Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2019-01-27 with analysis and opinion: Features • 1) IGF2019 Open Consultations & MAG Meeting Jan 28-30, 2) ICANN news: EPDP Meetings Jan 29 & 31, EPDP Recap, TSG and more, 3) Names, Domains & Trademarks: Expired Domains, and more, 4) ICYMI: China Blocks Bing, Google Struggles in Russia, 5) Most Read.
1) IGF2019 Open Consultations & MAG Meeting Jan 28-30
In preparation for the fourteenth
Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (
IGF) which will be
hosted by the Government of Germany in Berlin from 25 to 29 Nov 2019, the
first face-to-face 2019 Open Consultations and
MAG meeting will take place on
28-30 January 2019 at the Palais des Nations in
Geneva, Switzerland. A
Call for Issues has been published and all submissions were due by Thursday 24 January 2019--among the proposed issues
submitted in the
Category: "Evolution of Internet Governance"--
#37 "A middle ground between the vested-interest capture of multi-stakeholderism and government capture of multi-lateralism is badly needed. How can IGF stimulate such innovation?" with the following comment:
Agenda of the
IGF 2019 First Open Consultations and MAG Meeting--
Register (open
thru Jan 30) for
online participation.
Geneva date and time:
Additional issues may also include:
2) ICANN News
a. EPDP Meetings are scheduled for
Tuesday, 29 Jan 2019, and
Thursday, 31 Jan 2019, at
14:00 UTC (9am EST) for 3 hours each. The
EPDP Final Report (Phase 1)
is due Feb 1, 2019, but
EPDP Chair Kurt Pritz indicated on Jan 24, 2019 (
transcript pp. 51-52), that the final report may actually be submitted sometime
after February 1:
"... the [ICANN EPDP] support team is figuring out sort of a drop dead date for putting a version – or the final report version in front of the GNSO Council ..."
UPDATE: Jan 29 chat transcript (pdf) and
Jan 31 chat transcript (pdf).
Observers may use
Adobe Connect, or audiocast via
browser /
app.
Links:
Draft Final Report info,
EPDP Initial Report (pdf) and public
comments to the Initial Report;
PCRT Public Comment Review Tool; GNSO Council
EPDP page and
updates; links to
EPDP meeting transcripts and recordings are on the GNSO calendar.
Other EPDP links: wiki;
mail list;
action items;
Temp Spec;
EPDP Charter (pdf); Data Elements
Workbooks (pdf),
packet (pdf) of small team agreements.
ICANN Controllership Memo (pdf).
b. EPDP recap for week ending Jan 26 [
Editor's note: the dysfunctional EPDP rolls on]:
Jan 22 EPDP meeting wiki page and Jan 24 EPDP meeting wiki page (with action items);
Legal committee Jan 23,
and Data Elements Jan 22 and
Jan 24.
Jan 22 chat (pdf):
Milton Mueller (NCSG): (08:16) Will [Attorney] Ruth [
Boardman] (Bird & Bird) be on these calls?
Kurt Pritz: (08:17) @Milton - generally
no but can be called in as required ... and we will refer questions that come out of each meeting to her.
Jan 22 transcript (pdf) p.35:
Diane Plaut (IPC): "... I think that it really –
a starting point that’s an
absolute necessity is to
get ICANN to define its role. We all have been presented with the
ICANN Legal memo [pdf] with regard to the roles (unintelligible) or position on
joint controllership relationship
or a
sole controllership ..." [link added]
Email to EPDP Mail List Jan 23, 2019:
"I am really mystified, having taken the time to examine the records and mailing list of the TSG-Access-RD which Benedict mentioned, that we were not briefed on the meetings, the group, and the questions they are settling, many of which depend on policy decisions. I am also mystified as to why this appointed group of technical experts has funding to their Washington meetings and to Kobe [ICANN64}, and our group does not have funding for Kobe. Further, it looks as if they need some legal advice. I recommend they consider adding Ruth [Boardman, Bird & Bird] as an independent outside counsel, and add a policy person to think up the questions to ask her."--
Stephanie Perrin, EPDP member & NCSG Chair (links and emphasis added).
Revised draft charter (pdf) of
ICANN's TSG-Access-RD (Technical Study Group on Access to Non-Public Registration Data).
GNSO Council Chat Transcript Jan 24, 2019 Rubens Kuhl (RySG): "TSG will be yet another dead body in the decades of failed WHOIS-related projects, like EWG."
25 January 2019 Letter from ICANN CEO Göran Marby to
Willem Debeuckelaere, President, Belgium DPA, re: ICANN Contractual Compliance Data Processing Activities and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). See
15 Jan. 2019 Letter from Willem Debeuckelaere to Göran Marby (pdf)
excerpt: "In your letter of 9 August 2018, you indicate that ICANN has only a single regional office on EU territory, namely in Brussels."
"The [ICANN Technical Study] group will base its work on the following
assumptions ... 3.
ICANN is the sole party that authorizes access to non-public registration data in the gTLD space."--TSG revised draft charter,
supra.
TSG mail list: "... As noted on Tuesday's call, I think it's important to remember that
ICANN org's understanding is that
whatever solution ICANN proposes for
third-party access to
redacted registration data is
unlikely to eliminate liability for the contracted parties.
ICANN org's goal is to explore ways to diminish that liability to the extent possible. To that end, the TSG is tasked with developing a technical solution that
ICANN org may test against the law to determine
if a unified access model is possible. The
memo on
independent controllership was drafted by ICANN org as part of the EPDP's discussion on processing activities. The EPDP has
not yet tackled third-party access to gTLD registration data. They anticipate discussing that during Phase II ..."--
Eleeza Agopian, ICANN Strategic Planning and Initiatives Sr. Manager. [link added]
Editor's note: it appears
ICANN org has a competing ongoing
top-down policy-making and implementation process (
TSG-Unified Access model) moving simultaneously in
parallel to the GNSO's EPDP process.
More info on Jan 22-24 EPDP meetings on last week's
News Review.
GDPR Related:
- More than 95,000 complaints have been filed with EU Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect May 25, 2018, the European Commission said Friday.
- Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, are among eight tech firms (pdf) named in a complaint filed in Austria by non-profit organization noyb (noyb.eu), based upon failure to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- Google to appeal €50 million GDPR fine imposed by France's Data Protection Authority (DPA) CNIL (cnil.fr), which "observed two types of breaches of the GDPR"--violation of the obligations of transparency and information and violation of the obligation to have a legal basis for ads personalization processing.
- Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) is "currently investigating Twitter’s compliance with its obligations under the GDPR to implement technical and organisational measures to ensure the safety and safeguarding of the personal data it processes. This investigation commenced in November 2018 following receipt of a number of breach notifications from the company since the introduction of the GDPR. The DPC has this week opened a new statutory inquiry into the latest data breach it received from Twitter on 8 January, 2019. This inquiry will examine a discreet issue relating to Twitter’s compliance with Article 33 of the GDPR"--dataprotection.ie.
- Businesses that invest in data privacy see benefits when they do experience a breach--a new Cisco study (pdf) of 3,200 security professionals in 18 countries found that preparing for the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) lessened the impact of data breaches.
c. ICANN New gTLDs .GCC, .PERSIANGULF, .MUSIC, .GAY, .HOTEL, .HALAL, .ISLAM, and
.WEB
ICANN
CEP and IRP Status Update – 11 January 2019 (pdf) excerpts:
One Active Independent Review Process (IRP) Proceeding: .WEB
- Date ICANN Received Notice of IRP: 14-Nov-2018
- Date IRP Commenced by ICDR: 26-Nov-2018
- Requestor: Afilias Domains No. 3 Limited
- Status: Panel Selection: IRP commenced on 26 November 2018; one panelist has been appointed; awaiting appointment of remaining two panelists.
- Materials: Written submissions, Declaration(s), and Scheduling Order(s) are here.
- Hearing(s): No hearings are currently scheduled.
3) Names, Domains & Trademarks
a. Expired domains do not help for rankings: "
Google understands when domains change ownership so it
won't necessarily rank for the queries it used to rank pre change of ownership. So if the sole purpose of buying a domain is to get search traffic from the old domain, I would suggest against doing so since there's no benefit."--
Aaseesh from the Google Webmaster Trends Analysts team.
b. EFF Client Responds to Ludicrous “Collusion” Trademark Threat--
eff.org.
c. Yes,
domain names are covered by the
USMCA (successor to NAFTA)--
Lexology.com.
4) ICYMI Internet Domain News
China blocks Microsoft's search engine Bing (domain: cn.bing.com):
"The situation appears to be a DNS (domain name system) corruption, one method for China to block websites through its intricate censoring system called the Great Firewall. When a user enters a domain name associated with a banned IP address, the Firewall will corrupt the connection to stop the page from loading."--techcrunch.com.
UPDATE: according to a report in
reuters.com, the Bing outage in China was due to a technical error, not censors' block.
As of December, 2019,
Bing only had a
2% share of China’s search market compared with 70% share for
Baidu. The Chinese version of Bing had been the only major foreign search engine accessible from within China, and Microsoft had censored its search results in accordance with
Chinese government policy.
Google is blocked in China, but nevertheless still has about
90% global market share for internet search. Google lags behind in Russia, where homegrown competitor
Yandex has 55% of the market due to superior Russian language search capabilities and willingness to comply with Russia's restrictive laws. See
Why Is Google Struggling In Russia? Yandex | YouTube.com.
5) Most Read this past week on
DomainMondo.com:
-- John Poole, Editor • Domain Mondo
