2016-11-13

News Review: ICANN57 Hyderabad, India, the Elephant in the Room

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news [pdf]:
1. Feature: ICANN57 Hyderabad, India, the Elephant in the Room; 2. Other matters at ICANN57 (the GAC Communique); 3. CENTR Report on ICANN57; 4. Trump and ICANN, what's the connection? 5. Most popular posts.
1. Feature • ICANN57 Hyderabad, India: the Elephant in the Room
Banksy art exhibit "Barely Legal" in Los Angeles, 16 September 2006.
By Bit Boy - Flickr: The Elephant in the Room, CC BY 2.0
New gTLD .WEB


The dispute over new gTLD .WEB was the elephant in the room at ICANN57, though it was not on the agenda. Afilias, a losing applicant for .WEB in the ICANN last resort auction, raised the issue with the ICANN Board in Public Forum 1 on Saturday, November 5th, when Afilias Executive Chairman, Jonathan Robinson, spoke and reiterated his blog post in CircleID (see below). Later, at the Public Forum 2 on Tuesday, November 8th, a rebuttal was presented by Verisign's Pat Kane (starts at 51:55 in the video above) and later Verisign's Keith Drazek (starts at 1:41:00) who directed the Board to a responsive post on CircleID.com (see below), and then Afilias's Jonathan Robinson addressed the Board again (starts at 1:44:30). Articles published at CircleID.com:
Why Afilias would choose ICANN57 to pursue their objection publicly by lobbying the ICANN Board via ICANN Public Forums, rather than avail itself of the accountability mechanisms inherent in the new gTLD processes, including filing an IRP, is quizzical, if not troubling, particularly since Afilias Executive Chairman Jonathan Robinson, a winner of the ICANN 2016 Leadership Award at ICANN 57, also served as Chair of the ICANN GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) Council for three consecutive terms until 2015, and was Co-Chair of the IANA stewardship transition's CWG-Stewardship. The dot WEB issue is also currently the subject of litigation pending between Ruby Glen (Donuts) and ICANN, and therefore the ICANN Board could not, and did not, respond in any way to the issue during either Public Forum 1 or Public Forum 2. For additional background see: Afilias Challenges New gTLD WEB Auction Results in Letter to ICANN | DomainMondo.com.

2. Other matters at ICANN57 that were on the agenda and discussed:
• GAC Communique (pdf) embedded below, highlighting added:

3.  CENTR publishes its Report on ICANN57 (pdf) (embed below) highlights include:
  • Extended Process Similarity Review Panel (EPSRP) Working Group update
  • Country/territory names and codes
  • PDPs on the retirement of ccTLDs and the review mechanisms for decisions on the delegation, transfer, revocation and retirement of ccTLDs
  • Content Control and DNS
  • Auction Proceeds working group
  • New gTLDs: Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice (CCT-RT)
  • Mitigation of Abuse in gTLDs
  • Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)
  • New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP
4. Trump and ICANN, what's the connection? Apart from supporting Ted Cruz's effort to derail the IANA transition, Donald Trump or the Trump Organization reportedly owns in excess of 3000 domain names, more info here and here. In addition, see also From Steaks to Fragrances, the Donald’s Trademarks Trump Them All - Law Blog | WSJ.com: Trump's 300+ trademarks.

5. Most popular posts this past week (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) on DomainMondo.com:
  1. News Review [6Nov] | What Is ICANN? | New ICANN Domain Name Transfer Policy
  2. LIVE Breaking Video: Trump Headed to White House, Market Recovers
  3. MacroView [7Nov]: It's All About The US Presidential Election on Tuesday
  4. Rightside $NAME Q3 2016 Results, LIVE Webcast Nov 8, 4:30 pm ET
  5. Trump Win Shocks Political & Media Establishment, Tech & Market Reaction

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

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