The Voice of the eCommerce Industry

Pausing for Breath on a Didgeridoo

The didgeridoo performance that kicked off this week's ICANN meeting in Sydney prompted Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush to marvel at how the player produced a continuous sound without pausing for breath. The didgeridoo could become the official instrument at ICANN, which pushes ever forward with its plans, often without pausing to respond to the legitimate concerns of stakeholders.  

ICANN has a lot on its plate this week -- the upcoming expiration of its formative agreement with the U.S. Government, the introduction of hundreds of new top-level domains (TLDs), internationalized TLDs, and internal restructuring, just to name a few. 

What's concerning is that with such a loaded agenda, ICANN seems to be succumbing to an artificial sense of urgency, trying to mow through complex, challenging policy changes without taking the time needed to get the policy right.

One example of this trend was Monday’s discussion of vertical integration among registries and registrars. It's a complicated issue, and one that could have serious ramifications for all Internet users, as I tried to point out in my comments:

Allowing registries (wholesalers) to be owned by registrars (retailers) and vice versa may have some beneficial effects for the market, but also may have severe unintended consequences for Internet users in the business community and elsewhere.

The economists brought in by ICANN talked about market power problems with exclusive or preferential vertical contracts.  But registrants are also impacted by old fashioned spite and rivalry, if it compromises market performance.  For instance, some registrars choose not to sell some TLD domains because they don’t want to enrich a competing registrar who’s running the TLD registry.

This isn't just hypothetical concern -- it's happening today with the dot me TLD. .me is a GoDaddy project, so some rival registrars don’t even show .me as an available TLD.  If I’m a registrant in .me, or trying to build a social network around .me domains, I lose when inter-registrar rivalries suppress registrations (and traffic) in the TLD.  

The complexity and lack of consensus on the issue was illustrated by the free-flowing (and long-running) debate that followed the discussion, but the buzz in the hallways is that ICANN is in a hurry to make a final determination on this issue to clear the way for the introduction of new top-level domains.

Unfortunately, that buzz is a familiar tune, since ICANN often deems that meeting its own deadlines is more important than achieving real consensus on serious issues.

As much as we enjoy the continuous sound of the instrument, it may be time for the organization to stop and take a breath.

--Steve DelBianco

Artificial Deadlines, Real Consequences

Executives of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have been keeping the airlines in business this year, flying to the far corners of the globe to enlist support for ending a key relationship with the U.S. Government this September. It seems the question of ICANN's readiness has taken a backseat to the imperative of meeting this hard-and-fast deadline.

But for the business community and everyone else who relies on a stable, secure Internet addressing system, the key concern is whether the ICANN "transition" will preserve the safety and security of the system, not whether it will occur by an arbitrary date. I said as much in my comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on its Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with ICANN.

One thing is clear: most of the people involved in the ICANN process support the idea of ICANN transitioning into a fully private-sector-led entity with a narrow scope and robust accountability mechanisms.  (see all comments)

But attempting that transition before ICANN is fully equipped to stand on its own would be dangerously and unnecessarily destabilizing. Yet that's exactly what ICANN is trying to do, all in order to shed the JPA by September 2009.

What makes this particularly troubling is that ICANN knows what it needs to do in order to achieve the stability and accountability the community has been demanding.   Terms may differ, but a broad cross-section of ICANN participants have called for:

• Accountability - specifically a mechanism that would make ICANN accountable to some entity other than itself.
• Protection against capture - by foreign governments, cartels or bureaucracies seeking to impose greater governmental control.

The irony of ICANN's fervent push to end the JPA is that community support for the JPA stems mainly from the belief that it is the only thing that currently addresses those organizational needs. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, the JPA has clearly prevented aggressive governments and government bureaucracies from mounting a full-scale assault against ICANN. The JPA has also introduced a measure of accountability into the process, by requiring ICANN to justify its decisions to the U.S. Government.

The JPA is hardly perfect, but until we come up with something better, it's our best bet to preserve private sector leadership of ICANN. 

--Steve DelBianco

If the ICANN JPA Doesn't Matter, Why Are So Many People Trying to Kill It?

ICANN's President Paul Twomey was up before Congress today, making his case for why the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the US Commerce Department and ICANN should be allowed to expire in September. Among his reasons: the JPA doesn't matter and if it goes away, "nothing will change" in the relationship between the U.S. Government and ICANN.

If that's really true, Mr. Twomey should probably tell the governments of Russia and Brazil, the European Union, the International Telecommunications Union and the slew of other foreign and intergovernmental entities that have mounted a concerted campaign to terminate the agreement.

The JPA is the U.S. Government's main tool for communicating concerns and guidance to ICANN (which was created by US government to transition management of the Internet to the private sector) Twomey is correct when he says that the agreement is short (just two pages) and contains little in the way of binding language, but the JPA also sets goals for ICANN to work toward, and provides ways to review and assess that progress.

For those that seek to impose greater governmental control over ICANN, the JPA is seen as a major obstacle. They've devoted significant resources to making sure it goes away in September of this year.

The United Nations wants the JPA gone so it can exert more muscle over Internet governance.  And the European Commission just proposed a new “G-12 for the Internet” to replace US government oversight when the JPA expires.  

Seems to me that the JPA is a kind of Star Trek shield that protects ICANN from capture by governments.  Captain Kirk wouldn’t shut down his shields just when the enemy draws near, and neither should ICANN.

Mr. Twomey can't have it both ways. If the JPA doesn't actually matter, neither he nor the global Internet community should care whether it is extended. And if it does matter, he needs to come clean with Congress and the Internet community about risks we face when the JPA goes away. 

Right Question, Wrong Answer

How to build real accountability into the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the $60,000 question in Internet governance circles these days. While we don’t yet have the right answer, we just heard one answer that can be ruled out as a non-starter.

The Technology Policy Institute (TPI) this week published a report calling for ICANN to be accountable just to the domain name industry players with which it holds contracts -- namely registrars and registries. TPI’s reasoning is that registries and registrars are ICANN's primary "users," and provide most of its funding.

The reality, of course, is that Internet registrants -- the millions of businesses, people and organizations who own Internet domains -- are the primary supporters of ICANN. Registrars and registries may collect the fees, but Internet registrants pay them, and have a vested interest in ICANN's policy-development process. 

Moreover, there are billions of internet users who rely on these domains for information, commerce, and communications, and they also have a stake in holding ICANN accountable for maintaining the security and stability of the domain name system.

To arrive at its conclusions, the TPI paper compares ICANN to purportedly similar member-driven standards-setting bodies such as the American National Standards Institute, Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, and International Telecommunication Union.

But ICANN is very different from these other bodies in its organizational structure, scope, and the size of its constituency. The challenge in ICANN is not that it has too many stakeholders, but rather that those stakeholders lack a consistent means to challenge adverse decisions and hold the body accountable for its actions.

Making ICANN solely accountable to registries and registrars would solve one problem -- the weakness of ICANN's accountability mechanism -- only to replace it with another, larger problem -- disenfranchising a massive and critical block of ICANN's constituents. Businesses, service providers, users, and public interest advocates would be among those left out in the cold under TPI's recommendation.

TPI is right about one thing: the current accountability mechanisms within ICANN are wholly insufficient, and could become a major liability if ICANN severs its ties with the U.S. Government, which has served as an accountability backstop for the past decade.

The $60,000 accountability question still needs to be answered, and answered correctly, before ICANN "transitions" away from the only real accountability mechanism it is has ever known.

Steve DelBianco

 

 

 

Making Sure Dot-Eco Doesn't Become Dot-Oh-No!

Given the chicken-in-every-pot rhetoric surrounding the plan to create potentially thousands of new Internet domains, it's not very surprising that Al Gore's plan to create ".eco" domain is garnering a lot of uncritical praise.

Now it may well be that .eco will be an excellent addition to the Internet's addressing system, forming the basis of a robust online community of environmental activists, scientists and developers. Unfortunately, because of the lack if clarity and safeguards in the selection process, it is just as possible that it will fail -- becoming a haven for cyber-squatters and worse. 

This is the paradox of the new domain process. We're all excited to see whether new domains like .eco can open new markets and create new communities of Internet users around the world, but concerns about the process have many of us worried about what happens when the best laid plans of new domain operators go astray.

Take ".eco": under an ideal scenario, the domain has a good business plan, solid technical underpinning and becomes an online home to environmentalists around the world. But what happens if those pieces aren't in place?

If the business plan fails, does .eco open its doors to a wider clientele, with a less singular focus? What happens when a polluter buys up attractive .eco addresses and starts posting misinformation to a community that takes the ".eco" brand as a sort seal of approval? Worse, what happens if criminals buy .eco addresses and use them to target green-themed scams at environmentalists?

As much damage as a failed business plan could eventually cause, it would be nothing compared to a failure of technological competency. What happens if .eco is shut down completely by one of the myriad attacks that are launched against major Internet domains every day? Or worse, what if hackers infiltrate the domain and use it as a launch pad for attacks?

These are the questions that ICANN should have been asking as it developed the application guidelines for new Internet domains. But in the most recent draft of those guidelines, these concerns receive very short shrift.

At the ICANN meeting in Mexico City last week, I asked ICANN to address all of these issues by "raising the bar" for new domain applicants. A rigorous application process, combined with appropriate safeguards, will help to ensure that the host of horrors I mentioned above stay purely theoretical.

Steve DelBianco

 

 

Raising the Bar for New Internet Domains

Running an Internet domain is a little like generating nuclear power: do it right, and you safely provide an important resource to a grateful community; do it wrong, and...well, let's just say you don't want to do it wrong.
 
That may explain why business leaders are so concerned about the latest iteration of ICANN's plan to create potentially hundreds of new Internet domains.

I did my best to highlight those concerns when I spoke before the ICANN Board at the public forum here in Mexico City Thursday. Operators of new top-level domains will have a leading role in protecting consumers from fraud and phishing scams. In addition they must prevent abusive registrations intended to extort money out of brand owners. Defending against so-called "cybersquatting" already costs companies millions of dollars annually. The introduction of an unprecedented number of domains could increase those costs exponentially, if it isn't handled carefully.

But in the draft "guidebook" for potential new domain operators, the standard for preventing abusive registrations is currently set dangerously low. Applicants can get a passing score by simply describing what -- if anything -- they intend to do to prevent abusive registrations.

That's it. There's no requirement that applicants even have a plan and the expertise to make it work. From a business perspective, that simply isn't good enough.

As I told the board, ICANN must "raise the bar" for new domain applicants. Put simply, applicants should not be able to get a passing score unless they have adopted industry best practices for protection of consumers. There is no silver bullet to address the problem, but there are known methods that, used in concert, can protect consumers and brand-holders alike. It is ICANN's responsibility to require applicants to implement real protections for consumers and global brands.

And abusive registrations are just the tip of the iceberg as far as challenges that will face new registry operators. As cyber-crime grows in scope and complexity, some ICANN board members have expressed open concern that smaller, less experienced registry operators will not be able to keep pace with the rising tide of increasingly sophisticated attacks that they will face.

An improperly secured registry could become not just a victim of electronic attacks, but an unwitting tool for cyber-criminals. We all want this new domain experiment to work, because the alternative is frankly terrifying. The first, and most important step will be to set a high bar for those seeking to operate these critical global resources.

ICANN: More Catholic than Quaker

In his CircleID post, Graham Chynoweth reaches back to his childhood experience and draws some interesting parallels between the Quaker faith and the mystical methods of ICANN.  However, to really make the most of the religion analogy, let’s set the way-back machine to sixteenth century England – during the time of Henry the 8th – that’s where you’ll find a closer match: between ICANN and the Catholic Church of Rome.

Like the Catholic Church, ICANN draws its legitimacy from hallowed texts: “Thou art Peter", says the New Testament, "and upon this rock I will build my church”.  And while ICANN today may be about as old as the Catholic Church of St. Peter’s day, ICANN’s Peter sits at the head of well-organized church whose coffers are overflowing.  Importantly, as in Henry’s England, there’s clear trouble brewing today from kings who don’t care to be subject to any Church.  At risk is nothing short of the breakup of the today’s church – the potential of a divorce between ICANN and some of its key constituencies. 

In the controversies I heard today at the ICANN meeting in Mexico City, national governments are sounding more and more like England’s King Henry VIII.  Some kings have already set up their own church, as China did by adding their own top-level domains within their borders.  Other kings (or governments) have suggested they will be glad to split the church further if they don’t get their way on several key issues: 

• Will governments sign operating agreements for ccTLDs?  Only if the agreements are ‘voluntary’. 
• Will ccTLDs adhere to technical standards?  Perhaps, if it is convenient for the governments in question. 
• Should governments pay fees to ICANN?  To the extent that they want to pay, we’re told.  But very few governments pay any ICANN fees today.
• And what about IDNs in new TLDs?  Governments want to launch when they’re ready, without concern for IDN versions of generic top-level domains.
• Finally, governments are insisting on control over territory and place names in both top-level and second-level domains. 

When faced with a similar dilemma, the Catholic Church held firm to its doctrine.  And King Henry and England went their own way.  Apart from some nasty early scuffles, the Catholics and Anglicans co-exist peaceably today.  But what is ICANN going to do when faced with the same dilemma?  Let the kings go their own way, or give-in to government demands to water-down doctrine in the name of church unity?  Nobody knows what today’s schism might bring for Internet users around the world, but whatever happens, this is more than an abstract theological debate. 

Stay tuned....

Steve DelBianco

Don’t mind me, ICANN -- I’m Just One Stakeholder

The theory behind ICANN is that the Internet “community” – which is to say, all of us – determines what’s best for the Domain Name System (DNS). Many of us in the community have long questioned whether ICANN really allows our input to influence its decisions, but rarely are those suspicions so clearly demonstrated as they were this week.
 
Mike Palage, an adjunct fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF) and longtime participant in the ICANN process, did an excellent post on CircleID documenting the broad-based criticism of ICANN’s proposal to add hundreds of new top level domains (TLDs) to the DNS. Both the Commerce Department and the Justice Department posted substantive criticisms, as did NetChoice and many other businesses.

Palage posits that with so much outcry from the “community,” ICANN might be re-thinking increasingly unrealistic timeline for adding new TLDs. But Kieren McCarthy, ICANN’s general manager of public participation, responded by brushing aside the mountain of criticism, saying it was “perfectly normal - there was always going to be at least one stakeholder that was not happy” 

It’s surprising that ICANN dismissed the letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce so causally.  After all, that letter represents the views of the entire executive branch of the US Government -- including the Obama transition team.
 
But it’s even more troubling that ICANN so casually dismisses a massive cross-section of the global business community with a brush-off like “just one stakeholder group is unhappy”.  The business community includes ISPs, content companies, application providers, and device makers who have spent a trillion dollars to bring the Internet to a billion people.  It also includes the consumer brands and financial services companies that want to protect their customers from fraud and phishing enabled when criminals abuse the DNS.

By dismissing the concerns of business as the complaints of just one stakeholder, maybe ICANN is reaching for the concept of “multistakeholderism” advocated by the United Nations. But as much as they may want to forget it, ICANN’s true DNA remains rooted firmly in the private sector. Moreover, only private sector investment will bring the Internet to the next billion users.  
 
The preamble to its Joint Partnership Agreement with the US Government says ICANN is to promote “private sector leadership in the innovation and investment that has characterized the development and expansion of the Internet around the globe”. And under ICANN’s responsibilities, that same agreement reads, “ICANN shall continue in its commitment to the private sector management of the Internet DNS, by promoting the security and stability of the global Internet...”
 
I get that ICANN intends to just walk away from its partnership with the US Government later this year.  But I really didn’t expect ICANN to boldly declare independence from the private sector, too. 

Where exactly are they going once ICANN becomes independent? And to whom, if anyone, would ICANN be accountable?

By letting this new TLD process spin out of control, ICANN threatens injury to businesses that give it life.  And they’ve just added insult to injury by dismissing the US Government and multinational businesses as just “one stakeholder”.  

Does ICANN believe this is inspiring “institutional confidence”?  Sounds more like institutional OVER-confidence to me.

--

Steve DelBianco

Keeping ICANN Focused on the Job Ahead

Picture this: Your child struggles academically. He is always sleep-deprived and barely gets his assignments in on time. He's going into a new semester facing his toughest course-load yet ... and he asks you if he should take a 20-hour-per-week after-school job.

Would you even hesitate before you rejected the idea?

Well that's the situation facing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The body that oversees the Internet's Domain Name System faces the biggest challenges in its 10-year history. ICANN plans to review applications of hundreds of new Internet domains next year; it continues a massive project to "improve institutional confidence"; and it plans to sever its legacy ties with the U.S. Government.

And now ICANN wants to wade into uncharted territory, taking the technical lead on a critical Internet security issue.

The U.S. Commerce Department recently asked for public comments about who and how to do DNSSEC, a technology that will play a critical role in the broad global effort to increase the security and stability of the Internet.

As NetChoice wrote earlier this year in "Hardening the Security Stack", DNSSEC has significant limitations, and must be part of a much larger security effort that involves stakeholders at every level of the security "stack." Still, there is broad agreement that it's time to implement DNSSEC, starting with the root zone.

In my comments to the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), I left the arcane technical implementation questions to the hardworking technologists who have been developing DNSSEC for more than a decade.

Instead, I focused on whether ICANN should be the one that implements DNSSEC at the root, when a) there are other viable options, and b) ICANN is already clearly overburdened with its current slate of obligations and challenges.

The strain on ICANN is clear to anyone involved with Internet governance. Deadlines are routinely delayed, documentation arrives late, and constituency groups grow increasingly restive that their issues are not being adequately addressed. Meanwhile, outside forces, including an increasingly hostile International Telecommunications Union (ITU) threaten to destabilize ICANN from the outside.

ICANN will face enough difficulty just surmounting the challenges it MUST face. The organization should be discouraged from tackling new challenges and assuming new risks at this volatile time in its history.

Capturing the Meaning of "Capture" at ICANN

The higher-ups at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) were in town on Wednesday, talking up their plan "improve institutional confidence" before they walk away from a key relationship with the U.S. Government in September 2009.

I had a chance to ask them (good account here) how they plan to address a major concern of the business community -- the possibility that an independent ICANN could be "captured" by a foreign government or multi-national bureaucracy.

When ICANN's Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the U.S. Department of Commerce came up for a mid-term review in 2007, one of the key concerns cited by members of the Internet community was that ICANN could be subject to capture after its traditional relationship with the U.S. Government ends.

ICANN appeared to acknowledge that concern, making "Safeguarding Against Capture" their top agenda item in their plan to improve institutional confidence. But to our chagrin, almost all of the proposals ICANN offered were aimed at preventing internal capture, by parties already involved in the ICANN process.

But what the Internet community was really concerned about was not internal capture, but rather the threat that ICANN would be forcibly taken over by the foreign governments who believe that the Internet's addressing system is too important to leave to the private sector.

ICANN is claiming they have "checked the box" on capture, with a few bureaucratic measures to stop ICANN participants from capturing ICANN’s internal processes. But the real danger to private sector leadership of ICANN comes from EXTERNAL forces eager to usurp ICANN’s role.

With a $60 million budget and control over the Internet DNS, ICANN is a magnet for the United Nations and governments. Last fall we heard the Russian government call for the United Nations to assert control over critical Internet resources. Just goes to show ICANN that all that money and power may not buy friends, but it does invite a better class of enemies.

Many of us believe that the legacy role of US Commerce Department oversight is the main defense against capture by the United Nations and restive governments. But who’s protecting ICANN after it walks away from its partnership agreement with the US next year?

Plenty of governments question whether ICANN is doing enough to stop Internet fraud and abuse, particularly cyber-terrorism like the denial-of-service attacks that crippled Estonia and more recently Georgia? What happens when they decide to take matters into their own hands? Frankly I don't know, and what scares me is that I don't think ICANN does either.

Until somebody gets a handle on it, we may want to put the brakes on ICANN's impending "transition."

Can ICANN Really Do Alchemy?

Media reports might have you believe that ICANN has discovered how to turn lead into gold, with their decision to create lots of new top-level domains (TLDs) for the Internet. But there could be a lot of fool's gold in the ICANN treasure chest, based on concerns and questions I heard at their meeting in Paris last week:

1. Some businesses advocating new TLDs claim they will help to categorize the web, much like bookstores arrange shelves by subject matter. For example, the applicants for a .berlin TLD claim it will help users find websites relating to Berlin. But I have to wonder how that's more useful than using 'berlin' in a conventional web search? The big winner in having millions of new domains is the big search engine that can sort it all out for us.
2. ICANN will entertain objections "relating to morality and public order" regarding the words or phrases proposed for new TLDs. Sounds like a responsible policy, but will paranoid governments use this policy to oppose new TLDs like .freedom or .democracy?
3. If a new TLD would create confusion with existing or similar TLDs, ICANN may deny the application. "Confusingly similar" is a good concept, but isn't something this subjective certain to generate controversy and litigation?
4. ICANN will have to pick winners and losers when multiple contenders want the same TLD. For example, who gets the .apple TLD – Apple computer, Apple records, or the Washington State Apple Growers Co-op?
5. Consumers and brand owners are rightly concerned about fraud and cyber-squatting in new TLDs. Is every new TLD going to generate a gold rush for domains that can be re-sold to global brand owners? Worse still, are cyber criminals going to exploit new TLDs to dupe users into revealing personal data or lure them into online scams?

Applicants for new TLDs will have to run a veritable gauntlet of objections and contentions, which could take many months or even years to complete. At the same time, ICANN doesn't want to keep restive governments waiting on domains that use non-Latin scripts, such as an Arabic and Chinese. So ICANN also approved a fast-track for governments to get country-code domains using non-Latin scripts, but users will be frustrated if this fast-track excludes the global TLDs (.com, .org, .edu ) they're really looking for.

These are legitimate questions and real concerns that ICANN must overcome to launch hundreds of new TLDs. I can already hear critics claiming that ICANN processes are delaying new TLDs and the resulting gold rush for millions of new domains.

Before ICANN and domain speculators catch gold fever over the promise of newly-minted TLDs, they ought to heed an old proverb – all that glitters is not gold.

Posted by Steve DelBianco

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