your idea will hold no quarter.

A public forum has been established. Comments should be submitted to auction-consultation@icann.org

ICANN has started a new round of consultations with regard to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. The consultation is open through 4 August 2008. I submitted the following comment:

3.3 Public Access to Data on Registered Names

This section of the RAA has been left untouched, although it is well known to ICANN and its community that this contravenes several national and international laws.

See http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2003/wp76_en.pdf
and http://www.icann.org/correspondence/schaar-to-cerf-12mar07.pdf

Quoting this last letter: “Privacy issues stemming from the making available of personal data in the context of the operation of the WHOIS services should be solved through amendments to the registrar accreditation agreement that would offer at least to those registrars located in EU member countries to comply with EU data protection legislation in accordance with the basic principles of data protection and privacy.”

How can ICANN justify that it forces, by contract, other parties to break the law ?

Of course, one could say that it is customary in most European countries laws that contract clauses which go against the laws are considered void. As an example, both the French and Belgian Civil Codes define in article 1133 that “La cause est illicite, quand elle est prohibée par la loi [...]“. Hence, European registrars could invoke the legal requirement to not publish data about individuals in their whois database , and to inform ICANN they are not able to fully comply with article 3.3.  Most don’t, but rather have registrants accept terms by which they agree to see their data published. This lack of courage has always amazed me.

Gartner, the well known IT consulting company, has published a report on the new top level domains that will appear some time next year.

The report totally misses the mark. In a pure US centric vision, it focuses on “.com” as the must-have TLD, totally overlooking the fact that a “.com” is mostly worthless e.g. in Germany, where “.de” is the TLD one must have to succeed locally. There are many countries where the local TLD has much more value than a “.com”.

The report is also clueless in that it states that “proposals previously rejected by ICANN, such as the creation of “.xxx” for adult-oriented sites, are also likely to be commercially successful“, when everybody but Gartner knows that the newly adopted rules were designed to precisely avoid the “.xxx” debacle to happen again.

Going further down the path of ignorance, Gartner also states that : “we would expect that an extension such as “.movie” would have similar value“. I am afraid “.movie”, just like “.travel” or “.name” will only have modest success, because they are focused on the English speaking market, and have little value outside North America. In this specific case, my British colleagues usually use the word “film” rather than “movie”. Looks like “.movie” will not even be able to cross the Atlantic.

How much credit you give to this report depends on the credit you give to Gartner, of course. I am afraid this one is not going to help the company’s track record. Sometimes, silence is better.

I have blogged earlier about a, now aborted, attempt by a group of extreme right activists and independentists to get hold of a ccTLD for Belgian Flanders.

A new attempt, by Flemish parliament member Mark Demesmaeker,  is on its way. As Mr Demesmaeker observes in his question to the flemish government, Flanders cannot get .vl because they do not have an ISO-3166 two letter code, and won’t get one “until it gets independent and not earlier” (Vlaanderen zal .vl krijgen als het onafhankelijk wordt en niet eerder).

This is why he suggests asking for .vla instead. This time, rather than extremist groups, it is the Flemish government itself which will be pursuing the project.

There is still some common background to the failed proposal and the new one, as one extrem right parliament member observed. Both see this as a first step towards political independence, rather than as a way to build a cultural community, like .cat did.  Mr Demesmaeker makes it clear in other posts on his blog that he wants Flanders to be a Flemings-only club. It must be heartbreaking for those independentists to be relegated to just ask for a gTLD, rather than the ccTLD they think they deserve.

At the GNSO Council meeting today in Paris, the Council asked again for additional reports, despite the 1500 pages or so that have already been produced. These delaying tactics will further slow down a process that has been on the ICANN table for 8 years.

This is damageable to the public but also to registries and registrars. As I reminded the GNSO several times in public consultations over the years, the data regarding natural persons is protected under the EU directive 2002/58/EC. This applies not only to data processed in the EU, but also to data belonging to EU citizens and processed abroad.

On the particular issue of the whois databases, the Article 29 working party issued a commentary in 2003. It makes it clear that the current public exposure of the registration details of natural persons is not acceptable. This was reminded in a letter sent to then ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf last year.

Hence, every registrar or gTLD registry with European customers that try to follow ICANN’s current policy on the whois are breaching the law.  In the end, it is an irresponsible attitude from the ICANN community to expose companies to possible judicial consequences. Maybe it is time to remind those who think the Internet is not subject to real world legislation that they are playing with fire.

The annual EGENI event in Paris will take place on the 20th June 2008, right before the ICANN meeting, at the same venue.  This is always a very interesting event.

OK. Now my lawyer has given me the green light, I can officially announce I am working on a proposal for a .sport TLD, to be submitted to ICANN for consideration as a new TLD next year.

There is still a long way to go in terms of getting the proposal ready, but I this this one is a winner. First of all, sport is one of the most popular human activities. It transcends cultures. The.SPORT community is large and diverse, from small clubs to large international federations. There is also a large industry for which.SPORT is an essential element of its communication strategy. Think about the media. Television networks may be interested to have dedicated web sites about.SPORT.

Unlike existing sponsored and unsponsored TLDs, .sport is also meaningful in languages other than English. The word “sport” originates from the ancient French verb “desporter” and was later adopted by many European languages and others. “Sport” just means.SPORT, whether in English, French, German, Dutch, Afrikaans or many others languages.

There is a provisional web site at http://www.dotsport.info, developing some of the ideas above.

If you like the idea, I would of course most welcome your partnership. Let’s talk about it at ICANN Paris.

Antony Van Couvering from names@work writes that ICANN’s constituencies are a “bad idea“. While I am not sure to agree with him on the general principle, he makes some interesting remarks. Among others, he points out that the GNSO includes groups that seem to be redundant (the Business and IP constituencies)  and others like domainers which are not representend in the ICANN arena, yet are an integral part of the domain name business.

I would add to that list the domain name resellers. They have no direct contractual relationship with ICANN, as they do their business through registrars. Yet, given they are usually even closer to the customers than the registrars, they are generating their own set of problems, with little control. Typically, resellers can be web hosting providers. They often offer a domain name “for free” when you sign up a hosting contract with them. I set “for free” under quotes, because, as we know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. In some cases,  the customer uses the domain name, but the reseller is the one which actually registers it under its own name.

Hence, when you want to move your blog or web site to another web hosting provider, you are being told that you will not be able to take the domain name with you, because after all, it is not yours. You did not pay for it. Your hosting provider did. Maybe they will be willing to transfer it to you, in return for an amount of money much higher than the actual transfer fees.  Of course, after one year of happy blogging, your domain name has now acquired some value. If you do not want to restart from scratch, your only way out is to pay what is being asked by your hosting provider.

I pointed this out during the public forum at the Lisbon meeting last year. There is little ICANN can do in this context, because it lacks a direct relationship with the reseller. However, there is a tremendous effort ICANN could make to inform the domain name users (as opposed to domain name registrants) of their rights.