ICANN released its updated procedures Tuesday for handling conflicts between compliance with WHOIS domain registration data requirements and global privacy laws. The updated procedure allows an accredited domain registry or registrar to give ICANN a written statement from the concerned government stating how WHOIS data requirements conflict with the government's privacy laws. The procedure previously allowed only the registrar to invoke the procedure if the contracted party had received a “notification of an action” that WHOIS compliance clashed with privacy laws, ICANN said.
ICANN Senior Vice President-Contractual Compliance and Consumer Safeguards Jamie Hedlund urged stakeholders to provide feedback to the organization and its Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team on contractual compliance issues. ICANN is collecting comments on CCT-RT’s draft report on whether the organization’s new generic top-level domains program has promoted competition, consumer trust and consumer choice in the domain name system, and whether the gTLD program’s procedures are effective. Hedlund said the Registry Stakeholder Group and the Generic Names Supporting Organization’s IP Constituency already submitted recommendations to ICANN on contractual compliance issues that are “clear and specific and can be assessed for feasibility, cost and effort.” CCT-RT plans to issue a report after it reviews feedback that will detail “changes that we will undertake as well as a rationale for not undertaking others,” Hedlund said in a blog post.
Updates to systems to allow universal acceptance of domain names that use non-Latin based scripts, such as Arabic, Chinese or Cyrillic, is a $9.8 billion opportunity for growth in online revenue, the Universal Acceptance Steering Group said Tuesday in a white paper based on the results of commissioned Analysys Mason study. ICANN's new generic top-level domain rollout resulted in the proliferation of domain names using gTLDs that are longer than the legacy three-character TLDs or internationalized domain names (IDNs) that use non-Latin scripts, UASG said. Wider technical support for IDNs would bring up to 17 million new users online who use non-Latin scripts, UASG said. Technical updates aimed at fixing bugs that cause rejection on IDNs would alone increase revenue by $3.6 billion yearly, UASG said. “To excel in the long run, organizations should seize the opportunity -- and responsibility -- to ensure that their systems work with the common infrastructure of the Internet -- the domain name system," said UASG Chairman Ram Mohan in a news release. Universal acceptance “unlocks a significant economic opportunity and provides a gateway to the next billion Internet users by ensuring a consistent and positive experience for Internet users globally," Mohan said: "Governments and NGOs will be better able to serve their citizens and constituencies if they adopt” universal acceptance.
ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee urged the organization's board Wednesday to “take into account the serious concerns expressed by some GAC members” about ICANN's policy to allow domain registries to sell two-letter domain names that match county code top-level domains (ccTLDs). The board in November agreed to release all two-letter names while requiring registrants not to claim they are affiliated with the country whose ccTLD corresponds with a registered domain name. The board also required registries to investigate governments' complaints about registered two-letter names. The ICANN board should “engage with concerned governments” before the organization's planned June 26-29 meeting in Johannesburg “to resolve these concerns” and “immediately explore measures to find a satisfactory solution of the matter to meet the concerns of these countries before being further aggravated,” GAC said in its communique. The board also should “provide clarification of the decision-making process and of the rationale” for its November release of the two-letter domain names, GAC said. Brazil, China, the EU and Iran are among countries that raised concerns about ICANN's decision. Governments don't have a legal right to second-level domains that correspond to their ccTLD strings, said ICANN board member Chris Disspain during a Wednesday meeting with GAC during the organization's conference in Copenhagen. Some GAC members disagreed. Iranian GAC member Kavouss Arasteh said that “the multistakeholder process was not easily accepted by many countries. Still, people have difficulty with that.” Arasteh threatened to seek ITU involvement in the issue at its 2018 Plenipotentiary Conference “if the matter is not resolved.” It's “not always commercial; government also has some powers, and we exercise our powers,” Arasteh said.
ICANN released a publicly available “testing platform” Sunday of its rollover of the root zone key signing key (KSK), which acts as the “master” key for the Domain Name System Security Extensions. ICANN Chief Technology Officer David Conrad urged DNS operators Monday to use the test bed, saying during the organization’s Copenhagen conference (see 1703100062 and 1703130010) “we have to make sure that everyone is aware that the KSK rollover will happen.” ICANN will also do a briefing on the test bed during a Tuesday session in Copenhagen. The KSK switchover is set for Oct. 11.
The Domain Name Association said it will “take additional time to consider the details” of controversial recommendations from its Healthy Domains Initiative Committee that proposed a Copyright Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy, as expected (see 1702240058). The Copyright ADRP proposal, modeled on ICANN's trademark-centric uniform dispute resolution policy, called for a voluntary third-party mechanism to address copyright infringement through the use of domain names (see 1702080085). DNA’s HDI recommendations also addressed practices for combating online abuse, child abuse imagery and “rogue” pharmaceutical companies, but the Copyright ADRP proposal received “a great deal of attention” and criticism, DNA said in a Friday blog post. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Commerce Association and other domain name interests criticized DNA over the Copyright ADRP proposal (see 1702100054). “It should be pointed out that providers of online services, including domain name registration services, appropriately establish latitude in their acceptable use policies (AUPs) or terms of service to directly address illegal behavior -- including copyright infringement,” DNA said. “If DNA members are interested in the regulation of anything, it would be in ‘regulating’ clearly illegal behavior, not in deciding what the public can see on the Internet.” Critics mischaracterized the ADRP proposal but DNA’s “concern is that worries over these seven recommendations have overshadowed the value” of the other HDI Committee proposals, DNA said. “DNA will take keen interest in any registrar’s or registry’s design and implementation of a copyright ADR, and will monitor its implementation and efficacy before refining its recommendations further.”
Public Interest Registry said it will indefinitely pause “further development” of its planned Systemic Copyright Infringement Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy (SCDRP) amid stakeholder scrutiny. PIR, the domain registry for the .org top-level domain, was developing SCDRP in concert with the Domain Name Association’s development of its Copyright Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy, a voluntary third-party mechanism akin to ICANN’s trademark-centric uniform dispute resolution policy that would address copyright infringement through the use of domain names (see 1702080085). The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Internet Commerce Association were among stakeholders criticizing DNA’s proposal and seeking further information on PIR’s plans (see 1702100054 and 1702170058). PIR said Thursday it paused development of SCDRP to “reflect on those concerns and consider forward steps.”
Internet Society Vice President-Global Policy Development Sally Wentworth acknowledged the Domain Name Association’s Copyright Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy (ADRP) proposal and the Public Interest Registry’s (PIR) intention to implement a pilot version of that process (see 1702080085 and 1702170058) have sparked a lively debate among ISOC members. Participants in the group’s internet policy discussion list have been debating the copyright ADRP, with several urging ISOC to weigh in, since the group formed PIR in 2002. Wentworth said in an email to the discussion list that she has “been following this discussion closely” and recognized that “a number of important points have been made about this issue. I don’t have all the answers just yet but am working to get greater clarity on where this proposal stands.”
ICANN said it's “free to proceed” with delegating the .africa generic top-level domain to the ZA Central Registry after the California Superior Court threw out DotConnectAfrica Trust’s lawsuit to block the delegation from proceeding. DCA Trust had sought to require ICANN to follow the terms of independent review process proceedings that found ICANN mishandled DCA's 2013 challenge to the nonprofit's .africa delegation decision. DCA Trust also wanted ICANN to reconsider the registry's application to be the .africa registry (see 1603070062 and 1603280050). The California court cited the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles’ dismissal in December of a lawsuit that Donuts’ Ruby Glen subsidiary filed against ICANN over the controversial auction of the .web generic top-level domain, in which Judge Percy Anderson ruled that the anti-lawsuit covenant that ICANN includes in all gTLD applications is enforceable. That same covenant bars DCA Trust from suing ICANN on claims of fraud and unfair business practices, the California Superior Court ruled Thursday. ICANN said it “will now follow its normal processes towards delegation” of the .africa gTLD. DCA Trust didn’t comment Friday.
Verisign lost its appeal Wednesday to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of District Judge Claude Hilton’s 2015 dismissal of the domain name registry’s false advertising lawsuit against registry XYZ. Verisign claimed XYZ violated the Lanham Act by claiming entities couldn't get desired .com domain names from Verisign, and that XYZ’s .xyz top-level domain was “the next .com.” Hilton dismissed the lawsuit in the Alexandria, Va., court, saying XYZ’s statements about its rising registration numbers were “verifiably true." When XYZ “stated they were a market leader in new TLD’s and that they had the most new registrations than any other TLD, they were basing that information off of an accurate zone file,” Hilton said in his ruling (in Pacer). A three-member 4th Circuit panel affirmed Hilton’s ruling Wednesday. Verisign’s analysis of XYZ’s claims “suffers from what we have identified as a ‘fatal flaw’ in calculating Lanham Act damages: It assumes rather than demonstrates that every .xyz registration during the relevant time period was the result of XYZ’s allegedly false statements,” said Judge Pamela Harris for the three-member panel. Judges Henry Floyd and James Wynn joined Harris in affirming the district court ruling. XYZ’s claims about the availability of .com domain names couldn’t be considered false or misleading under the Lanham Act, the 4th Circuit ruled. “XYZ’s statements concerning the availability of desirable .com names constitute opinion or puffery, not statements of fact on which reasonable consumers could rely,” the court said. “XYZ’s YouTube video claim that it is ‘impossible to find the domain name that you want’ … we conclude, cannot be interpreted as a verifiable statement of objective fact.” Verisign and XYZ didn’t immediately comment.