Company suggests ICANN is only posting letters that “will advance its positions”.

Verisign has sent a letter to ICANN questioning why it isn’t publishing certain correspondence on the ICANN.org web site.

ICANN has a section on its web site where it publishes many letters it receives and sends.

But Verisign says ICANN hasn’t published three prior letters the company sent regarding the proposed new domain registry agreement. The company says it is aware of other letters sent to ICANN regarding the registry contract that have not been published.

Verisign’s latest letter has been “published” because the company submitted it to the comment board about the contract.

The new letter includes three previous letters the company sent to Verisign’s general counsel dated February 20, February 15, and January 30. Verisign did not receive a response to the letters, nor were they published.

The February 20th letter criticizes ICANN for what it says is a lack of transparency and selective disclosure of correspondence related to the new TLD program. Verisign points out that ICANN published the Verisigns’s January 8 letter declining to participate in ICANN’s contractual compliance audit (which was negative for Verisign) but hasn’t published Verisign’s recent letters about the registry agreement.

“Because ICANN has published no criteria on how it decides to make letters public, we are left to conclude that ICANN posts only those letters it believes will advance its positions and withholds those thought to be critical,” the company wrote.

A quick look at the correspondence page shows that ICANN does publish critical letters, but it’s also true that none of Verisign’s letters included in the post have been published.

I have reached out to ICANN for clarification on what its rules are (if any) for publishing correspondence on its web site.

Non-profit plans to continue hiring in all departments.

ICANN expects to end FY 2013 this June with nearly 50% more employees than it began the year with.

That’s according to the non-profit’s FY 2014 draft operating plan, which shows an expected 233 employees by the end of June. It ended June 2012 with 158 employees. That’s nearly 50% growth in just one year.

The forecast shows that ICANN expects to hire 47 people in this quarter alone. 19 of those are allocated to the new top level domain program.

The non-profit is planning to grow its headcount to 284 by the end of FY 2014, which concludes in June 2014.

The Global Stakeholder Engagement Group and Operations team will see the biggest headcount growth during FY 2014 under the draft plan, going from 23 to 29 and 11 to 17 projected employees, respectively.

DNS Industry and the technical functions team will both get five new employees under the draft FY 2014 plan.

No “permanent” department plans to shed employees in the coming fiscal year, although headcount dedicated to the new TLD program is expected to decrease from 35 at the beginning of FY 2014 to 21 by the end of the fiscal year. However, only 16 people were allocated to new TLDs as of March, so the number of employees will still be higher at the end of the fiscal year than it was at last count in March.

I expect much of the hiring to occur outside the United States.

ICANN forecasts 646 applications will be withdrawn, mostly after the initial evaluation period.

66 applications for new top level domain names have been withdrawn as of today. For budgeting purposes, ICANN projects that number will explode to 646 before everything is said and done.

The number was disclosed in ICANN’s proposed operating plan and budget for the 2014 financial year, which begins in July 2013. The number is up from a previously budgeted 545 applications withdrawn.

ICANN expects 105 applications will be withdrawn before they pass through the initial evaluation phase. Applicants get a 70% refund of their $185,000 application fee in this case.

A further 390 applications are projected to be withdrawn after initial evaluation but before string contention resolutions, dispute resolution is completed, or extended evaluation. ICANN is betting that many applicants in contention sets will withdraw as applicants strike deals with each other. These applicants will get a 35% refund.

The forecast shows a further 150 applications withdrawn after string contention resolution, dispute resolution, and extended evaluation. These applicants will get 20% of their money back.

This is a reverse of the prior forecast, which predicted most withdraws would come only after final contention resolution. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if more companies settle their contention sets privately before initial evaluation results are posted.

One application was withdrawn within 21 days of getting a GAC Early Warning. That applicant received an 80% refund.

Is the GAC right? It depends on who you ask.

The ICANN New gTLD Board Committee request for comment on the GAC’s safeguard advice has closed, and the reply period will open soon. Here are some select comments, along with links to the full comments.

“Instead of Guidebook advice, the GAC has offered public policy advice and expects the whole New gTLD program to be halted until such advice is considered and adopted.”

-Jonathon Nevett, Donuts Inc

“The GAC is proposing restrictions upon the new gTLDs which have not been imposed on their own ccTLDs.”

-Graeme Bunton, Tucows

“Governments play an important role in the multi-stakeholder model of Internet Governance, but the implications of the GAC Beijing Communiqué represents a fundamental re-write of the New gTLD Program by a single stakeholder at the very end of a multi-year process.”

-James Bladel, Registrar Stakeholder Group

“…the Insurance Council considers that the risk of harm being done to the public interest means that some strings should not be permitted as new gTLDs no matter the level of safeguards applied.”

-Robert Whelan, Insurance Council of Australia

“…use of the GAC Objection procedure to create new, one-size-fits-all, across-the-board mandatory requirements at this late date is in fundamental tension with the ICANN multi-stakeholder model in general, and its bottom-up policy development principle in particular.”

-J. Beckwith Burr, Neustar

“The GAC did not advise or comment on the actual ICANN policy, but seems to have attempted to take over the process of defining and implementing new gTLD policy at an impossibly late stage of the process.”

-Robin Gross, Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group

“It is vital to take special care when assigning strings representing generic terms like .APP because those terms have the opportunity to artificially define an entire industry. Generic terms logically lead consumers to assume that the gTLD represents the industry as a whole.”

-Jonathan Zuck, Association for Competitive Technology

“The GAC Advice has created a competitive disadvantage for applicants who have, from the start, committed to responsible policies that others in their contention set now have a third chance to get right.”

-John Berard, VoxPopuli Registry

By incorporating the GAC Advice into the new gTLD program, ICANN will strengthen and lend credibility to the multi-stakeholder process.

-Steven Metalitz, Coalition for Online Accountability

“…there are good reasons for the Board to follow the GAC’s advice regarding the GAC Safeguards, which represent a thoughtful response to the GAC’s legitimate scalability concern, which Turn shares. There is no good reason not to.”

-Todd D. Williams, Turner Broadcasting System

“While the recommendations offered in the GAC Communiqué are extensive, and come at a late stage of the new gTLD process, many of the issues they address go to the very heart of the success and stability of the new gTLD program.”

-Meredith Baker, NBCUniversal

“If GAC advice were followed, the new gTLD program would be changed from an objective process in which qualified applicants are granted new gTLDs into a ongoing subjective regime in which new policies and rules can be issued by the GAC on ad-hoc basis without reference to principles, rationales, or access to any appeal by affected parties– it would turn the multi-stakeholder model on its head.”

-Antony Van Couvering, Minds + Machines

“The Internet is too valuable and important to consumers, brandholders and the economy for ICANN not to address the issues raised in the Advice.”

-Dan Jaffe, Association of National Advertisers

“We ask the ICANN Board to reject the GAC advice on “Consumer Protection, Sensitive Strings, and Regulated Markets” because it is untimely, ill-conceived, overbroad, and too vague to implement.

-Bret Fausett, Uniregistry

“The GAC’s recommendations raise complex issues of ICANN’s mission and governance and how they relate to the laws of the jurisdictions in which the registries operate.”

-Thomas M. Lenard, Technology Policy Institute

“The role of GAC advice at this stage, as outlined in the Applicant Guidebook, is to address individual strings, not provide advice on the program as a whole.”

-Aparna Sridhar, Google

“GE remains concerned that ICANN will be under such pressure to move forward with the new gTLD program that it may not sufficiently implement or consider the GAC’s advice, or enter into the serious negotiations necessary to come to a mutually agreeable solution.”

-Kathryn Park, GE

Tax return unveils compensation, legal costs.

ICANN just published its FY 2012 tax return online (pdf). The form tax return covers the year ending June 30, 2012.

Much of the information, including financials, had previously been published by ICANN on its web site, so there’s not much new there.

What may be most interesting is the latest compensation information for ICANN’s high ranking and top paid employees. I count 17 positions earning $200,000 or more in reportable compensation.

ICANN publishes its compensation policy each year, and states:

ICANN’s overall compensation philosophy is to target compensation between the 50th and 75th percentile of the market, to attract and retain the right staff. The driving element of this philosophy is that ICANN’s compensation is market-based.

What has always surprised me about ICANN’s compensation is the generous retirement benefits. ICANN contributes 5% of each employee’s salary to the plan regardless of employee contributions. ICANN also matches employee contributions up to 10% of the employee’s annual salary.

I’m not sure what type of companies they’re benchmarking against that provide such contributions to retirement. I think only the biggest companies are doing any sort of matching contributions these days, and non-matching contributions seem unheard of.

Also disclosed in the report was that ICANN paid law firm Jones Day $1.9 million in FY 2012. I bet that number is higher in FY 2013 — or will be higher in FY 2014.