1) ICANN & GDPR: ICANN Org vs EPDP Access?
Editor's note: links to transcripts and Adobe Connect recordings will be posted here, as made available by ICANN. Note that links to EPDP meetings' transcripts are posted (usually within 24 hours) on the GNSO calendar. See also EPDP Team wiki, mail list, Temp Spec, action items, EPDP Charter(pdf), GNSO's EPDP page, & weekly updates to GNSO Council.
Fri. Oct 5 EPDP small group meeting (wiki link) 13:00 UTC (9am EDT): meeting transcript (pdf),
MP3, Adobe Connect replay, chat transcript (pdf), Background document embedded below:
Oct 4 EPDP Meeting (agenda), meeting transcript (pdf), chat transcript (pdf), Adobe Connect replay, MP3, Purpose N (pdf). Data elements workbooks. Editor's note: meeting discussions were led by 2 CBI facilitators, Gina Bartlett and David Plumb.
Wed. Oct 3 small group meeting: background document (pdf). Editor's note: 2 facilitators from CBI.org were at this meeting--Gina Bartlett led the meeting and David Plumb was present--so apparently CBI.org has been retained for further "facilitation and mediation" although the details are not known. The Wednesday small group EPDP members present: Alex Deacon (IPC), Laureen Kapin (GAC), Ben Butler (SSAC), James Bladel (RrSG), Marc Anderson (RySG), Margie Milam (BC). NCSG (6 EPDP members) was MIA (missing in action) for most of the meeting with no explanation or apologies noted--Stephanie Perrin (NCSG) did appear more than an hour after the meeting started.
The Wednesday small group did not address the implicit flaws in the present WHOIS data fields (which if corrected would clearly distinguish between a legal entity or person as the actual registrant), instead they appeared to reach 'rough' consensus on adding more WHOIS data fields (before Perrin appeared). So much for data minimization! Meeting transcript (pdf), Notes & Action Items, Adobe replay, MP3, chat transcript (pdf) excerpt:
Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "note that the registrars will be held accountable for how well informed the individual is. If they give away their rights because they were not well informed, it will be the registrars fault."
Ben Butler (SSAC): "Thank you Stephanie. That would seem to raise the importance of getting the educational resources item right."
Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "Caution is required here ....if civil society were to sue under the GDPR, in my view (remember, I am not even a lawyer let alone a litigator) the strategy would be to go for ICANN as data controller responsible for the policy, and the registrar as data controller for the client relationship data."
Oct 2 Meeting (agenda, documents, high level notes and action items), chat transcript (pdf) embed below; and Meeting Transcript (pdf);
- Adobe Connect replay, MP3, F2F Action Items and F2F High-Level Notes (pdf); EPDP Planning (pdf) updated Oct 1;
- Agenda item 3) Legal basis for purposes and related processing activities: Lawful Basis memo (pdf);
- Agenda item 4) Review data elements workbook for purpose C - Enable communication or notification to the Registered Name Holder and/or their delegated parties of technical and/or administrative issues with a Registered Name (see https://community.icann.org/x/5AC8BQ).
Highlights of the EPDP F2F Meeting Sep 24-26 in LA:
Best Quote of the entire F2F Meeting was from Stephanie Perrin [NCSG] on the first day:
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| Definition of "train wreck" -- a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a peculiar fascination for observers. |
"... about the only valid primary purpose for gathering data from the registrant is so that you can give the registrant the rights to a domain name that’s--that is the most legitimate purpose there is."Biggest controversy: ICANN CEO Goran Marby on Tuesday
ICANN CEO Goran Marby met with the EPDP working group Tuesday (transcript embedded below) the day after his controversial blog post:Marby's presence in the ePDP was profoundly divisive, exacerbating divisions between those who want ICANN to do anything to create a unified access model and those who think the multistakeholder process should be driving policy— IGP Alert (@IGPAlert) September 26, 2018
Clueless to the end, ICANN CEO Goran Marby’s final statement to the EPDP working group: "It was fun" (transcript, supra, p. 32). Marby's Tuesday EPDP session Adobe Connect replay and MP3 audio.
ICANN CEO Marby sends a profoundly mixed message: he says repeatedly the community makes policy and he doesn't want to preempt it. At the same time he invites governments to sanction ICANN as an authority. Doesn't that fundamentally pre-empt what the community does?— IGP Alert (@IGPAlert) September 26, 2018
Many members of the ePDP wanted to adjourn they were so depressed after Marby's appearance. As the mediators urged us to move beyond that, Board member @chrisdisspain pulls us back into rancor by defending Marby— IGP Alert (@IGPAlert) September 26, 2018
The key problem is that most ePDP members, especially contracted parties and NCSG, think @ICANN has taken sides and is engaged in a parallel process to create unified Whois access model— IGP Alert (@IGPAlert) September 26, 2018
Other highlights:
Day One--Welcome & Introductions:
Kurt Pritz, EPDP Chair: "I’m certainly aware of the concerns and even criticism of our progress to date, so I've taken, you know, every comment I’ve heard on board. And in hindsight we might [have] do[ne] some things differently ... while I wish we were further ahead, I don't feel so bad about it ... You know, personally, I don't think that the multistakeholder model can take [any] more of these top down temporary specifications before it falls in on itself ..."
Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Hi. I’m Milton. I spoke to Margie Milam of the Business Constituency who has disappeared but I didn't do it."
Alan Greenberg (ALAC): "I talked to Farzi [Badii] who the last time I heard her introduce herself, introduced herself as Farzaneh Badass. And she’s a ... concert violinist in the making."
David Plumb (facilitator): "Yes, not surprising."
Alan Greenberg: "Badass or concert violinist?"
Editor's note: there is no question some substantive work was done during the F2F, but whether it was enough to meet the EPDP's tight timeline is questionable. We may have a better idea after the EPDP meeting(s) this coming week, depending on how well the EPDP working group, and its Chair Kurt Pritz, function without the three facilitators from CBI.org who led most of the F2F meeting sessions.
"I mean, from some of the things I’ve seen in the chat it looks like the third party mediators were a positive thing, but it’s not clear to me whether or not any substantive progress was actually made at the face-to-face or are we going to end up in yet another RDS PDP type situation? The other thing as well is, I mean, the – whether or not this kind of outside the EPDP lobbying by certain groups – whether that’s having any impact on the general morale of people involved within the EPDP."--Michele Neylon (RrSG), GNSO Council Meeting, Thursday, 27 Sep 2018 transcript (pdf), p. 38.More info on the EPDP F2F meeting in last week's News Review.
Note also:
- Whois Reform Grinds forward--by Milton Mueller, InternetGovernance.org, Sep 28, 2018. [Editor's note: Professor Mueller, a NCSG member of the EPDP, provides a deep dive into the current status of the EPDP issues.]
- ICANN Webinar (one hour) data protection/privacy (GDPR) update now scheduled for Oct 8, 2018, 15:00 UTC (11am EDT) via Adobe Connect. Dial-in info, questions, etc., here.
- Verisign Requests One-Year Extension (pdf) of current implementation deadlines under ICANN's Thick WHOIS Policy.
- Tim Berners-Lee announces Solid (domain: solid.inrupt.com), an open source project to decentralize the web and give users control of their data, and Inrupt (inrupt.com), a startup to guide the project.
2) New gTLDs Next Round?
Editor's note: all submitted comments are here. Of particular note, are the comments submitted by:
- Public Interest Community (pdf) members: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org), Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Public Knowledge, Martin Silva Valent, Esq. (Professor at Universidad de Palermo), Kathryn A. Kleiman (Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University), Leah Chan Grinvald (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School), Eve J. Brown (Professor at Roger Williams University), A. Michael Froomkin (Professor, University of Miami School of Law), Bryan Bello (Center for Media and Social Impact, American University).
- Council of Europe (pdf)
- ICANN Board of Directors (pdf)
- ICANN Org (pdf)
and my submitted comment (pdf) embed below. I thank the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, for their affirming response which I received Friday.
See also New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP September 2018 Newsletter (pdf).
3) Other ICANN News
a. .AFRICA new gTLD litigation UPDATE:
Feb 6, 2019 at 10:00 am Trial.
b. Pre-ICANN63 Policy Open House webcast:
Thursday, 11 October 2018, 10:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC. The open house will run in English with simultaneous Spanish interpretation. The presentation materials will be translated into Spanish, and posted following the open house with the recordings of the sessions here. Register via this form by 8 Oct 2018. More info here.
c. Issues and Challenges Impacting Domain Name Registrants (pdf):
--ICANN.org blog 26 Sep 2018. See also icann.org/registrants.
d. Open for Public Comment at ICANN Closing in October (23:59 UTC on the respective date indicated below--subject to change by ICANN):
e. SSR2 Restart, Terms of Reference Update (pdf).
f. ICANN's new gTLD .BRAND extortion racket loses two more: .spiegel and .blanco.
4) Names, Domains & Trademarks
a. Malicious Domain Names often use a trusted TLS certificate and appear to be safe for online shoppers who unknowingly provide sensitive account information and payment data reports Venafi.com. Among the key findings from the research:
c. Intellectual property and e-commerce: Alibaba’s perspective | wipo.int.
5) ICYMI Internet Domain News
UN Sec-Gen High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation:
6) Most Read Posts this past week on DomainMondo.com:
-- John Poole, Editor • Domain Mondo
See also New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP September 2018 Newsletter (pdf).
3) Other ICANN News
Future Hearings:
Jan 25, 2019 at 08:30 am Final Status Conference;Feb 6, 2019 at 10:00 am Trial.
b. Pre-ICANN63 Policy Open House webcast:
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| ICANN63 is in Barcelona, Spain, Oct 20-25, 2018. |
c. Issues and Challenges Impacting Domain Name Registrants (pdf):
d. Open for Public Comment at ICANN Closing in October (23:59 UTC on the respective date indicated below--subject to change by ICANN):
- Next Steps On Reviews 5 Oct 2018
- Proposals for Devanagari, Gurmukhi, and Gujarati Scripts' Root Zone Label Generation Rules 8 Oct 2018
- Proposals for Kannada, Oriya and Telugu Scripts' Root ZoneLabel Generation Rules 8 Oct 2018
- Proposed gTLD-Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) Profile 13 Oct 2018
e. SSR2 Restart, Terms of Reference Update (pdf).
f. ICANN's new gTLD .BRAND extortion racket loses two more: .spiegel and .blanco.
4) Names, Domains & Trademarks
- The total number of certificates for look-alike domains is more than 200% greater than the number of authentic retail domains.
- The growth in look-alike domains appears to be connected to the availability of free TLS certificates; 84% of the look-alike domains studied use free certificates from LetsEncrypt.org.
c. Intellectual property and e-commerce: Alibaba’s perspective | wipo.int.
5) ICYMI Internet Domain News
US-China Internet Bifurcation:
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts the internet will bifurcate into Chinese-led and US-led versions within the next decade: "I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America."--CNBC.com.
Bad Internet Laws:
The spectre of bad Internet laws in Europe should be a warning shot for Canadians https://t.co/bogvr2dbcW— EFF (@EFF) September 20, 2018
UN Sec-Gen High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation:
More information: digitalcooperation.org and @UNSGdigicoop.1st mtg of High-level Panel on #DigitalCooperation underway during #UNGA with co-chairs @melindagates & #JackMa and 20 diverse experts ranging from economists to civil society activists, young entrepreneurs & govt Ministers talking about a digital future that works for all pic.twitter.com/B240uNeIIk— High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (@UNSGdigicoop) September 24, 2018
6) Most Read Posts this past week on DomainMondo.com:
2. Tech Review: Digital Outdoor Advertising Growth Due To GDPR? (video)
3. Tech Review: 1) First Major Global eSports League; 2) eSports in China
3. Tech Review: 1) First Major Global eSports League; 2) eSports in China
-- John Poole, Editor • Domain Mondo
