Category Archive

Following up on its critical statement delivered to the ICANN Board at the recent Hyderabad public meeting, ICA submitted a Thanksgiving Day comment letter decrying the insertion of URS into the .XXX Registry Agreement (RA) via contract negotiation and declaring— “GDD staff should demonstrate their clear commitment to ICANN’s bottom-up policymaking process by ceasing and desisting from seeking top-down imposition …

At the recent ICANN 57 meeting held in Hyderabad, India a full Public Forum session was held on Tuesday, November 8th. Utilizing the open mike, ICA Counsel Philip Corwin addressed the ICANN Board regarding the recent announcement that ICM Registry had agreed to adopt the new gTLD rights protection mechanism (RPM) of Uniform rapid Suspension (URS) at the .xxx adult …

ICANN Global Domain Division (GDD) staff are at it again, engaging in top down policy decision-making through contract negotiations with older registries that pre-date the new gTLD program. The latest example is the announcement of a “Proposed Amendment to .XXX Registry Agreement to Transition to New Fee Structure and to Adopt Additional Safeguards” that would provide the adult content gTLD …

Verisign has just filed a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealing that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved the extension of the .Com registry Agreement through November 30, 2024. We previously reported that, on September 15th, ICANN’s Board approved the .Com RA extension’ and simultaneously approved an extension of the existing $7.85 …

Earlier today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued its decision in Weinstein vs. Iran, a case in which families of terror victims sought to have ICANN turn over control of Iran’s .IR ccTLD to plaintiffs. In a unanimous decision the three judge panel stated, “On ICANN’s motion, the district court quashed the writs, finding the data …

On July 25th ICANN announced the publication of the Draft Report of the Independent Review of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This study was coordinated for ICANN by the Analysis Group, in conjunction with researchers from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford as well the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The Report’s Executive Summary provides a background on its …

It’s been almost six weeks since the NTIA announced “that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government’s stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions”, and thereby signaled …

  “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis   ICA has long been an advocate for greater transparency in ICANN operations, especially in the decision-making activities of the Board. Back in May 2012, reacting to the announcement that the Board would no longer hold …

During its regular monthly meeting on Thursday, May 12th, ICANN’s GNSO Council confirmed the appointment of ICA Counsel Philip S. Corwin to be a Co-Chair of the Review of all Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) in all gTLDs PDP Working Group (WG). Corwin represents ICA on ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC) and is one of the BC’s two representatives on the Council. …

On March 9th, 2016, during its final open meeting at ICANN 55 in Marrakech, Morocco, the GNSO Council approved a motion that I proposed to adopt the Charter of the Policy Development Process (PDP) to Review all Rights Protections Mechanisms in all Generic Top-Level Domains. I serve on the Council as one of the two representatives of ICANN’s Business Constituency, and …