ICA members and others familiar with our work know that we have no hesitancy taking ICANN to task when we have serious problems with its policy or procedures. That’s part of our job of being a vigorous advocate for the domain name investment and development industry given the huge impact that ICANN decisions can have on the fundamentals of its business model.
That said, we would be remiss if we did not take note of those occasions where we think ICANN is making progress and doing a better job. This month has given three occasions for such positive assessments.
The first was ICANN’s announcement on August 10th that three ICANN registrars had been stripped of accreditation, followed by an August 17th advisory that the domain name transfer process had begun for customers of these registrars.
The three registrars lost accreditation for different reasons:
• South America Domains Ltd. (dba namefrog.com) failed to provide public access to registered names as required by the WHOIS provisions of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).
• Simply Named Inc. failed to escrow gTLD registration data and to pay its ICANN accreditation fee.
• Tahoe Domains, Inc. also failed to escrow gTLD registration data and to pay its accreditation fee.
Now none of these registrars was large (according to ICANN data each held fewer than 300 names) but, nonetheless, it is good to see ICANN actively enforcing the RAA – including the data escrow provisions that are the bedrock of registrant protection – and to providing registrants with a comprehensive set of questions and answers to advise them of the transfer process and name protection measures going forward. This is all a significant and positive change from what occurred in the days leading up to, and immediately after, the collapse of RegisterFly in early 2007.
The second positive note is engendered by ICANN’s announcement that the implementation of measures initiated one year ago to curb abusive domain tasting had led to a 99.7 percent decline across all registries (http://icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm). Not surprisingly, the biggest declines have occurred at .com (Add Grace Period (AGP) deletes declined from 15.74 million in June 2008 to 37.52 thousand in April 2009) and .net (1.86 million to 6.20 thousand in the same period). We point to this announcement as proof that ICANN is capable of taking effective action against a problem when there is strong consensus within the ICANN community that the problem exists and the proposed remedy will be effective. ICA agreed that excess tasting was an abuse of the AGP that was engaged in because it had no economic cost, and we also agreed that imposing a modest cost could effectively curb this without eliminating the AGP as a basic protection for registrants who made mistakes. We would note that some in the Intellectual Property community expressed the mistaken view that ICANN’s actions would not be effective and that the AGP needed to be entirely eliminated, and we hope that the ICANN community will remember that exaggerated and incorrect perspective as it continues to consider the draconian URS proposal and other “solutions” proposed for new gTLDs by the IRT.
While noting the positive outcome of the domain tasting action, we would be remiss if we did not also note two misleading and disturbing statements in ICANN’s announcement on this subject. They are in this paragraph:
Aside from the problem that domain names may have been difficult to register, domain tasting also had a series of negative consequences on the manner in which people used the Internet. If individuals accidentally allowed their domain names to lapse, it had become extremely difficult for them to get the domain back (since it was being picked up and dropped by automated systems). Domain tasting also saw an enormous proliferation in the number of websites featuring nothing but advertisements, thus leading to a form of Internet graffiti. (Emphasis added.)
ICANN should be well aware that there is a very efficient marketplace for dropped domain names, and that if a registrant inadvertently allows a name of any value to lapse it is still quite likely that it will be picked up by another and lost to the original registrant. As for the equation of parked web pages with “Internet graffiti”, they are no more graffiti than Google and Yahoo search results (in fact, they are generally served up by those very same companies). ICANN has no business endorsing or denigrating Internet business models, or pronouncing that search engine results are somehow more worthy than what a consumer gets from a direct type-in search, so long as the parked page is not infringing or engaged in illegal or malicious activity, and it is disturbing to see this mind set in an official announcement – especially after ICANN had seemingly jettisoned that viewpoint after we raised concerns about an earlier draft information brief on domain monetization.
The third and last development is ICANN’s announcement that it will experiment with new collaborative software to allow more interactive discussion within the ICANN community. The topic to be addressed in this experiment is possible solutions to the “frustration and exhaustion” experienced by those community members who engage in ICANN’s various working groups, supporting organizations, and advisory committees (given ICA’s current involvement in the Business Constituency, three separate working groups, attendance at and participation in the thrice-yearly ICANN meetings, and strenuous involvement in such issues as the proposed URS, we know that feeling). Simply put, we think it’s good to see the entity that manages the DNS trying out software that has the potential to increase collaboration and aid consensus-building. That said, if the URS is jammed through like the .com settlement of mid-decade, no amount of software will alleviate the frustration and angst of a community that feels that its views have been ignored.
So hats off to ICANN for progress made, while recognizing that there is still considerable room for improvement.