Domain Name Wire » icann

Here’s what law enforcement wants you to do before registering a domain…

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:27:34 +0000

Registering a domain name might become a lot more time intensive in the future.

Negotiations between ICANN and registrars to amend the registrar accreditation agreement are ongoing, and law enforcement agencies are asking for some pretty big changes to how domains are registered today.

Law enforcement proposals relate to verifying whois information and tracking more information about registrants. Law enforcement agencies that have been involved in consultations include:

Australian Federal Police
Department of Justice (US)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (US)
New Zealand Police
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Serious Organised Crime Agency (UK)

The latest recommendations from law enforcement agencies are:

* In order to register a domain name you’ll need to phone and email verify. First you’ll receive an email with a link to a verification page. When you go to the page you’ll enter more information including verifying your phone number. You will then get an SMS code or voice message to your phone with a PIN, which you will then need to enter at the registrar’s web site before your domain is added to the zone.

* Law enforcement wants your IP address recorded at time of registration/verification.

* For annual whois updates, registrants will have to take action by completing some sort of verification. If you don’t verify/confirm your details, your domain might be suspended. This verification step will also record the registrant’s IP address.

* An alternative suggestion from law enforcement agencies is for ICANN to run a central verification system.

The silly thing about all of this is it won’t stop a criminal from doing what he or she does today. Sidestepping these systems is very easy. Just ask anyone who has created a phone verification system how many bogus requests they get from Google Voice phone numbers.

Adding these verification steps will certainly increase the cost of domain registrations and lead to massive cart abandonment at domain registrars.

Of course, this is merely a wish list from law enforcement. We’ll see what happens. You can follow the RAA negotiations here.

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Overstock.com: We’d still really like O.com

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:34:50 +0000

Overstock.com pleads for single letter .com domains in VeriSign contract renewal.

For many years Overstock.com has had an obsession. An obsession with getting the domain name O.com.

As you may know, there are only three one letter .com domains ever registered: q.com, x.com, and z.com. These were registered (and grandfathered) prior to a restriction on one character .com domains being put in place.

Since then, Overstock.com has done everything possible to angle itself for getting o.com whenever it becomes available.

Its latest action is to urge ICANN to make one letter .com domains part of VeriSign’s renewal of the .com contract with ICANN.

One thing’s a good bet: if ICANN ever allows single letter .com domains then Overstock.com will pay whatever it takes and sue whomever it has to in order to get the o.com domain name.

Back in 2005, Overstock.com started beating the drum to release single letter .coms. Here’s how domain attorney John Berryhill tells it in a 2008 article:

The subject of allocating single character domain names has captured the attention of the ICANN community to varying degrees from time to time, primarily depending on the interested efforts of Overstock.com and its advocates. For example, just prior to the December 2005 ICANN meeting in Vancouver, a press release was circulated, and its authors managed to pimp their claim that ICANN was weighing the release of single character domain names to a variety of media outlets (e.g. ICANN weighs single-letter Web addresses USA Today, November 28, 2005). During the 2005 Vancouver meeting, one of the more interesting exhibit tables was run by Overstock.com, for the purpose of distributing baseball caps embroidered with the letter “O”, apparently for the purpose of impressing on the minds of the ICANN community that Overstock.com claims a pre-eminent interest in the letter “O” – and apparently oblivious to the fact that Oakley has longstanding rights in the mark “O” for sportswear. Hence, while rumors spread that Oprah was coming to visit ICANN, the presence of blatant trademark infringement at an ICANN meeting by a member of the Business Constituency was, at least, entertaining.

Overstock.com has always argued that single letter domains should respect “prior use”. Of course, a domain like o.com can’t have any prior use. But that hasn’t stopped the company; it has registered trademarks for o.com. In fact, someone has at least attempted to trademark every single letter .com that could exist. (This is similar to all the companies trying to trademark non-existent top level domains.)

Overstock.com’s obsession with o.com is widely seen as its reason for pursuing other single letter domain names such as o.biz and o.info. It helps the company establish more rights to o.com (at least that will be its argument). It even went so far as to rebrand to o.co, only to pull back.

VeriSign floated an idea of offering single letter .net domain names back in 2010, but later withdrew its request.

One of the tricky parts for VeriSign is the windfall offering single letter .com domains would create. Who should get this money? A lot of people in the internet community would argue it’s certainly not VeriSign that should pocket the money.

VeriSign likely doesn’t want to bring up the single letter issue as it renews the contract. It doesn’t want to do anything to upset the apple cart. The .com monopoly is good enough for it.

So while others debate whether new IP protections should be included in the .com contract or challenge VeriSign’s .com price hikes, Overstock.com continues to focus on a mission. A mission it’s been working on for at least 7 years.

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ICANN refunds idea was a dumb move

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:35:01 +0000

Offering an additional $5,000 refund just draws more attention to ICANN’s top level domain system failure.

ICANN’s offer to refund 100% of applicant fees if new gTLD applicants pull their applications was a dumb move.

First, this offer isn’t a big deal. It’s an offer of $5,000 more (just 3%) than the refund schedule previously in place offered if you withdrew your application before names were revealed.

Second, will this offer actually prompt people to recall their applications? I doubt it.

But the real reason it was a bad idea is that it sends a message that the application “glitch” is a really bad thing. (It is, but this just calls more attention to it.) To the casual news reader, it sounds like this is a screw up of epic proportions if ICANN is offering refunds. It almost sounds like the program has been closed.

Here are a couple headlines about the move:

“ICANN offers refunds to domain name applicants” – Bloomberg

“ICANN offers refunds over gTLD system shutdown” – ZDNet

I suspect some readers will assume the entire program has been canned based on these headlines. (Oh, you mean they’ll click through and read the entire story?)

ICANN has egg on its face. A little bit more won’t destroy it. But I don’t think this was a smart move.

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ICANN’s $350 million windfall

Andrew Allemann — Sat, 05 May 2012 13:57:18 +0000

ICANN has already collected $350 million in new TLD application fees. And that number will grow.

One of the mysteries of ICANN’s new top level domain process is why it’s been so shy about releasing the total number of applications received so far. It released the number of application system registered users, but not the number of applications.

That just changed: ICANN announced it had 2,091 applications completed or in progress when it took the application system down for security issue. ICANN says there are another 214 potential applications for which payments had not been received or reconciled.

ICANN has already collected $350 million in application fees. That means even its “high” budget scenario released this week is too low.

ICANN will collect well more money per application than it needs to cover historical costs. It also means we’re probably looking at five or more batches of top level domains within the digital archery system.

This may be a very bad thing for ICANN. I can see senators’ phones ringing right now.

“They’ve got how much money?”

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Should ICANN can digital archery?

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:38:20 +0000

Given the latest data, ICANN should consider changing how it batches new TLDs.

With 1,268 registered users for ICANN’s new top level domain application system, it’s clear there will be over 1,000 unique top level domains going through the new TLD process. That means we’ll have “batching“, where approximately 500 domains at a time go through the full evaluation and addition to the root.

The current plan for determining which 500 applications go into each batch is called digital archery. Applicants will pick a target time and then try to click a button as close to that target time as possible.

Given ICANN’s failure to run the new TLD application system effectively and securely, a lot of doubt will be cast on the accuracy of a digital archery system.

This, in combination with the expectation that ICANN is going to make a lot more money off of applications than originally forecast, is renewing calls for coming up with a different solution. Here’s what Jeff Neuman, Vice President, Business Affairs at Neustar, Inc. tweeted yesterday:

I wouldn’t be surprised to have an applicant who misses the first batch sue ICANN over its digital archery system. That could delay the entire process.

The problem with putting all domains into one batch isn’t necessarily the evaluation process. The problem is adding more than 500 domains to the root at a time. ICANN has said it wants to limit batch sizes to monitor new TLD effects on the root.

If I were ICANN, here’s how I’d look at it. The non-profit is looking at a windfall of $30 million if it gets 2,000 applications. And that assumes a whopping $120 million is spent on “risk” costs such as lawsuits. Why not use some of this money to “buy off” applicants? Offer a substantial refund to applicants who agree to be slotted in later batches. I suspect that at least half of new TLD applications are for .brand domains. Many of the applicants have no idea what they’ll do with their .brand or when they’ll do it. Offer them a nice refund and many will opt for later batches.

ICANN could even hold a “reverse refund auction” to figure out the market cost of being in a later batch.

This volunteer program would save ICANN from more legal risks. It would also prevent the likely scenario of a bunch of the new TLDs being “dead” when they are added to the root. (Basically, .brands added to the root that aren’t actively used yet.) This would kill two birds with one stone.

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ICANN: 105 new TLD applicants may have had data exposed

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 03 May 2012 02:36:09 +0000

ICANN releases data about new top level domain application system bug.

105 applicants for new top level domains might have had the filenames of some of their application documents and their username exposed, ICANN revealed today.

The non-profit also revealed that 50 applicants might have been able to view these details.

Of course, just because filenames or usernames were exposed doesn’t mean that someone actually saw them or knew what they were seeing. And even if they realized what they were viewing, that doesn’t mean that the filename or username gave away any competitive intelligence.

ICANN is in the process of notifying the 105 applicants that they may have been victims of the programming bug. It hopes to complete notifications by May 8.

There were 1,268 registered users of the TLD Application System, or TAS, when the system was pulled offline due to concerns about the bug.

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How ICANN will spend $12 million more of your money next year

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:54:26 +0000

…and that doesn’t include new TLD costs.

ICANN’s latest proposed budget segments out the core ICANN functions and the new top level domain program.

But even its core functions budget are slated to grow by nearly $12 million next financial year compared to what it expects to spend in the current year (FY 12). Here’s why.

Contractual Compliance: $2.4 million increase

Let’s face it, ICANN’s contractual compliance has historically sucked. Fixing the problem is welcome, and the money will be well spent if it resolves the problems. Here’s how ICANN breaks down and extra 62% in expenses for next year:

- headcount increase from an average of 9 FTE in FY12 to 15 FTE in FY13 for approximately $1.1
million
- Compliance audit for $0.5 million
- Legal allocated costs increase for $0.4 million
- other overhead increases for $0.3 million

Meeting Logistics: $0.9 million increase (or $2.6M)

The cost of meeting logistics will go up next year despite a reduction in the number of meetings. ICANN saves about $1.5 million from the lack of a third meeting, yet still spends $0.9M more than last year. So it’s really a $2.6 million increase if the number of meetings were held constant. Here’s why:

- increase in headcount from 11 FTE to an average of 15 FTE to allow an increase in the size and complexity of the meetings (1 FTE) and the implementation of the language policy
(3 FTE) for a total of $0.5 million,
- increased IT costs related to audio-visual infrastructure at the meetings for $0.3 million
- increased language services costs due to the increased volume of translation and interpretation for approximately $1.2 million
- a meeting costs contingency of $0.3 million

Community Support: $0.8 million increase

This increase is basically due to community requests. It includes more money for travel/sponsorship, meetings, etc.

Global Engagement: $1.4M increase

Keep in mind this is on top of added expenses at ICANN meetings for language services.

- $0.2M increase in publications and information materials
- $0.4M increase in sponsorship contribution and outreach materials
- $0.8M in travel, outside providers and equipment to enhance its multilingual programs.

Ombudsman: $0.1M increase

The Ombudsman’s office is going to cost about $100,000 more in 2013 than in 2012. And when I say office, I mean it. The added costs are primarily attributed to “the additional administrative cost for renting an office and the associated expenses.”

I’d really like to see that office.

Board Support: $0.7M increase

Here’s how it breaks down:

- $0.3M for Board compensation
- $0.2M for additional Board training , communication tools and self assessment,
- $0.2M for an additional Board workshop

Organizational Reviews and Implementation: $0.7M increase

ICANN will spend $3.7M in FY 2013 mainly to comply with the Affirmation of Commitments. That includes implementing some of the recommendations from the Accountability & Transparency Team,
WHOIS policy, etc.

Of course this is just part of the budget difference. See more in the full draft budget.

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