ICANN Labs is rolling out experimental websites, but it isn’t the registrant of the domain names it’s using.
ICANN Labs is ICANN’s attempt to introduce innovation in four areas: discovery, conversation, communication, and education. ICANN has partnered with web developer/product designer Neo on the venture.
Regardless of whether this ends up being a fruitful venture, you can be sure that any domain names used for ICANN Labs will be registered with best practices.
Or maybe not.
Labs currently has two experimental products out there, each with their own web address. Apparently no one set up guidelines for how the domains should be registered.
It’s the classic web-design-firm-owns-the-domain case, but even worse. It’s more like the employees-own-the-domains. I sure hope ICANN doesn’t stiff Neo on its bills!
Let’s take a look at Peer Advising Network. This application will help people in the community advise others and find advisors. It sounds like it could be useful.
The Peer Advising Network is set up at ICANNPeerLearning.org. Let’s take a look at the whois for this domain to see how ICANN someone registered it:
The domain is registered to Timothy Lombardo, who’s listed as a product manager on ICANN Labs’ website. It’s not registered to ICANN or even Neo. I’ll give him kudos for registering the matching .com domain name, although it doesn’t have a “registrant organization” that would indicate ICANN or Neo is the owner..
I’ve blocked out the phone number and address, although you can look them up. Here’s why: both the address and phone number appear to be Lombardo’s personal ones.
Yikes!
At least he used his corporate email address.
The other site is ICANN Roundtable, hosted at ICANNRoundtable.org. Here’s the whois:
This domain is registered by Bruno Aguirre, who’s listed as a developer on the ICANN Labs team, and presumably works with Neo. But you can’t tell that from the domain name registration. Not only is it registered by Aguirre, but it appears the email address is Aguirre’s personal one. Neo lists a Uruguay office on its website, but it’s not the same address you’ll find on the whois for this domain. Aguirre also registered the matching .com, although it also has a blank field for “registrant organization”.
Am I being too harsh? Is it just a slight oversight? Maybe if the group behind the sites was someone other than ICANN.
Oh well, at least they didn’t use bogus information for the whois.
[Update: the domains have been updated to show ICANN as the registrant.]
Sam says
Certainly don’t think you’re being harsh!
Oversight on WHOIS information is something web designers do when registering domains for small businesses.
Not something the governing body of the entire industry should be doing …
Just my opinion!
Kevin Murphy says
It’s not like ICANN is a massive advocate of these best practices. It doesn’t seem to be going against its own policies, advice or statements here.
ICANN Labs Team says
Hi Andrew,
Just to provide some clarification — as per Neo’s contract with ICANN, ICANN owns all the domain names we are using for experiments on ICANN Labs, regardless of who registers them.
Given the pace we are experimenting, we needed to get these URLs registered quickly, and in this case, it made sense for members of the team to register the domains themselves.
This is standard practice with projects at this early validation stage of development. Domain transfers will happen as necessary, should the experiments provide successful.
Let us know if you have any other questions, and feel feel free to contact us directly at icannlabs [at] neo.com.
Thanks,
The ICANN Labs Team
@ICANNLabs
Andrew Allemann says
I realize you haven’t worked for a domain name organization before – let alone the one that basically controls the world of domain names – but I suggest changing this practice. I have to think ICANN can register a domain name fairly quickly.
At a minimum, your corporate practice should be that employees never register domain names in their own name.
Tom Brackey says
I honestly thought ICANN Labs was a parody site, a la Foody Chehade. The diction is a nothing more than a mesmerizing twist of corporate-speak, acronyms and tautologies chasing each other in an infinite loop…
John Berryhill says
“ICANN owns all the domain names we are using for experiments on ICANN Labs, regardless of who registers them”
*snort*
Not according to the terms of registration to which the registrant agreed.
And, by “ICANN owns” – do you mean to say that the domain names are property of ICANN. Is this written down somewhere?
Kristina Rosette says
“Given the pace we are experimenting, we needed to get these URLs registered quickly, and in this case, it made sense for members of the team to register the domains themselves.”
Seriously? Someone who wanted to criticize ICANN could say that this comment suggests that the idea was so underdeveloped that no one at ICANN had the 90 seconds necessary to register the domains before the announcement was made. Just an observation . . .
Dr. Willis Davies says
I did a bit more research. Theres a great article I came across here on ICANNs mismanagement of its own domain names.
http://www.newmarketnames.com