1) ICANN Interactive Webinar on DNS Abuse September 25
- Review and discuss existing safeguards within ICANN’s contracts and By-laws.
- Identify types DNS abuse that may fall within ICANN’s remit.
- Discuss voluntary efforts to address abuse within the DNS.
- Consider possible topic(s) for discussion during a session at ICANN 60.
Webinar Date & Time: 25 September 2017, 1500-1600 UTC | time convert 11am EDT (US)
Join via Adobe Connect: https://participate.icann.org/safeguardsandcompliance/Dial-In Conference Number(s)--Participant Code: 1941584829:
- US (Toll): 1-605-475-5603
- US (Toll): 1-712-770-4202
- US (Toll Free): 1-888-619-1583
- Canada, Montreal (Local): +1 514 669 5944
- Canada, Toronto (Local): +1 647 426 9168
- Additional access numbers: here
- Existing safeguards (pdf) within ICANN’s contracts and Bylaws
2) Other ICANN news
"Conclusion: With its 2012 round of expanding gTLDs from just 22 to more than 1200, ICANN has made a mess of the DNS and given multistakeholderism a bad name. And it’s not as if ICANN wasn’t warned, repeatedly, as noted hereinabove. No, this disaster wasn’t any force majeure, but a disaster of ICANN’s own making, founded upon a mixture of arrogant power and greed:
"I really can’t see a legitimate upside where new benefits [of the new gTLDs] outweigh costs, and everyone I mention this to feels the same way. People just shake their heads. It’s all about the money. They [ICANN] are creating these extensions because they can."--University of Pennsylvania Wharton School marketing professor Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (source: Knowledge@Wharton May 21, 2014)."ICANN’s new gTLDs program is a systemic failure of both the organization and the “ICANN community”—they need to own it and be held accountable. It is as important to understand “how we got here” as “what happened.” The failed ICANN leadership that got us into this mess includes Peter Dengate Thrush (former ICANN Board Chairman), Steve Crocker (ICANN Board member and Chairman), ICANN ex-CEOs Rod Beckstrom and Fadi Chehade, former ICANN Chief Strategy Officer Kurt Pritz (“architect of ICANN's new gTLD program”), and lastly but not least, Akram Atallah, interim ICANN CEO (twice) and President of ICANN’s “Global Domains Division.”" (emphasis added)
Full comment embedded below. Other comments submitted may be read here.
b. Latest on Spain vs .CAT--gTLD .CAT domain names judicial seizure warrant
Background: Intervention at Fundació puntCAT's headquarters | fundacio.cat 20 Sep 2017: "Fundació puntCAT wants to express its utmost condemnation, indignation and reprobation for the actions that it has been suffering lately with successive judicial mandates, searches and finally the arrest of our Director of Innovation and Information Systems, Pep Masoliver ..." (emphasis added)
See also 17 September 2017 Letter from Fundació puntCAT CEO Eduard Martin Lineros to ICANN CEO Göran Marby (pdf) published by ICANN 20 September 2017, embed below:
See also: Spain and Catalonia Wrestle Over .Cat Internet Domain - The New York Times: "Given the web’s rich cat history, you’d think that domain names ending in .CAT would be another online feline gold mine."--For the love of god, not everything is about cats | theoutline.com: "The foundation that administers the .CAT domain for Catalonians just got raided by the Spanish police, but all the media wants to talk about is cats."
UPDATE--Catalonia Police Reject Madrid Orders: Barring Invasion, the Vote Will Take Place October 1st--"Given the importance of the story, Western media is amazingly silent. Stories are few and far between."--MishTalK.com.
c. ICYMI: ICANN’s “Proposal Regarding Feasibility Analysis of Cross-Field Address Validation Services.”--Letter from Graeme Bunton to Jennifer Gore | ICANN.org embed below, highlighting added:
(Editor's Note: Graeme Bunton is manager of public policy at Tucows, and was elected as Chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group in July 2016. Jennifer Gore is ICANN Director, Registrar Services & Engagement since July, 2016; prior to that she was employed by Web.com.)
3) Names, Domains & Trademarks
• IT Contractor Convicted of Wire Fraud for Defacing Website of Arizona Company | USAO-AZ | US Department of Justice | justice.gov: "... According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, [Defendant] Tso provided information technology (“IT”) services for a company located in Phoenix, Ariz. Tso subsequently used the company’s account information to make changes to the company’s website. These changes prevented the company’s employees from using their email accounts and redirected the company’s homepage to a blank page. Tso then offered to return everything to normal for $10,000. When the company refused to pay the requested amount, Tso redirected the company’s homepage to a pornographic website. Visitors to the company’s website were redirected to the pornographic website for several days before the website was returned to normal ..."
• IP in the Digital Age: Protecting Against Domain Name and Social Media Infringement | New Jersey Law Journal | njlawjournal.com
• Don’t Fall for a Scam: Trademark Owners Targeted | Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, LLP - JDSupra.com: "These scamming organizations, which often use names that resemble government agencies, will obtain freely accessible information regarding a registration or application ... and then create an official-looking letter or invoice seeking payment regarding the referenced trademark."
4) ICYMI Internet Domain News
Iceland authorities weighing options after neo-Nazi site registers there | ArsTechnica.com: “What we worry about is the reputation of the .is domain,” ISNIC CEO Jens Pétur Jensen told the Reykjavik Grapevine. “ISNIC does not want to have the reputation that we’re a safe haven for criminals.”
See also: Why many Russians have gladly agreed to online censorship | osu.edu and Iran: Policing the Internet and Social Media | AEI.org.BREAKING: Gab's domain registrar has given us 5 days to transfer our domain or they will seize it. The free and open web is in danger. pic.twitter.com/Irl6KO5Xmr— Gab (@getongab) September 18, 2017
• China's Great Firewall: Chinese man jailed for helping others break Internet firewall | newsbytesapp.com. See also U.S. seeks partners to help Internet users evade foreign censors--bgov.com: "The Office of Internet Freedom (OIF), part the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, is looking for vendors that have systems and software to counter internet censorship by foreign governments, according to a notice published Sept. 6."--helping dissident groups set up web proxies and secure email.
• Net Neutrality: FCC Chair’s “chat” with tech execs draws protest | Electronic Frontier Foundation | eff.org .See also: "... the FCC blatantly ignored the evidence that the agency had in its possession throughout its push to scrap the vital consumer protections established by the Open Internet Order," NHMC Policy and Legal Affairs Director Carmen Scurato said in a press release last week." See also Technology is outsmarting net neutrality | AEI.org.
• EFF Resigns from W3C over EME: An open letter to the W3C Director, CEO, team and membership | Electronic Frontier Foundation | eff.org: ".... The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they’ll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures. So we'll keep fighting to keep the web free and open. We'll keep suing the US government to overturn the laws that make DRM so toxic, and we'll keep bringing that fight to the world's legislatures that are being misled by the US Trade Representative to instigate local equivalents to America's legal mistakes. We will renew our work to battle the media companies that fail to adapt videos for accessibility purposes, even though the W3C squandered the perfect moment to exact a promise to protect those who are doing that work for them. We will defend those who are put in harm's way for blowing the whistle on defects in EME implementations. It is a tragedy that we will be doing that without our friends at the W3C, and with the world believing that the pioneers and creators of the web no longer care about these matters. Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C. Thank you"--Cory Doctorow, Advisory Committee Representative to the W3C for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (emphasis added).
• Internet Freedom: How supporting internet freedom in Cambodia makes America great | R Street Institute | RStreet.org
• Internet Regulation: FEC Dems renew bid to regulate Internet, Drudge, 'not done fighting' | washingtonexaminer.com
• Internet Shutdowns: Togo latest country to lose web access as regimes increasingly shut down Internet to control protests | theglobeandmail.com
• China Connecting The Unconnected: "... as new players enter the race to connect the 4 billion people who remain offline, new questions are emerging about who is providing that connection and what their agenda is. As China’s interest in global development has grown, so too has its influence in the telecommunications sector, with two companies in particular — the privately owned Huawei and state owned ZTE — making up the majority of China’s efforts to connect the unconnected."--China's role in the race to connect the next billion | Devex.com.
5) Most read posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:
1. News Review: ICANN New gTLDs Declining, But Other Domains Growing
2. Hurricane Maria: 2017 Hurricane Season, Satellite Views .... LIVE Feeds
3. EU Antitrust & Competition Policy, EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager
4. MacroView: Election in Germany (video), ECB, EU, Spain, IMF & Greece
5. Jeff Bezos Empire: Amazon $AMZN, Blue Origin, WaPo, Bezos Expeditions
-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo