A couple of recent articles have caught my attention because they offer scathing criticism of ICANN.

The first is a long and convoluted article by Kieren McCarthy on the .JOBS debacle. Kieren has basically written a feature that only a seasoned ICANN insider can hope to understand and that's a pity, because the points he makes appear very valid. Namely that ICANN is incapable of looking at itself in the mirror and admitting when it's wrong.

The second is an op-ed that makes it clear ICANN often has no-one but itself to blame for the bad press it receives.

Take the long list ICANN directors this article points its finger at as having a stake in the new gTLD game. Anyone not well-versed with the ICANN process would certainly look with some discomfort at the fact that several industry people sit on the Board of the organisation that is approving the Internet's biggest expansion ever. And, be thankful for small mercies, author David Rowan has apparently not heard of previous ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush's damaging move to a new gTLD firm minutes after he'd led the Board to an approval vote for the program last June. Otherwise he would have surely painted an even starker picture of ICANN…

As it stands, the picture is bleak, and yes it is one-sided. The truth is that the reason the governance model that ICANN embodies is so strong is in part because it involves industry insiders. For that read people who actually understand what they're voting on! A welcome change from traditional politician-driven governance bodies where the decision makers don't know the slightest thing about the market they're looking at.

But ICANN has not been tough enough with itself in the past, and thus left itself wide open to such attacks. Under existing ICANN rules, Dengate-Thrush did nothing wrong. But that doesn't make it right, because there's a difference between doing what you're allowed to do and doing the right thing. ICANN has since beefed up the onus on its directors to disclose potential conflicts of interests and is asking them more clearly not to benefit directly from Board decisions. It should have come sooner.

Up until now, ICANN has also made a very poor job of explaining how it works, and the benefits it brings. Instead, when it doesn't work, ICANN just gets all upset and sulks, treating critics with at best disdain, at worst outright arrogance.

And that's a pity, because its public/private sector-led governance model remains better suited to something as fast-evolving as the Internet than some sclerosis-riddled organisation who's members might sometimes value state control more than individual freedoms or public service.

I think it's fair to say that ICANN is in a state of near meltdown at the moment. With less than a week to go before the new gTLD program's first application window is opened, on Thursday January 12, 2012, the amount of work being done is mind-bending.

The ICANN Board held a special meeting on January 5 to determine the program's state of readiness ahead of the launch. Out of that meeting comes a roadmap showing key dates, major steps already completed, and others still to complete.

Biggest shock to prospective applicants might be that a new version of the applicant guidebook - the program's bible - is scheduled for release on January 11. The day before the program launches!

And while the application and fee processing systems are now listed as ready, the batch processing mechanism will not be completed until February 29. That's more than a month into the Jan 12 to Apr 12 application window.

The entity tasked with running the trademark protection database known as the Trademark Clearinghouse won't be selected until the end of February either. While the governmental early warning system designed to enable states to point out those applications they don't like will have to wait until the end of March.

However, this is part of the normal launch program and should not give cause for concern. Apart from the late publication of a new version of the guidebook, the other steps can be covered concurrent to the launch window. And ICANN is being very open about these final preparations so that applicants are not taken by surprise.

Bottom line, there can now be little doubt. The new gTLD program will launch on January 12… and ICANN will be ready!

Yesterday evening, the GNSO held its last teleconference of the year. We had invited ICANN's new gTLD supremo Kurt Pritz to give an update on the recent US Congress hearings.

Kurt was ICANN's spokesperson in both hearings, and felt that the first was more favourable to ICANN than the second. When I asked him if he thought the launch of the new gTLD program might be delayed as a result of these hearings, his response was a cryptic: "the risk is greater than zero".

Although there are calls for a delay to the program, it was fiercely defended by both Pritz and some American politicians who want to see ICANN's unique model of non state-centric governance succeed. "The New gTD Program demonstrates the strength of the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder process," Pritz said in his testimony to the US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. "The New gTLD Program under discussion today is the implementation of an ICANN-community policy recommendation to achieve one of ICANN's foundational mandates."

ICANN's search for a replacement for current CEO Rod Beckstrom, who's contract ends in July 2011, continues. The organization has published a profile for potential candidates.

So if you're interested, read the candidate profile here, and learn more about the process here.

As part of its drive to open up its new gTLD program to potential applicants that do not have the financial resources to fulfil the full program requirements, ICANN is reducing the fees from USD 185,000 to USD 47,000. A 76% rebate!

But before applicants decide to drop their current business model and relocate to an under privileged country, they should know that there are strict criteria to qualify for the rebate. The first prerequisite: that their TLD serve the public interest and operate in the benefit of the public.

Applicants applying for the support will also have to accept being evaluated later. ICANN needs the extra time to evaluate the requests for support. Those TLD applications that are successful will then be evaluated in the same way as all the others.

However, applicants requesting support and not passing that evaluation would then be invalidated for the whole TLD application process. A logical attempt to discourage those that do not need support from "trying it on".

The amount of applications that can be supported will be limited by the amount of money available in the support fund. So far, ICANN has set aside USD 2 million for the fund, and has called for others to chip in. If no-one does, then a maximum of 14 needy applicants will be supported. That means some applicants may qualify for support, but ICANN may not have the funds to grant it. In such cases, the applicants will be given the choice to either continue as non-supported applicants and pay the full fee, or withdraw from the process.

ICANN's plan is to recruit the applicant support evaluation panel by June 2012 and to be able to notify those applicants that have been deemed in need of support by November of next year.

Does ICANN have its head stuck in the sand on new gTLDs? The campaign against the Internet governance organisation has been building up in the past few months, with public protests from entities like the American national advertisers' association ANA or CRIDO, a group of major corporations.

The protest themselves play like a broken record.

"Where's the economic studies to show that new gTLDs are needed?" or "new gTLDs will make it more difficult to deal with crime on the Net."

ICANN has done economic studies. But how can a study predict innovation? Did studies prove that Facebook or Google might work? Thankfully, there was no need. Those major Internet initiatives where the result of private enterprise doing what it does best: innovating without being constrained by politics.

Those worried about crime point to the WHOIS as a potential flaw that might be exploited by cybercrooks. There again, this is waving away years of policy development by the ICANN community to try and find solutions to these (very real) problems.

That community is still working hard. Recent results include fresh proposals on how to improve WHOIS.

But in the light of a US Senate hearing happening today on "ICANN's Expansion of Top Level Domains", it’s the critics that are getting all the press. As former ICANN staffer Kieren McCarthy notes, ICANN is missing a lot of PR opportunities here by simply not responding to critics.

Worse, this is the second such hearing where ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom has chosen not to attend in person but rather to send his Senior VP Kurt Pritz. While Kurt, as the man in charge of the new gTLD program, is probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this topic, you might have expected ICANN to front its CEO for such an important event.

Because despite the fact that the launch date has been set at Jan 12, 2012, new gTLDs aren't here yet. And as storm clouds gather in an ever-more ominous show of protest from the new gTLD naysayers, ICANN needs to be as convincing as it can be today in front of the US Senate, with a panel where Kurt Pritz can expect to feel very much on his own opposite staunch critics like ANA VP Dan Jaffe or ex ICANN Board member turned ICANN opponent Esther Dyson.

A promoted .XXX tweet appearing as a permanent fixture at the top of a #icann search column.

According to Twitter's help center, promoted tweets will stay at the top of a search page used to display all tweets related to the promoted search term. And it works. For example, the .XXX promoted tweet that I can see now sits at the top of my #icann search column in my (excellent) Twitter client Tweetdeck.

Looks like Twitter's actually got around to selling stuff, and promoted tweets comes across as a good idea and an unobtrusive way of doing advertising.

As Russia opens up its .?? (.RF in Cyrillic) domain to foreign (non-Russian) applicants (the new rules apply from November 11, 2011), comes another reminder of the country's incredible success with its IDN ccTLD (Internationalised Domain Name country code Top Level Domain).

Registration in the Cyrillic domain opened on November 11, 2010. Today, more than 900,000 domains have been registered! An incredible number, underlined by the fact that 68% of those names have been delegated (i.e. they are ready to be used on the Internet) and 25% are linked to working websites.

Russia's sense of national pride remains as strong as ever, as shown by the fact that the TLD has proven most popular with individuals. They account for 70% of registrations, businesses covering the remaining 30%.

One leading Russian registrar polled its clients and found that a whopping 90% of private individual domain owners plan to renew, and that 62% of registrants consider that the Cyrillic domain is easier to use and understand for them than the equivalent ASCII domain.

The forces of resistance to change and innovation are stepping up their fight against the rollout of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).

Never mind the fact that the program itself is the result of:

• 21 months (from 2005 to 2007) of intense work by the GNSO resulting in a consensus vote to approve the program's guiding principles from the various groups that make up the GNSO – ICANN's manager of policy development for gTLDs.
• 7 draft versions of the program's Applicant Guidebook, documented and augmented by 47 comment periods during which over 2,400 comments were received and analysed by the ICANN team in charge of implementing the GNSO's new gTLD policy recommendations.
• 55 explanatory texts or independent reports were produced during this implementation phase which lasted from June 2008 to June 2011.

Since the ICANN Board vote to approve the program on June 20 2011, America's Association of National Advertisers is the driving force behind a new movement to stop new gTLDs, teaming up with businesses and companies to create the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight, or CRIDO.

On November 10, CRIDO sent a letter to the department of commerce to express its "strong concern with respect to the June 2011 decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers".

The letter mentions "troubling conflict of interest questions" which can no doubt be read as references to Peter Dengate Thrush's move, just after the June 2011 Board vote and as soon as he stepped down from his position as Chairman of the ICANN Board, to a gTLD consultancy firm.

In its letter, CRIDO seems happy to forget that ICANN is no longer under US control and calls on the DoC to postpone the January 12, 2012 application window. The letter is signed by 40 companies, including Amex, Adobe, Coca Cola, Dell, Ford, HP, Kellogg, Nestle USA, and Samsung.

Valeri Borisov, Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications watches on as ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom attempts to explain his organization's refusal to allow Bulgaria's 2 character Cyrillic domain. Photo Domain Forum.

Taking part in the Domain Forum in Bulgaria is turning out to be an extremely interesting experience providing a unique insight into other communities' concerns and issues with Internet governance in general, and ICANN in particular.

The big issue here is ICANN's refusal to grant Bulgaria a Cyrillic IDN .BG TLD. In March 2011, ICANN turned down the country's request, made under the IDN ccTLD fast track program, citing possible confusion problems between the requested TLD and Brazil's ASCII ccTLD .BR.

This was the second time Bulgaria had submitted the request, after being snubbed by ICANN a first time in May 2010.

Debate today has centered around this issue, with local Internet users obviously still smarting at the ICANN decision and both government officials in attendance mentioning the issue in their respective panel appearances as obvious criticism of ICANN.

ICANN's IDN ccTLD fast track is considered non transparent by Bulgarians, who do not feel they have had adequate rationale from ICANN on why they are not being allowed to use the Internet in their own script and language.

Valeri Borisov, Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications, in attendance at the Domain Forum event, explained that his country would most likely make a third request for the IDN TLD to ICANN, but perhaps not under the fast track program. Borisov said he hoped to see Cyrillic Bulgarian websites with a couple of years.

I'm at the Domain Forum in Sofia, Bulgaria, today doing a couple of presentations on new gTLDs. The first is an introduction to the program itself and the following panel I'm on is looking at what registrars will have to face as many new gTLDs come online and they are asked to connect to them.

The Domain Forum itself is a great opportunity to get outside the usual "ICANN bubble" that those of us who are used to attending ICANN meetings and working in that community tend to live in month-in, month-out.

It's a clear reminder that for some people, the acronyms "new gTLDs", "IDN, "GNSO" or GAC" don't mean anything. And yet, the GNSO's recommendations for the new gTLD program were clear: there needs to be enough communication ahead of launch so that as many potential applicants as possible are aware of the program.

Events like the Domain Forum in Sofia are an important part of achieving that aim. Looking around the room, this is clear. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom is here in Sofia speaking just before me as part of ICANN's outreach efforts on the new gTLD program. In attendance here in Bulgaria are the country's minister for IT, the country's GAC representative, and many people just wanting to learn more about the program itself.

Find out more about the Domain Forum here.

Did former ICANN Board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush damage the organisation by joining a new gTLD consultancy firm as soon as he left the Board?

If calls by a US Senator for more ethics at ICANN are anything to go by, the answer may very well be a resounding yes.

Ron Wyden, a democrat representing Oregon, has sent a letter to Acting Commerce Department Secretary Rebecca Blank and NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Agency) boss Lawrence Strickling in which he warns about the possibility for favouritism the "Dengate precedent" sets.

Obviously, the IANA contract that is currently up for renewal is the US government's main mechanism for putting pressure on ICANN. "I urge you to put in place guidelines that ensure any future IANA has clear ethics rules and conflict of interest requirements in place," Wyden wrote in his letter.

The Senator's press release also talks about his "concerns about the potential for bias and unfair favoritism stemming from a revolving door between internet regulators and the multi-million dollar domain name industry they formerly regulated."

So does ICANN have an ethics problem? In my opinion, it's the way the Board works at the moment that's the real concern. 

Perhaps current research into whether the Board should be paid might help...

As part of its drive to make sure its new gTLD program has maximum visibility, ICANN has opened a FAQ and general guidance site on new gTLDs.

The site provides help and information for potential new applicants, including useful links to the latest version of the applicant guidebook.

Video guides to new gTLDs and a calendar of upcoming gTLD-related events also feature.

As the program itself ramps up, the site will provide data on actual applications and stats for the first application round.

ICANN has published the latest version of the Applicant Guidebook. This September 19 version brings only limited changes compared to the May 30, 2011 guidebook.

The first and most noticeable is the inclusion of an actual first application round start and end date, and time!

Quoting from the new guidebook: The user registration and application submission periods open at 00:01 UTC 12 January 2012. The user registration period closes at 23:59 UTC 29 March 2012.

The new AG also takes into account the June 20, 2011 ICANN Board resolution which officially gave the new gTLD program a green light but included extra instructions. For instance, module 2 of the guidebook now describes how key terms associated with the Red Cross and the Olympic Committee cannot be requested as gTLDs.

These rules are subject to change however, as ICANN community work continues on issues such as whether the aforementioned organisations should also benefit from having their names protected at the second level, and how support can be provided (financial or otherwise) to needy applicants.

In June, ICANN announced the appointment of Thomas Spiller as its new Vice President for the European region.

I've never met Thomas, who is described as a "French national" in ICANN's press release, and was set to take over management of the organisation's Brussels office.

At the time, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said that "the new position is vital for global expansion and deepening of ICANN."

That may be, but Thomas won't be taking care of the expanding and deepening. Although there has not been an official announcement (and from what I hear there won't be), I have learned that he will not be joining ICANN after all.

Why? I have no idea. But it does seem a pity for the ICANN community. It would have been great to see ICANN opening up to more Europeans…

Kevin Murphy reports in El Reg that the first of a new breed of websites has gone live. What's significant about the site is that it is an adult site that uses a .XXX address: Casting.xxx.

The Register article explains that the domain was awarded as part of .XXX registry ICM's Founders Program. "It's actually a perfect example of a Founders site," ICM president Stuart Lawley is quoted as saying. "It's a generic name... but with a special niche in the .xxx world."

Please be warned that the site shows extremely explicit content. 

It's not quite at News Of The World level, but expect the word "scandal" to be bandied around the ICANN community in the next few days. The news that ex Chairman of the ICANN Board Peter Dengate Thrush (PDT) has joined a new gTLD consultancy firm will no doubt cause a few teeth to grind.

In fact, just hours after it was made public, I was seeing tweets like this "Peter Dengate Thrush votes for new TLDs at #ICANN, then joins a company which sells them..." or this "A clear case of conflict of interest, it does not help #ICANN nor new TLDs."

The bitterness is understandable. PDT was in charge of the industry's regulatory body for most of the implementation phase of the new gTLD program. His drive to get it approved before his term as Chair ended (in Singapore on June 24, just 4 days after the Board approved the new gTLD program) was relentless. Getting there meant upsetting a few people who felt PDT's intransigence left no room for any views but his own.

No doubt those people will now join in a chorus of criticism and smug "oh now we understand why he was in such a hurry to get new gTLDs done!" comments.

As amazing as that may sound, ICANN is keeping to its schedule! The new gTLD Applicant Guidebook was published on the target date of May 30, 2011.

This version is considered final. So if ICANN can weather the continued opposition from some groups with particularly strong lobbying skills, then its Board will be voting to approve the new gTLD program during a special meeting on June 20 in Singapore.

Could this really be the home stretch?

The ICANN unofficial timeline for the launch of the new gTLDs seems to be on track. A planned teleconference between ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the Board happened yesterday (Friday May 20) on schedule.

Unofficial reports say the meeting was very positive, although differences of opinions are still said to exist on trademarks.

The next major milestone will be May 30, when the final Applicant Guidebook is scheduled to be posted.

An extra GAC/Board meeting, not featured on the timeline, has been confirmed for June 19, in Singapore. The day before the planned final meeting of the Board to give the program its official green light.

Then ICANN CEO Paul Twomey with French minister Eric Besson at the Paris ICANN meeting in June 2008.

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom will be in Paris next week to meet with Eric Besson, French minister for the digital economy, as part of the e-G8 summit being held over 2 days, on May 24 and 25.

Besson met with Beckstrom's predecessor, Paul Twomey, when Paris hosted an ICANN meeting in June 2008.

Besson and Beckstrom will no doubt discuss new gTLDs and the role of governments in Internet governance.

Preparing for an ICANN meeting has now become a full-time job for many participants, from ICANN Staff to the numerous volunteers that contribute to the bulk of the ICANN processes.

The preparations for one of the 3 yearly International Meetings start as soon as the previous one is over, sometimes even before that. A full meeting planning team is in operation at ICANN, but input is also required from the Supporting Organisations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) that make up the ICANN structure.

As the body responsible for setting generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) policy, the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organisation) is part of that planning. At each meeting, we work on our own agenda and strive to meet the deadlines set for its publication. We interact with the other SOs and ACs as everyone tries to fit into the increasingly busy schedule that is an ICANN meeting week.

It is as part of this preparatory work that we have learned that the GAC/Board discussions on new gTLDs that started in Brussels in February and continued at the San Francisco ICANN meeting in March are set to once again disrupt the normal business of community discussions and policy development that is the raison-d'être of an ICANN meeting.

Websites are reporting that Kenya's government has announced its intention to block .XXX. This was precisely one of the fears opponents of the adult entertainment domain voiced in San Francisco, where .XXX was given a definitive go-ahead by the ICANN Board.

Kenyan Communications Secretary Bitange Ndemo was quoted by www.xbiz.com as saying "We are not going to allow .XXX in this country. It's actually a certificate for people to watch pornography."

It remains to be seen what effect the wholescale blocking of a TLD will have on the way the Internet works, if any.

In related news, www.domainincite.com reports that the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes wrote a letter to US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke on April 6, 2011 asking him to wait before adding .XXX to the Internet root.

The Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet of the US Congress has called a hearing into ICANN's new gTLD program for Wednesday May 4, 2011.

Considering who has initiated this, no-one will be surprised to see much of the proceedings centre around trademark protection.

What may be more surprising to some is that representing ICANN in front of the US congressmen attending the hearing will be Kurt Pritz. Although Pritz is ICANN's Senior Vice President of Stakeholder Relations and the man in charge of the new gTLD program, most would probably have expected Rod Beckstrom, the organisation's CEO, to take centre stage.

Instead, it appears that Beckstrom will not even make an appearance. Many will no doubt be surprised by this as when ICANN was heard by the House of Representatives in June 2009, then-CEO Paul Twomey went to Washington in person.

The reason for Beckstrom deciding not to go may be due to his past links to the US administration (he was US cybersecurity tsar in 2008) and a desire not to see those colour this hearing…

A criticism that I often hear of ICANN is that it is a toothless body with no real ability to regulate the domain name system.

A couple of recent episodes seem to indicate that ICANN actually takes enforcing rules very seriously.

There's this letter from ICANN General John Jeffrey to .JOBS registry Employ Media. The language of the letter is totally unambiguous. ICANN feels that Employ Media has usurped the responsibility that it was given to build a TLD that would "serve the needs of the international human resource management community" in a way that instead appears to "exclusively serve the financial interests of Employ Media".

It had been promised for April 15… It's out on April 15th!

The new DAG (Draft Applicant Guidebook) is out. This shows both the incredible amount of work ICANN Staff is putting into getting this program finished and that the June 20th date for green-lighting the new gTLD program is one that ICANN really wants to keep to.

Read the new DAG here.

Following final approval at last March's San Francisco ICANN meeting, the newest Internet domain's roll-out has started.

Dot XXX registry ICM had already announced details of the adult entertainment domain's sunrise periods and launch program.

Now comes the news that the domain has been activated at the root and is therefore fully functional, as evidenced by ICM's new website address.

As of today, there are 22 active generic Top Level Domains on the Internet.

Most ICANN registrars are members of the Registrar Stakeholder Group (RrSG), their official representative body. Although membership is not compulsory for ICANN-accredited registrars, it does carry several advantages.

RrSG members have regular meetings with ICANN policy, compliance, finance and registrar liaison staff. They are able to vote to elect representatives on the GNSO Council, ICANN's policy-making body for generic Top Level Domains. They engage with Law Enforcement Agencies, registries and governments, while working on industry best practices and exchanging information to continually improve the service registrars provide to their customers.

With the recent events suffered by Japan, RrSG members are banding together to provide help where possible. See the following announcement below from the RrSG Executive Committee.

ICANN Registrars Provide Assistance to Registrants in Japan

Many ICANN-accredited registrars are implementing special emergency registration provisions to assist their customers who were impacted by the last week's earthquake and tsunami, and the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan.  Special domain-related services include enhanced procedures for making changes to domain name DNS records, alternative hosting arrangements, and allowing automatic or emergency renewals of domain name registrations.

Implementation details vary, so affected registrants should contact their registrar directly to learn what special measures are being offered by registrars to protect customer domain names from accidental expiration or transfer.  Most registrars are providing extended support coverage and alternate customer contact methods to ensure that domain names continue to resolve and customer websites remain operational.

Was asking Bill Clinton to speak at ICANN San Francisco (for a reported $250,000 fee) a good idea?

For the domain name system, for the unique governance model that ICANN represents, as a spotlight for the key issues that model is currently dealing with – How to integrate governments with being taken over by them? How to spread the Internet to non-English speakers or writers? How to maintain technical stability while continuing to support the ever-increasing demand for network resources that innovation continues to drive? – the media interest generated by Clinton's visit alone probably made it worth it.

About 1,000 people heard him speak in the main ballroom at the San Francisco Westin on Union Square on Wednesday March. They thought he was enthralling enough to hear that they cheered when he walked on stage, and had given him two standing ovations by the time he left it.

As for me, well obviously in this case I can't give an unbiased opinion. When I started in the domain names industry, I never thought it would lead a small time entrepreneur from Paris like me to this. Meeting Clinton was an honor. Simple as that.

The meeting was called in an attempt to resolve the remaining issues of contention between ICANN's decision-making body and the representatives of the world's governments on the subject of the new gTLD program. ICANN's bylaws state that if the GAC gives advice and if the Board, after having listened to that advice, is not ready to follow it, a formal consultation must take place in order to air the differences.

Brussels was not that meeting. It was a first step in the bylaws process. The consultation meeting has been scheduled for March 17, the day before the Board meeting that will bring ICANN San Francisco, the first of 2011's three International ICANN Meetings, to a close.

ICANN staff has just confirmed to the GNSO that the meeting initially planned for Amman, Jordan, will now take place in Singapore. The Amman meeting was cancelled due to the current uncertainty in the region.

The meeting will happen from June 19 to 24 2011.

In preparation for the March San Francisco meeting, ICANN introduced a new sponsorship program with both increased costs and levels of sponsorship.

A new top sponsorship level was created and set at a whopping USD 500,000. Other packages also saw their costs increase.

Sponsors found it hard to stomach the changes and ICANN has therefore revised its sponsorship program.

"Earlier this year, ICANN announced a new sponsorship program that introduced higher levels of support, as well as price increases for lower level sponsorship packages," says ICANN on its sponsorship website.

"Some of our supporters have found it difficult to purchase the sponsorship package that provides their preferred benefits at the new cost.

We have listened to concerns expressed by our community and today are announcing a revised sponsorship program that reduces the cost for many of our lower level sponsorship packages while retaining some of the higher level opportunities. 

We have also created a 33% discount rate for non-profit organizations."

In the run-up to an upcoming meeting between the GAC and its Board, ICANN has published a set of briefing papers. The page used for this also includes a proposed set of dates listed as ICANN's expected path forward.

Of special interest is the April 14 date listed as the date for publication of the AG. This is tentative and does depend on the outcome of the two GAC/Board meetings that will happen in Brussels next week and then in San Francisco on March 17.

But it also sets a clear target date for the start of the new gTLD program.

ICANN has posted a preliminary draft of its FY 2012 budget (ICANN's fiscal year runs from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012). The document makes for interesting reading if you know what to look for. Here are a few titbits I picked up.

500 new gTLD applications

ICANN is still working on a year 1 estimate of 500 new gTLD applications and therefore forecasts taking in USD 92,500,000 in application fees (at 185,000 a pop) if the program launches during the upcoming fiscal year.

Greater than expected ccTLD contributions

Unlike gTLD registries and accredited registrars, ICANN has no direct contract with ccTLD registries. So they are free to contribute as little, or as much, to ICANN's budget as they see fit. It seems that for FY 2011, ICANN had underestimated the amount ccTLD operators would be willing to front. ICANN had forecast taking in USD 835,113 from ccTLD registries. In fact, it got USD 1,600,000. Ok so that's still far from the USD 32,647,000 that new gTLD registries contributed or the USD 29,159,000 that registrars ponied up, but it's still nice to see ccTLD registries getting stuck in.

Meeting sponsors

For the upcoming San Francisco meeting, in March, ICANN has considerably upped the price of its sponsorship packages. Some speculated that might be to finance Bill Clinton as a keynote speaker for the opening ceremony (Clinton charges organisers when he gives a speech). But the draft budget provides another possible explanation. ICANN had forecast getting USD 1,067,973 in sponsorship revenue for FY 2011. For the upcoming fiscal year, it has forecast less at USD 900,000. Have worries about not making the budget pushed ICANN to up its prices?

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom will be one of the participants of a meeting with the governments happening in Brussels end of February to try and launch the new gTLD program as soon as possible.

ICANN has confirmed the dates for a highly anticipated meeting between its Board and the government representatives of its Governmental Advisory Committee. The meeting will happen in Brussels on Feb 28 and March 1.

Although the meeting will be open to observers and scribed, only Board and GAC members will be allowed to speak.

As Chair of one of ICANN's supporting organisations, the GNSO, I regret the decision not to solicit feedback from our group and from others. There would have been time in the run-up to this meeting for the GNSO to consult with its constituencies and stakeholder groups and, at the very least, prepare a statement.

The meeting is crucial as it aims to identify the remaining differences of opinion between the Board and the GAC on the best way to come to resolution on the new gTLD program.

If, at the end of the meeting, such differences remain, ICANN's bylaws may impose a further round of consultation with the GAC. This would undoubtedly prevent the program from being launched at the next ICANN international meeting, in San Francisco (March 13 to 18).

Read the Brussels meeting announcement here.

President Bill Clinton will guest star at ICANN's 40th international meeting, in San Francisco in March.

ICANN was started by the Clinton administration in 1998. With the California-based organisation returning home for its next meeting, Clinton's presence brings more prestige to what is already expected to be a heavily attended event.

Dubbed the "Silicon Valley" meeting, ICANN 40 is expected to break all attendance records as it draws local Internet professionals and companies on top of the fifteen hundred plus delegates that normally attend an ICANN meeting.

Clinton is expected to keynote at the opening ceremony. But getting the former US president isn't free. "We’ve seen some wildly inflated figures of what President Clinton would be paid to speak," says ICANN staffer Scott Pinzon on the organisation's blog. "His speaking fees are a matter of public record, and you can rest assured that the half-million and million-dollar figures some have reported are way out of line."

However much Clinton is being paid to show up, it won't come out of ICANN coffers. "The fees will be covered by a targeted sponsorship donated specifically for this purpose," adds Pinzon.

ICANN's sponsorship packs have been revamped for the San Francisco meeting, with new levels added such as the Diamond pack, priced at USD 500,000, or the Platinum Elite at USD 250,000! As Verisign is currently the only sponsor listed by ICANN, and the company is shown at Diamond level, it may be providing the "targeted sponsorship" that Pinzon alludes to.

In any case, the SF meetings looks like being a record-breaker for ICANN both in terms of attendance, and sponsorship revenue. Now if only the new gTLD program could be green-lit there, that would make it the perfect event for ICANN.

According to an open LinkedIn group focused on new gTLDs, the man behind .GAY is planning a .FLORIDA.

Alexander Schubert is fast becoming one of the major players in the new gTLD space and has acknowledged plans for a .FLORIDA project to be announced this January.

A website is already up, although Schubert describes it as still a "mock-up". The website indicates that the company behind .FLORIDA is currently being created. It will be called dotFlorida LLC.

It's obviously early days for the project, as the following caveat on the website confirms: "It should be noted that discussions with the state of Florida are pending. .FLORIDA will not be created without the permission of the Florida State government."

Wise words of caution, as under ICANN's new gTLD rules, no geographic TLD can be created without the all clear from the corresponding local government.

The ICANN Board and the GAC have apparently set a date for their joint meeting early next year. GAC representatives have been told to plan for a 2-day meeting to be held in Geneva on February 28 and March 1.

The meeting is an attempt to resolve the final issues standing in the way of ICANN's approval of the new gTLD program. It is not yet known whether this will be a closed meeting. ICANN's thrice yearly international meetings are open to anyone and attendance is free, but this specific get-together between GAC and Board members may be seen as requiring a little more intimacy.

Russia has now opened its first non-ASCII country code domain, .PO (no that's not a typo - the second letter should actually be crossed - but my blog doesn't want to do IDNs it would seem...) which translates to .RF for Russian Federation. According to Andrei Kolesnikov, a director at the Russian registry, 36,607 new domains were registered in the first hour, 43,054 in the second and 41,456 in the third hour. Those new domains came on top of the 18,000 plus that had already been registered as part of the pre-launch sunrise period giving priority access to trademark and rights holders.

"This clearly demonstrates a great demand for domains in national languages," Kolesnikov said.

As the time of writing, there are now over 226,000 domains registered in the Cyrillic Russia domain.

The launch timeline for new gTLDs that was approved by the ICANN Board at its last meeting (October 28) shows November 9 as the publication date for the latest version of the DAG.

That timeline itself is a significant document, as it provides for clear dates all the way up to the actual launch of the first round of new gTLD applications.

Key dates would be:

• December 10, 2010, when the Board would approve this latest version of the DAG as final,


• January 11, 2011, when ICANN would start its global communications campaign, and,


• May 30, 2011, when the first round would be launched.

So today we get to see if this timeline is to be believed. At the time of writing, still morning in Europe so middle of the night in the US, it's a little early for anything to have been released. But if the DAGv5 does indeed appear today, the Board would then be in a position to approve the AG at its Cartagena meeting, following the mandatory minimum one-month comment period.

If DAGv5 is even a single day late, that could delay the process.

I guess we'll know in a few hours' time...

So to coin a famous English TV catch phrase: "until then, keep 'em peeled!"

So in all the excitement about the Board decision on vertical Integration of registries and registrars, it seems the next version of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook has been forgotten.

According to a timeline put together by ICANN and agreed to by the Board, it was supposed to be published yesterday (Nov 9).

Well it hasn't, but the latest is it should be out by the end of the week, maybe even late today...

When will the next version of ICANN's new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook come out, and will it be the last? Whether you are pro, or against, new gTLDs, those two questions have to be foremost in your mind as we move ever closer to the last ICANN meeting of the year, in Cartagena this December.

This is when the final AG is supposed to be released. But will it happen like that?

On the one hand, ICANN Staff clearly think the DAG is almost done. Briefings given to the GNSO Council by ICANN's new gTLD boss Kurt Pritz point to limited changes between the current DAG (version 4) and the next one. Expect parts of the guidebook to be changed, à la DAGv2 to DAGv3, but not a fully revised version.

The new material will be published in November. A comment period will then be initiated leading up to the Cartagena meeting. But Staff will shy away from calling this the final guidebook because only the ICANN Board can do that.

Will they? From private conversations I've had, it's pretty clear that some Board members feel there is no more to say and the guidebook should now be finalised. I'm also hearing that ICANN Staff is gearing up for an official launch to the new gTLD program sooner rather than later. So if the Board does say "yes" in Cartagena, they will be ready.

To be clear, many are still opposed to new gTLDs. Good intentions often stand in the way of good ideas. "Why now?", "It's too soon!", "Work on it some more!" or "You haven't thought this out properly…" are phrases that have often been thrown ICANN's way by the perpetual naysayers who would rather things never changed and this program be shelved.

But their arguments may at last be loosing traction. Even though the next guidebook will not be called final when it is published by ICANN in the next few weeks, there is a good chance that it will become so soon after. It's about time! Time to stop being afraid of the future and instead, to make sure the Internet remains the most innovate, fast-moving medium in human history.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) will not be passed.

Supporters of the bill ran out of time to put it before Congress and must now wait until after the US mid-term elections, at the very least.

Opponents of the bill remain cautious however. "Make no mistake (…) this bill will be back soon enough, and Congress will again need to hear from concerned citizens like you," wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation on its website in a blog post entitled "Victory: Internet Censorship Bill is Delayed".

Some fear the bill would pass easily if put before Congress as both sides of the American political landscape seem to be in favour of legislation of this kind.

In what was widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for the future release of all 1 and 2 character .COM domains, Verisign put in a request in August for the same operation in .NET.

However in a surprise move, Verisign now seems to have withdrawn the request. This is what the ICANN registry service request page now shows.

No information as to why is listed. Verisign may obviously resubmit the request at a later date so at this stage, it is impossible to determine what effect, if any, this might have on the 1&2 character .COM release.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent the US Senate Judiciary Committee a letter opposing the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).

Here are a couple of excerpts from the letter.

"We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it."

"If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure."

The full letter can be read here.

A special Board retreat held in Trondheim, Norway, over the weekend led to a set of resolutions on the new gTLD program.

The resolutions mean to give ICANN Staff directions on how to edit the next version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook. Those looking for concrete answers to such outstanding issues as Vertical Integration (VI) of registrars and registries will have to wait a little longer. On this issue for example, the Board will request that the GNSO provide it with a clear statement on the current state of the work being done by the community and whether consensus has been reached. This statement should be sent to the Board by October 8th.

Other resolutions cover Morality and Public Order objections, Geographic Names or Trademark Protection.

There are also a couple of resolutions that aren't linked to the new gTLD program, including one naming San Francisco as the venue for the first ICANN meeting of 2011, from March 13 to 18 2011.