Like it or not, intellectual property protections are a part of life if you plan to start a new TLD. Designing a clear, simple, and appropriately-priced Sunrise period can make the difference between smooth sailing and disaster. A smooth Sunrise will make your Landrush launch that much simpler; mismanage it, and you’ll have a lot of bad publicity and suspicion right at the start of your new venture.

The Sunrise Period is a special period prior to the general launch of a registry where trademark owners can claim names that are the same or similar to their trademarks. Typically, only trademarks that have been around for a while (usually a year to eighteen months) qualify, in order to prevent people from rushing out to register them for the sole purpose of getting a domain name during Sunrise.

Trademark owners nurse a suspicion that registries are started in order to get them to pay (again!) for names they own anyway. Most people who have started a registry will tell you that the revenues don’t even begin to cover the costs, although they can bring in revenue right at the beginning of your operations, when it’s needed most. Not only do you have to design systems to handle Sunrise names, you have to make sure to communicate your policies to the intellectual property community.

Although owners of large numbers of trademarks are usually wealthy companies, many are very price-sensitive, because they often feel that new gTLDs are a legal form of extortion. In other words, it’s not the money, it’s the principle. Therefore, if you can justify your pricing as a function of your costs, you will go a long way toward alleviating any hostility you may encounter. Remember also that your price is going to determine volume: many trademark holders will not register all their brand names, just the important ones. If you are able to convince them that your price is fair, they may go deeper into their list.

Be prepared to answer the “what if” questions that lawyers love. “What if” our trademark is owned by a holding company we set up in the Bahamas? “What if” our trademark is a design mark, and not a word mark? “What if” we have a common law trademark instead of a registered trademark? And so on, and so forth. There’s no way that you’re going to answer all these questions in advance, so you need to reach out to the intellectual property community and be prepared to set up seminars, conference calls, and other ways of keeping your lines of communication open.

Don’t forget that corporate registrants are likely to be substantial participants in your Landrush period as well. Johnson & Johnson, for example, may own the trademark “Pampers,” but they might also want to register “diapers,” “nappies,” and other generic words that go along with their brand, but which are not eligible for the Sunrise period. So it’s a good idea to keep these customers happy.

Some costs to keep in mind: you will want to have someone, probably an intellectual property law firm with expertise in these matters, validate the Sunrise applications to make sure that the applicants have followed the rules. Their trademarks should be valid, the jurisdiction in which they got them should conform to your rules, and so on. You may also want to hire someone to help you identify the legal issues as you put together your Sunrise plan. Depending on your TLD, you might well be looking at over $100K in costs. If you write to me, I will be glad to put you in touch with some good people I know.

Finally, doing the Sunrise correctly can save you a lot of money in legal fees later. Both .INFO and .BIZ had to substantially rework their Sunrise periods after the fact, at tremendous cost. .INFO didn’t screen trademarks, and (surprise!) got lots of bogus registrations, which they had to later invalidate. .BIZ was found by the courts to have conducted an illegal lottery, and they too had to re-do their Sunrise allocations.

The Intellectual Property Constituency at ICANN has put together a very useful booklet that describes the Sunrise periods (they call them “pre-launch Rights Protection Mechanisms”) of previous TLDs in some detail. You can download a copy of “The Perfect Sunrise” (PDF). If you are designing a Sunrise period, you would be very well served to study this in some detail.

Dealing with trademarks is a vexing problem throughout the life of a top-level domain registry. Despite ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), an arbitration process that handles domain name intellectual property squabbles, trademark owners intermittently attempt to insist that registries and registrars have a duty to proactively police the namespace for trademark violations. Putting together a Sunrise period that acknowledges the rights of trademark owners and provides them with a simple application process at a reasonable cost will set the tone for your future dealings with them. Whether or not you agree with trademark protections, they are a fact of life for a registry, and you can save yourself a lot of trouble down the road by doing your Sunrise period right.

Tags: new gTLD, new TLD, Sunrise, Sunrise period, IPC, ICANN IPC, intellectual property constituency, UDRP, uniform dispute resolution policy, pre-launch Rights Protection Mechanisms, .INFO, .BIZ

This promises to be very entertaining.

On the one side, Time Warner and Verizon (historically, one of the most rabid defenders of the divine right of trademarks) are moving fast to emulate domainers with an inexhaustible supply of useless sitefinder-like parked pages. If they’re your ISP, any time you misspell a URL, up come the highly-annoying ads.

On the other side, some domainers are displaying a new-found appreciation of intellectual property. A guest-post screed by “Seb” (no last name, some habits die hard) on the The Domains, is threatening a class-action suit against ICANN if they allow new top-level domains, on the grounds that it might hurt the investments made by domainers in .com names.

I quote:

Now ICANN wants to dilute the value of our intellectual property assets by allowing anyone to create a whole registry squatting on our domain names…. We’re not interested. I’ll sue ICANN for every new registry proposal that moves the left of any of our domains to the right of the dot (mydomain.com / .mydomain) on the ground of dilution of our intellectual property assets. I encourage everyone to do so.

Most trademark owners and domainers are smart enough to know that there are advantages to new gTLDs, which may (if there enough of them) even remove some of the problems created by scarce Internet real estate. But there are some who, having made their fortunes based on artificial and fragile laws, regulations, and market conditions, can be relied upon to go right over the edge.

I had posted earlier that there was no place for domainers in ICANN’s broken constituency structure, but now I’m thinking there’s room in the Intellectual Property Constituency. Or, since one distinguishing feature of domainer meetings is an outrageous entry fee, they could join the other three members of the Business Constituency.

In either case, I want a ringside seat. And some popcorn.

Tags: The Domains, Seb, Intellectual Property Constituency, Business Constituency, new TLDs, new gTLDs, ICANN, trademarks, Verizon, Time Warner

AFNIC, the French registration authority, has seven “colonial” ccTLDs that they keep dark and non-functional (see the full list below, extracted from an AFNIC document). At least four of these seven functioned at one point before being shut down under pressure from France. Their absence from the active Internet effectively denies their inhabitants any separate identity.

Then, in September 2007, the ISO-3166-1 list, from which the ccTLD codes are drawn, was shuffled around, adding two new potential French ccTLDs, .BL (St. Bartholomew) and .MF (St. Martin - French side) [link to PDF]. These two are for the moment also dark, bringing the dark total to nine. (Reunion, the tenth, does have registration activity.)

There are some very good people at AFNIC, but I’m not a fan of French ccTLD policies, as I made clear as a panelist at the recent ICANN session on new TLDs, as well as in previous posts.

During the discussion, I made the point that new gTLDs are an experiment, and that in order for an experiment to be valid, there must be room for failure. Bertrand de la Chapelle, the GAC representative from France, in the audience, stood up and said:

And you really believe it is the best service we can make to the security and stability of the Internet to allow the framework to have some that fail, some that don’t fail? I don’t believe so.

I have seen every form of outrage at ICANN, especially from the GAC, so I should not have been surprised. But I admit, this made my blood boil.

The French colonial ccTLDs are failures, by definition. They don’t work at all. Four of them (GF, .MQ, .GP, and .PM) were wrested from local operators and then turned off. In some form or another, they are all officially part of France “outre-mer” (overseas France).

The status of the native people of French overseas territories is unclear, but their rights are clearly inferior to those of French citizens on the mainland. For example, France does its nuclear testing there, and reserves the right to continue atmospheric nuclear tests. And while the European French can travel there, the residents may not be allowed to travel freely: “…les Territoires d’Outre Mer ne font pas partie du Territoire européen de la République française. Aussi le Traité de Rôme et le Traité de Maastricht ainsi que le principe de libre circulation qui en découle ne sont pas applicables.” So while a claim that these territories are “France” may be true from the point of view of military control, the population lack just a few of the rights that the mainland French enjoy. Just a few itty-bitty little rights, like self-determination.

Skepticism, therefore, may not be unwarranted in response to claims that these ccTLDs are administered for the benefit of the local Internet community, as per RFC 1591, the founding document concerning the responsibilities of TLD operators, or even according to IPC 1, ICANN’s early attempt to supplant RFC 1591.

But good news! In an apparent about-face, AFNIC has started an consultative session, which is considering under which conditions (if any) the ccTLDs of these territories may be started up. I can only speculate on their intentions. The consultation is “open,” meaning that anyone can give their opinion. The deadline for comments, unfortunately, was June 24, and I found out only the day before the deadline, in the middle of the ICANN session, that it existed.

Voilà the goal of the consultation:

L’objectif de cette consultation est de recueillir l’avis de l’ensemble des acteurs de la communauté Internet afin de contribuer à définir les modalités de gestion des domaines internet concernés par l’article L.45 du code des postes et des télécommunications (CPCE) et par son décret d’application 2007-162 :
« .fr » France ;
« .gf » Guyane Française ; « .gp » Guadeloupe ; « .mq » Martinique, « .re » Réunion
« .pm » Saint Pierre et Miquelon ; « .wf » Wallis et Futuna ; « .yt » Mayotte ;
« .tf » Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises ;
ainsi que les futurs domaines « .bl » Saint Barthelemy et « .mf » Saint Martin.

[Quick translation - The goal of this consultation is to collect the advice of Internet participants in order to contribute to defining the manner of managing Internet domains etc. etc. ]

I’ve spent more time than my high-two-figure salary can justify poking around the AFNIC and other related sites, but I never before came across this. Why not? Here’s the URL in full:

http://www.telecom.gouv.fr/rubriques-menu/organisation-du-secteur/
textes-reglementaires/consultations-appels-candidatures/
consultations-ouvertes/modalites-gestion-du-domaine-
internet–dot-fr-extensions-outre-mer-1652.html

Clearly the French telecoms department does not like type-in traffic. Significantly, it’s not on the AFNIC site, nor can I find a link there.

So it appears that for the first time the French authorities are considering opening these seven-plus-two ccTLDs. (It would not be accurate to say that the TLDs had not been considered before at all, since at least four were shut down, with no consultation whatever.) Even a well-hidden consultative process, though very late and of uncertain consequence, is to be applauded. Their action may spur the U.S. (.UM) and Norwegian (.BV, .SJ) authorities to follow suit and allow their captive ccTLDs to open up as well.

I can’t help but wonder, however, about the September 2007 flurry of activity on the part of the ISO, which concerned French territories exclusively. Apart from the two new ccTLDs, various French territories were shuffled from one ISO code to another. The charitable view is that France wants to contribute more money to ICANN, and therefore has contrived to add two new TLDs, that they might thereby receive two additional invoices, thus adding to their contributions while remaining nearly anonymous, and that in so doing they might escape any insinuation that their actions were less than purely charitable. That’s possible…. Or, a cynic might say that they just want two more votes on the CCNSO. Or it may have nothing at all to do with domain names.

Whatever the reason, my congratulations to the French authorities for taking some baby steps, at last.

But in the future I hope to be spared speeches about the dangers of allowing TLDs to fail.

Note: the flags above are, in order, the unofficial flags of Martinique, St. Pierre and Miquelon, French Polynesia, Mayotte, and Guadeloupe. Officially, there is only one flag, the tricolor of France.

Tags: ICANN, AFNIC, Bernard de la Chapelle, new gTLDs, new TLDs, GAC, Government Advisory Committee, French Polynesia, French Guyana, Mayotte, St. Martin, St. Pierre and Miquelon, St. Bartholomew, French Southern Territories, Wallis and Futuna, Bouvet Island, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, U.S. Minor Outlying Islands, .PF, .GF, .YT, .MF, .PM, .BL, .TF, .WF, .BV, .SJ, .UM, ISO-3166, RFC 1591, ICANN ICP1

Yesterday, hundreds of sweaty ICANN attendees put on their best clothes and braved the crush of the rush hour metro on a very hot day to crush together for the ICANN gala at the overwrought Hotel de Ville (city hall) in Paris.

Most of them missed an interesting announcement.

I arrived an hour late, but even so food and drink were not yet served (not even water), and everyone was in desperate need of provisioning. The dull roar of heat-induced complaining drowned out the dignitaries making speeches at the far end of the hall.

Anyone who has been to an ICANN meeting knows that it’s free to attend, and all the events are free as well. If you’re smart, you can get free food and booze most evenings, as well as nibbles during the coffee breaks (which makes up for the hotel bar prices: 12 Euros for two small bottles of Perrier, for example). ICANN is right to always profusely thank the hosts for footing the bill, and the Paris meeting, sponsored by AFNIC (the French registration authority) and the Mairie de Paris (city of Paris), among others, did a very good job for the most part.

So it seems the height of ingratitude to jabber while various luminaries, barely audible, heaped fulsome praise on one another. But jabber they did, and most probably missed the announcement that the mayor’s office was supporting the launch of .PARIS, headed by Sebastian Bachollet of ISOC France, which will have technical assistance from AFNIC. (AFNIC’s position on TLDs under its sway is baffling, but more on that in a later article.)

The inhabitants of Paris consider themselves a breed apart from the other denizens of France, and in this Parisians exactly resemble New Yorkers, Berliners, Londoners, and other citizens of their country’s most prominent city. And, to my mind, that’s the key to success for a geographically-based TLD — a feeling for the place (or language, or cultural identity) that makes people want to proudly display their affinity, and which will result in domain names that are actually used on the web, and not just filled up with annoying parking pages.

Congratulations .PARIS. We will see many more…

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This post could be subtitled: “The Wisdom of Elites.” I polled some people I know in the domain field (plus Andrew Goodman, who wondered what the hell I was going on about). I asked them a simple question:

“For the record, how many new TLD applications do you think there’ll be?”

Only two people shot back the very funny “42.”

Most of these people know the domain name world very well, but from different perspectives. Journalists, registrars, intellectual property attorneys, domainers, registry operators, TLD aspirants, entrepreneurs, domain aftermarket auctioneers, civil society activists. And only one woman — a reflection of the state of the domain industry, and that the clever ones avoid me…

Most answers coagulate around 100 - 150, but they are counterbalanced by very pessimistic estimates on the one hand, and mega-prophecies on the only. Many refused to name a number. The “crystal ball is cloudy,” as David Maher says.

The comments are great; they are at least as valuable as the estimateswild-ass guesses about the number of applications. Did Bill Mushkin really say that? (Yes.)

We can all expect to remain baffled about what the price will be for a while, since ICANN has said that price will depend on the number of applications. But, as my refused-to-be-named source says, the number of applications will correlate strongly to price. And so the push-me-pull-you chases its own head.

Here then are the results, in no particular order:

Thanks to everyone who agreed to be martyred for this post. Want to throw your hat in the ring? Comment away…

ICANN constituencies were always a bad idea. It’s time to get rid of them.

Constituencies flout the fine pronouncements by ICANN about transparency and representation, they are highly inefficient, and they serve to ensure that consensus is rarely achieved. The net effect is to concentrate power in the ICANN Board.

Bottom-up decision-making? Not even close. This is what constituencies do:

• Discourage participation — many ICANN constituencies have fees and membership criteria. If you don’t fit the mould, where do you go?
• Flout democratic principles of representation — you know the old slogan: “One constituency, one vote!” Er, right…
• Protect and promote special interests — by definition. That’s what functional constituencies are: special interests.
• Limit participation by new groups. For instance, it’s glaringly obvious that domainers are an important part of the domain industry, and yet they are rarely seen at ICANN. Instead, they are having their own meetings, bypassing ICANN and reducing its appeal.
• Dilute the effect of unanimity — one small undemocratic constituency can cast doubt on consensus achieved by all other parties.
• Promote factionalism — the primary disease of this system. The battle lines are drawn even before an issue is discussed. Fluid coalitions based on a particular issue are difficult because of entrenched longer-term interests. Distrust and dislike are institutionalized.
• Bring decision-making to a near standstill — in a community that values consensus, constituencies are an invitation to be intransigent in hopes of a better deal.
• Prone to capture — when ICANN matters only occasionally (e.g., for the business constituency), a few full-time people can effectively hijack a constituency.
• Go out of date — when was the last time you heard the words “ISP” and “ICANN” in the same sentence? A good argument could be made that domainers are a far more important interest group than ISPs. Why don’t they have a constituency?

The GNSO — the “open to anyone” body of ICANN — is divided into six constituencies (formerly seven). They are based on the power centers at the time of the formation of the GNSO (called the DNSO at that time) in Singapore in February 1999. I was co-chair of that meeting and argued against the formation of constituencies at that time, noting the gridlock of Hong Kong politics, which was (and remains) constituency-based.

In case anyone thinks I’m making an original critique, I’m not. Functional consitituencies (as opposed to regional constituencies, a feature of most democracies) are well-known as a Bad Idea.

Harvey Feldman, career U.S. Foreign Service expert in East Asia and former U.S. Ambassador to Papua-New Guinea, described Hong Kong constituency politics this way:

Only half of the Legislative Council’s members are elected from [regional] constituencies. The other half are chosen by “functional groups” [the equivalent of ICANN’s ‘functional constituencies’] in a method pioneered by Mussolini back in the 1920s and applied to Hong Kong in its Crown Colony days as an effective means of divide and rule. The functional constituency members assure the SAR government (and China) of their ability to control the Council. [emphasis mine]

Similarly, a recent scholarly book, Functional Constituencies: A Unique Feature of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, has revealing jacket copy:

provides… a full list of functional constituencies and the size and make-up of their electorates including how certain major companies may control large numbers of votes…. Then the impacts of the functional constituency members on social policy-making and on economic policy are examined, and deleterious effects on economic efficiency of its entrenchment of vested interests argued [emphasis mine].

Reasonable people can debate whether this what was intended when we set up this structure within ICANN. I was there, so I can say with some certainty that the less-politically-savvy groups in the audience were attracted to the idea of constituencies because they seemed at the time a fair way to distribute power. Others, less idealistic and naive, probably understood the long-term consequences and were pleased with what they saw.

Many have noted that ICANN’s constituencies give a lot of power to businesses, and exclude civil society interests. Just look at the list:

• Business (= big business)
• Intellectual Property (= big business)
• Internet Service Providers (= business)
• Registries (ICANN-specific business)
• Registrars (ICANN-specific business)
• Non-Commercial (anything else)

The Business and Intellectual Property constituencies serve the same masters, though their inflections are different. The ISP constituency has no more relevance to ICANN policy than, say, DNS providers, but as fossils will, they continue to make an imprint. Registries and registrars have the most excuse for existing, as they are a creation of ICANN itself, and need a forum. Then there is the lone “catch-all” non-commercial constituency, which is known for its collection of kooks, endless and pointless debates about procedure, and the inability to agree on much at all. In the time-honored tradition of dealing with trouble-makers, ICANN has provided this supposed “progressive” constituency with a forum to eviscerate itself, which it effectively has done.

Getting rid of ICANN’s constituencies would break down the special-interest silos that prevent consensus, and would strengthen the voice of the GNSO, which is the only place within ICANN where there is even a promise of participation and representation for all the people ICANN spends so much money doing outreach to. As it is, the ICANN constituencies are anti-democratic, anti-Internet, and anti-quated.

Tags: ICANN, ICANN constituencies, intellectual property constituency, business constituency, ISP constituency, non-commercial constituency, registrar constituency, registry constituency, domainers, functional constituency, Hong Kong constituencies, Harvey Feldman, GNSO, DNSO, ICANN meeting Singapore

So you’ve decided to start a new top-level domain!

Congratulations!

Have investors? Are they asking how long it’s going to be before they see a return?

Careful now….

Having spoken with ICANN staff and others who keep an eye on these things, here’s my best (current) guess for the timeline for new TLDs.

• 2008 late Q3 - draft RFP published
• 2009 early Q1 - final RFP published (”at least 3 months after draft RFP”)
• 2009 mid Q2 - applications accepted (”at least 4 months after final RFP”)
• 2009 mid Q3 - application period closed, admin period of 3 weeks to check apps for minor errors, give applicants a chance to correct
• 2009 late Q3 - applications posted, 2-month objection period begins
• 2009 mid Q4 - assuming no objections, contract negotiation begins
• 2010 mid Q1 - earliest new TLDs are added to root
• 2010 sometime - your TLD gets added to the root

Your mileage may (and probably will) vary. Here are some factors that could extend the timeline. I can’t think of any that would shorten it.

• To what extent will the ICANN board will involve itself in this process? There are various chokepoints into which they can insert themselves, for instance reviewing objections.
• To what extent are the ICANN staff trying to solve every little edge case in the application process, instead of sending them off for later adjudication? For instance, what does it mean to have governmental approval for .TAIWAN? The vaunted GAC Principles are even more useless than usual in this regard. Will ICANN staff insist on providing for these oddities up-front in the RFP, forcing everyone to jump through meaningless hoops, or will they leave edge cases for specialized consideration and come up with a fits-most-cases RFP?
• Don’t imagine that ICANN signing the contract and putting your TLD in the root will mean revenue the next day, or week, or month. Setting up a Sunrise Period takes work and money, and most prudent players will wait for contract signature before committing resources.

These are just some delaying factors. I invite readers to add others — I’m sure there are many more.

The other larger and (for the Internet) more interesting question is: How does this process evolve into a continuing roll-out? Or are we stuck with introducing new TLDs on a once-every-three-years schedule, with new rules and constraints each time.

Tags: ICANN, new TLDs, new top-level domains, ICANN application, ICANN Paris, ICANN RFP, ICANN timeline, ICANN new TLDs, ICANN new gTLDs

As expected, VeriSign raised the price of domain names, effective in October. New prices wholesale prices (to the registrar) for .com domain names are going from $6.42 to $6.86, while .net will increase from $3.85 to $4.23. This news came a few days ago in a letter to registrars. (Hint to consumers: renew your domains now.)

VeriSign’s contract with ICANN lets them raise prices by 7% a year, and if the sun rises in the East, then VeriSign will raise prices to the maximum extent allowed. You’d think that as the number of domain names increases, prices would go down, right? Isn’t this the trend everywhere else in technology? You know, economies of scale and all that…

For instance, Moore’s law states that the number of transistors you can pack onto an integrated circuit will double every two years. There are lots of corollaries in other fields, where innovation and scale push either increased capabilities, or dropping prices. Here’s a short list where Moore’s Law is mimicked in other areas:

• Cost per transistor
• Computing performance per unit cost
• Hard disk storage per unit of information
• RAM storage capacity
• Data per optical fiber
• Pixels per dollar

So, basically, many if not most of VeriSign’s registry costs have been falling at an exponential rate. Hard disk storage, computing performance, bandwidth, RAM storage — all central to registry operations. And yet the cost is going up. How is this justified?

At an ICANN session on deleted domain names in Cape Town in 2004, VeriSign complained about how much money they had to spend to handle all the non-registration activity (drop-catch, domain tasting, etc.). The registrars, almost as a chorus, volunteered to take over the registry and absorb all the costs. The registrars were well aware that the .com contract between ICANN and VeriSign was a virtual guarantee of what has been conservatively estimated at $3.4 billion in revenues for VeriSign over 8 years. Even supposing that this activity was the burden that VeriSign claims, ICANN’s better response would have been to get rid of the long-overdue recently-canceled [wait 5 seconds for annoying ad to disappear] much-abused 5-day grace period, which is responsible for much of the registry traffic.

VeriSign’s other justification for turning its plummeting costs into a price-hike is security. There is absolutely no doubt that the .com registry is pummeled by attacks from various malefactors, and that these attacks are not cheap to repel. It’s also true that VeriSign is one of the most reviled companies on the Internet; it shares the moniker “Evil Empire” only with Microsoft, and I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that their security costs would go down if they didn’t do things to make people hate them. But why should they? The bitterness they engender only serves as justification for price hikes.

The .com contract with VeriSign, which allows for this price-hike, was not ICANN’s finest hour. If ICANN has any reason to exist, it is to prevent this kind of absurdity. ICANN’s original remit, after all, was to do two things: bring down the price of domains, and to create new top-level domains. On both fronts, performance has been less than stellar.

ICANN traded the community interest for some guaranteed money from VeriSign. It was a very simple trade in many ways, which allowed ICANN to bulk up to an annual $50 million budget. This is cleverly sliced up to appear to be diversified, but is upon closer examination really a lot of staff costs hidden under such categories as “Excellence in Policy Development” ($2.97M); “Excellence in Operations” ($15M) and so on.

Overall, ICANN now spends 37% of its $50M on personnel (=staff); 19% on “professional services” (=outsourced staff); 13% on “administration and contingency” (=staff); 9% on ICANN meetings (mostly staff travel and lodging costs); and 7% on travel and other meetings (more staff travel costs). Of the paltry $1.59M spent on capital projects, $650K went to the L Root Server, $54K went to IANA for DNSSEC, while the much of the rest is for staff-related costs such as a new telephone system and new office furniture. This from an organization which is supposed to assure the smooth technical functioning of the Internet.

The charitable view of this Constantinian bargain is that because ICANN is now simply too big to abolish, Internet users everywhere should rejoice that VeriSign and other big companies and governments will never have unfettered sway. But the corrosive effects of the deal with VeriSign are still eating through the organization: in addition to the redistribution of wealth from Internet users to VeriSign, the .com contract once and for all got rid of the now-dated notion that ICANN consisted of its membership, and not its leaders and the ICANN staff. Today, I am not aware of a single person who is not being paid by ICANN who says “we” instead of “they” when referring to ICANN.

Still, now that we are done with the bibulous reign of Vint Cerf, we may cautiously hope for some improvement. For a possible preview, here is an lengthy interview with Peter Dengate-Thrush, the new Chairman.

I wish him luck. But unless things change, we are now living not with Moore’s law, which governs technology, but with many of Parkinson’s Laws, which govern unwieldy bureaucracies. C. Northcote Parkinson, who studied the British Army and Civil Service, noted that the number of employees in a bureaucracy rises 5-7% annually “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”

Tags: ICANN, VeriSign, Peter Dengate-Thrush, C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law, Moore’s Law, ICANN Budget, Sitefinder, ICANN-VeriSign contract, .com contract, domain name price, price of domain names

After DotAsia announced the results of its collision auction for the recent Sunrise Period, I was wondering in my last post why some valuable trademarked names had been auctioned for a pittance, and an anonymous commenter supplied the reason: the contestants are making the deals between themselves, and paying the registry nothing. That makes sense for them, but not for DotAsia.

Without saying that they had been victimized in the past, we have found DotAsia’s Advisory on Auction Tampering (PDF), a one-page guide to how you may lose your domain name if they catch you. That might have worked with the companies in the Sunrise Period, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a lot of tampering going on for the LandRush auctions.

Keep your eye out for crazy low reported auction results in .ASIA. It will be hard to spot unless the prices are way under expected value.

Tags: DotAsia, .asia, domain auctions, Sunrise, LandRush, auction tampering

Registries and registrars have been touting auctions as the fairest way to distribute names where there are multiple parties and no clear rights that favor one party over another. The fact that they have a fair amount of self-interest in promoting this solution doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one. Auctions may be the only way to distribute competitive names without hideous amounts of cost and time.

Dot Asia has auctions for Sunrise and Landrush names; the Dot Asia Sunrise auctions are going on right now. These have been referred to as “collision auctions”; they occur when two parties have the same (or similar) trademark for a name, and they both want it. When there are two applications for the same name, Dot Asia immediately sets it aside for an auction between the contenders. So far, this has occurred with about 200 names, with an average price (so far) of US$1515 each. The winner to date is ace.asia, which sold for US$20,501.

What’s baffling here are some of the very low auctions numbers. You’d think that if there was more than one party who wanted century21.asia, for instance, it would sell for more than US$20. I’m guessing that one of the parties didn’t show up for the auction.

The Landrush collision auctions should be much more interesting, with more names and more contenders.