Domain name decision-maker growing into a big machine

With a new office in Geneva, which would be close to international organisations headquartered there – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is stumbling forward. In introducing more changes to its policies on new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .ngo, .hamburg or .audi, by mandating more committees than ever before, ICANN is multiplying efforts to allow for many new TLDs to come onto the web... while growing into a big machine at the same time.

At its 47th meeting in Durban, South Africa, a quartet of non-latin TLDs (“web” in Arabic, “online” and “website” in Cyrillic and “game” in Chinese) was announced by ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehade. Awaiting only a few more technical tests and a signature by the US Department of Commerce, these TLDs should be the first ready to run, with an expected start date of 5 September 2013, according to latest projections from ICANN staff.

External evaluators have given a “pass” to over 1,000 new TLD applications for .brand, .community and completely open zones with no limitations to who can register (like .web, or comparably to .com). Some of these can proceed to flesh out their contracts with ICANN.  Only around a dozen domain names were sent to “extended evaluation” due to bad marks on technical or financial accounts. For around 200 still, ICANN has to solve some sort of contention – competing applicants for the same name, legal objections, or government “advice” (which are government recommendations).

Government and registries fight over geographic names

Some were less lucky attracting the attention of governments and resulting in diplomatic  interventions from countries via  the Government Advisory Committee (GAC). Resale platform Amazon was opposed by  governments on July 16, after a group of Latin-American Countries convinced their colleagues in the GAC that public interest – and the cultural, traditional and geographic meaning – had to prevail over the “business model“.

There is a lot of sympathy for this reasoning, not only in the GAC. Peru's GAC representative said, it was “striking that there is a prior search on trademarks during the sunrise period, but there is no list or no searching mechanisms for geographic names. Also a huge fight between governments developed over potential safeguards for .wine or .vin - as not only Europe was producing wine, the US GAC representative criticized.

At the same time the Registry Constituency warned against changing the rules of the game in the middle of the process – the applicant guidebook had not precluded Amazon from filing for its name, nor Patagonia which last week gave up and withdraw after a battle with Argentina.” For some academics, like Milton Mueller, the GAC's move is a step toward speech regulation on the net, too.

Domain name registries and registrars fear becoming a net “police”

One controversial debate on how far registries and, in some way, also registrars can be obliged to police their customers is on in several of the constituencies of the ICANN self-government bodies. Again, it is governments who push a series of safeguards for all those TLDs that fall into broad categories of strings representing names of “regulated” or otherwise “sensible” sectors. Governments gathered in Durban defended how much names they put in these categories, which include strings from “bank” or “doctor” to “games”, “book” or “music”.

For these and – as governments pointed out – such kind of names additional registries should establish additional safeguards, for example “establish a working relationship with regulatory or industry self‐regulatory bodies, including developing a strategy to mitigate as much as possible the risks of fraudulent, and other illegal, activities.” (see thex text of the GAC Beijing Communique)

The members of the ICANN Board Program Committee on New TLDs called some of the “advice” just “unimplementable” when discussing with the GAC in Durban. Still registries are afraid to now be stuck with a new Dispute Resolution Process. The process shall allow to enforce Public Interest Commitments (PICs), declarations attached to registry contracts about how companies will serve and protect the “public interest“. Jeff Neuman, who manages US Registry Neustar's implementation of the new gTLD initiative, complained to the ICANN Board: “you're saying you registries (sic) have to be the police, you have to do all these things and by the way, everyone can sue you.”

Plans for a mega database

Registrars also continued complaining about burdens put on them since ICANN gave in to the demands of governments and law enforcement. The GAC had pushed for a system of data retention for Whois data - including personal data from domain name users, and for increased accuracy of this data. Yet  during the Durban meeting, German and EU (e.g., EU Commission) representatives  turned around to ask clearly for “a balance between law enforcement and data protection and privacy.” Registries are not happy with their new standard ICANN contracts. European registrars would prefer to not sign their registrar accreditation agreements before clear privacy exemptions have been implemented, they said.

How such privacy exemptions could ever be honoured when ICANN proceeds with plans to set up a centralised Whois database - for which a proposal is on the table - has yet to be seen. Catalan (.cat) lawyer Amadeu Abril i Abril was one of few who warned against what he called a “super mega database“ on Whois data. While centralising accreditation and authorisation for access to Whois might help with some problems, he thinks a centralised database with the registration data is a bad idea. Centralization not only makes the data base an interesting target, it would complicate the enforcement of different levels of privacy standards.

Amid changes, ICANN remains in the hot seat

Given the range of issues ICANN tries to solve while fixing policies here and there, the question of how well the machine is working is constantly being discussed in Durban’s many different panels. How to avoid that the Board replaces the sometimes slow moving and complex bottom-up policy development process? How to avoid that governments come in late to change consensus found after years by other stakeholders? How to not forget the users out there in global cyberland who cannot attend the fancy meetings and yet have to live with its policies?

ICANN's President and CEO Fadi Chehade quite obviously not only defends the model as it works right now as “unique” and “marvelously working.” He also believes in the process of constant improvement – or at least constant change. Five new strategic high-level panels chaired by very well-known figures in internet policy and technology (Vinton Cerf, Paul Mockapetris, Beth Simone Noveck and Nii Quaynor) shall push the vision of the global self-governance forward. Cerf for example shall help to define ICANN's role in the family of internet related international organisations, from self-governing standardisation groups at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the World Wide Web Consortium to the traditional intergovernmental bodies like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Needless to say, the new Geneva office is part of an effort to touch base with international diplomats and organisations. It is added to new hubs in Istanbul and Singapore and other recently opened offices like the one in Beijing.

Wasting energy on structure?

Certainly interesting, governments welcomed the new strategic planning. Yet, there are also those overwhelmed with the processes, committees and yet more committees. The representation of non-commercial users in ICANN constitutes a very fine example of how to slice up forces just too much to allow them to be really effective.

Bill Drake, researcher and long time ICANN, ITU and other international organisations expert, warned for example against a “drain on our collective energies” spent solely on constructing, tending to and later still understanding the various divisions in civil society. So much time, he said, was wasted on explaining to incoming volunteers “what the hell is the difference between the NCUC, NPOC and ALAC and why is civil society in ICANN broken up in this way.” In effect “it blocks us from being able to concentrate on doing real serious policy work.”