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Just coming back home, after a few hectic days<br>
<br>
FYI, an interesting analysis<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/09/29/icanns-new-us-contract-and-new-top-level-domains-its-not-over/">http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/09/29/icanns-new-us-contract-and-new-top-level-domains-its-not-over/</a><br>
<p><strong>29 September 2009</strong></p>
<h2 class="posttitle"> ICANN’s New US Contract And New Top Level
Domains - It’s Not Over </h2>
<small>By <a href="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/author/monika/"
title="Posts by Monika Ermert">Monika Ermert</a> for <em>Intellectual
Property Watch</em> @ 12:07 pm</small>
<div class="entry">
<p>With
a day to go before the joint project agreement between the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United
States Department of Commerce (DoC) is set to expire, calls for
continuous US oversight role have been reiterated by US politicians and
private-sector representatives who reason that this oversight is
especially needed in the face of the planned introduction of new
internet top-level domains like .shop.<span id="more-6483"></span></p>
<p>ICANN is a “captured regulator,” the Coalition Against Domain Name
Abuse (CADNA) warned last Wednesday and asked for additional oversight
by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as ICANN is “risking
cybersecurity, national security and global security.” Yet The
Economist magazine ran an opinionated story only a day later asserting
that ICANN would be “independent,” under the new contract conceding
that the core infrastructure managed by ICANN - the domain-name system
(DNS) root zone - will still be controlled by US authorities. </p>
<p>So it’s not over, neither the disputes about new top-level domains
(TLDs) nor those about further internationalising internet domain name
system oversight. </p>
<p>ICANN was founded in 1998 to organise private-sector, bottom-up and
multi-stakeholder management for the coordination of the DNS and also
IP addresses and so-called protocol parameters. It has since been at
the centre of a heated debate about the roles of the US, but also
global governments, industry and civil society groups in internet
governance. </p>
<p>Broadsides at ICANN</p>
<p>While it had been quiet about the deadline of its joint project
agreement (JPA) over the last month, last week ICANN saw some
broadsides fired at its TLD expansion plans and its work record in
general that would have been suitable for lobbying by US companies and
trademark owners seeking to preserve US control. ICANN is “not
independent,” “not transparent” nor “accessible,” is only after its own
profits and is risking the stability and security of the internet it is
tasked to protect, wrote CADNA, that lists companies like Verizon, HP,
Dell, but also non-telecommunications, non-information technology
members like Goldman Sachs or Wells Fargo, Nike or Hilton Hotels. CADNA
called for a “full-scale audit of ICANN.”</p>
<p>The group requested that a special federal commission take up to
twelve months “to fully audit ICANN and develop recommendations for a
revised and updated JPA.” The introduction of new TLDs also came under
fire from CADNA who dismissed the roll-out as “poorly conceived.”</p>
<p>Steve DelBianco, chairman of the Net Choice Coalition, representing
companies like VeriSign and eBay, complained at a 23 September hearing
of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy
that ICANN had “got sidetracked” in the process of introducing new
TLDs. </p>
<p>“ICANN should refocus on international labels [domains],” DelBianco
said. Countries like China have long asked for internationalised,
non-Latin domain names at the highest level. By opening up the TLD
expansion to every new Latin-script string and complicating and slowing
the process instead ICANN has risked the “splintering of the single
root system,” he said, because “China has got tired of label makers and
made a mini-ICANN of their own sitting on top of ours.” DelBianco
neglected to mention that his parallel proposal to allocate the Chinese
versions of .com, .net to the registries managing the English versions
like VeriSign likely would not amuse the respective countries.</p>
<p>DelBianco, joined by Richard Heath, president of the International
Trademark Association argued, that new generic TLDs in English would
not bring innovation. Heath said it would instead “decrease competition
if we (the trademark owners) have to fund a lot more defensive
registration“ and this would also divert resources from innovation and
from investment in corporate social sponsorship projects. </p>
<p>Congressional Members: New TLDs Require Oversight of ICANN</p>
<p>Several members of Congress seemed to agree with the two trademark
right representatives. Chairman Hank Johnson (Democrat, Georgia) for
example said: “I do not understand [why] they want an unlimited
expansion of the name space.“ Johnson acknowledged non-Latin TLDs and
initiatives like .nyc and .eco have merit. Given the planned expansion,
US oversight over ICANN’s process continued to be necessary to provide
stability and security for domain name owners, he said. </p>
<p>Republican Congressman Howard Coble (North Carolina) warned that
ICANN by proceeding with the expansion of the name space had “not for
the first time ignored what one might think is a mandatory
instruction.” Governments in ICANN’s own Governmental Advisory
Committee (GAC) had raised concerns about the new TLD process, and the
DoC had asked for economic proof of the necessity of new TLDs, he said.</p>
<p>A week earlier a study from Interisle commissioned by ICANN also had
recommended first introducing a new security feature to the DNS, the
DNS Security Extensions protocol (DNSSEC), before moving on with the
introduction of new TLDs, said Coble. The study on “Scaling the Root”
in fact concluded ICANN could for stability reasons either introduce
new gTLDs, new international (IDN) TLDs and next generation internet
(Ipv6) or DNSSEC. It recommended to start with the latter, which will
authorise answers to name requests in the DNS and therefore make
forgery more difficult. The DoC already has announced that DNSSEC
should be introduced by the end of this year. To amalgamate the
complicated technology into the DNS system, root operators and the
community should be given 12 to 15 months before another addition to
the system is started, the study found. </p>
<p>ICANN: No Link between JPA and new TLDs</p>
<p>ICANN officials rejected the link between the dispute over TLDs and
the JPA contract discussions. ICANN’s new CEO, Rod Beckstrom, in a
letter dated 22 September wrote to several congressmen who had asked
for legislation to make US oversight permanent by legislation, that
consultations on the IP issues were still underway. “There is no link
to the conclusion of the JPA,,” he said. </p>
<p>ICANN Chief Operating Officer Doug Brent at the hearing outlined the
process on the future application procedure for new TLDs as an ongoing
discussion: a third version of the extensive applicant’s guidebook
would come out beginning of October, Brent said. Several protective
measures that were proposed by the “Implementation Recommendation
Group“ (IRT) were called upon by ICANN’s board chairman. The IRT work
was seen by other ICANN stakeholder groups including registries,
registrars, and non-commercial domain name holders as yet another round
for the IP community of undermining and bypassing the multi-stakeholder
process that had worked for months for a consensus.</p>
<p>“We will not allow an expansion that will not adequately protect
trademark owners,” reiterated Brent, and “it will not be an unbridled
expansion.” Delaying the process begun as part of ICANN’s overall
mandate to bring competition to the originally monopolistic domain name
system according to Beckstrom and Brent would only serve “to perpetuate
existing market conditions: concentration within some existing
registries, with most short generic strings unavailable and those that
trade on the value of the current marketplace, holding portfolios based
upon the value of current .com.” </p>
<p>Support for ICANN’s process to now finally push through with new
generic TLDs and non-English TLDs came from a coalition of domain name
registries like Core, registrars like ENOM, declared applicants for new
TLDs including the competitors for the .eco TLD of which one is
supported by former Vice President Al Gore and a Commissioner of the
Canadian Regulatory Authority (CRTC). In their letter to the ICANN
Board, the pro-TLD coalition urged ICANN to initiate the new TLD
application period without further delay as it would bring more
competition and consumer choice and avoid chaos stemming from an
alternative addressing scheme that would pop up if ICANN gave in to
what they see as fearmongering and “narrow arguments advanced so
vociferously by those who seek to preserve their advantages.” </p>
<p>End of the JPA, No End to US Control</p>
<p>So what will happen with a new agreement in place this week? ICANN
officials so far have not responded to requests for detailed
information. Beckstrom in his letter to the congressmen dated 21
September wrote: “I am in discussions with the NTIA (DoC National
Telecommunications and Information Administration) to establish a
long-standing relationship to accommodate principles including the
beliefs that ICANN should remain a nonprofit corporation based in the
United States, and should retain an ongoing focus on accountability and
transparency.“ ICANN should be made a permanent institution, said
Beckstrom, adding, “Accordingly, ICANN seeks to have a long-term
relationship with the United States government and also seeks to build
long-term relationships with other countries and contractual partners
as well.“ </p>
<p>By the end of last week The Economist came out with leaked
information about an “independent“ ICANN, quoting a four-page paper
about “affirmations and commitments” that envisaged four oversight
panels over ICANN, checking on “competition among generic domains (such
as .com and .net), the handling of data on registrants, the security of
the network and transparency, accountability and the public interest.”
The US would only retain a permanent seat in the latter one, and
representatives of “foreign governments” would be included in the
oversight panels. The agreement sets up oversight panels that include
representatives of foreign governments to “conduct regular reviews of
ICANN’s work in four areas.”</p>
<p>The potential new oversight model would partly answer long-standing
requests for internationalisation, not the least from non-US
governments, according to Wolfgang Kleinwächter, an internet governance
expert and head of ICANN’s Nominating Committee. The member states of
Europe have passed another version of their “Guidelines on
International Management of the Domain Name System” demanding further
development of the private-sector-led bottom-up multi-stakeholder model
for the technical coordination and the day-to-day management of the
DNS, continued efforts towards full transparency and accountability
and, notably, a “strengthened” GAC “that has increased active
membership (in particular from developing countries), greater
involvement in ICANN’s policy development processes [..] and effective
secretariat support.” </p>
<p>GAC members might be the ones who could fill the oversight panels,
one can speculate, and this might have come up during talks the NTIA
held with the EU Troika (Sweden, Spain and the European Commission) at
a meeting on the first of September, one of several meetings NTIA had
with governments around the world in the run-up to the JPA deadline. </p>
<p>The EU guidelines also state a need to stipulate and support
dialogue and cooperation on public policy issues pertaining to the
internet“ in general, a possible hint of the need for continued
discussions at the upcoming UN-led Internet Governance Forum in Egypt.
The guidelines do not touch on the new TLD process, yet recommend “the
establishment of an arbitration and dispute resolution mechanism base
on international law in case of disputes.” The burden to go to a
California court to appeal against a California-based ICANN decision
has been mentioned at many new TLD events in Europe recently. </p>
<p>In the end, a change in the JPA might bring some changes and pacify
some concerns over an overly US-centric ICANN. “From what I read, it
looks like a smart move,” said Kleinwächter. What it will not bring is
“independence” as ICANN will continue to be a government contractor for
what is the core “critical resource” - the root zone and internet
protocol address allocation management which are delegated via a
separation contract, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
contract. US authorities have always declared that they will hold on to
that one. </p>
<p>So after the JPA, it’s not over and discussions about the new TLDs
can be expected to continue, too, for a long time.</p>
</div>
<div class="alaligne">
<p><em>Monika Ermert may be reached at <a
href="mailto:info@ip-watch.ch">info@ip-watch.ch</a>.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="alaligne"> </div>
<div class="alaligne">
<p>Categories: <a
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<div class="alaligne"> </div>
<br>
PS : Concerning the pizza bet, my own opinion is that Milton just owes
a nice but empty pizza box...<br>
because it is just a nice packaging change...<span
class="moz-smiley-s5"><span> :-D </span></span>
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