Category: domain names

Original Cooperative Agreement That Laid The Foundation of Verisign’s Monopoly

To understand Verisign’s anti-competitive monopoly for dot-com domain name registration services, it is important to analyze its agreements with the US government. NTIA has a page on their website documenting aspects of their cooperative agreement with Verisign. However, that page is incomplete, as it only lists Amendments 10 through 35.  The original agreement (between the National Science Foundation and Network Solutions) and the first 9 amendments are not published.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was made to NTIA to obtain those additional historical records. I’m happy to report that NTIA responded to that request and sent all the requested documents. [NB: the US government takes FOIA requests seriously, unlike ICANN’s broken Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, which pretends to be like the FOIA but is far inferior to it]

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 6

More and more people are coming to the realization that the ICANN comment periods are a sham, open to manipulation by ICANN insiders and staff. The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ended on May 4, 2020, eleven days ago. I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts here, here, here, here and here). Rather than diving in and actually doing the work of analyzing the public comments, ICANN staff are actively preventing working group members from having easy access to those submissions.

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URGENT: Last call to submit comments on RPM PDP Initial Report

The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ends 23:39 UTC on May 4, 2020, just a day from now (which is not sufficient time to do a thorough analysis). I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts here, here, here and here).

[Update: I finished my final comments at 1:30 am Toronto time on May 4, so I’ve updated the article below with links to the newer PDF; the changes were relatively minor since the earlier draft, with just some tweaks on the TMCH comments, and stylistic changes, typos, etc.]

To help those who wish to submit public comments, or who wish to refine their own, I’m posting a draft the final version of my extensive comments here. My answers are all in RED text. I’m unable to use the broken online forms, so I’ll need to submit via a DOCX file by tomorrow instead.

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 5

The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ends on May 4, 2020, less than 2 days from now (which is not sufficient time to do a thorough analysis). I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts here, here, here and here). However, it continues to be fraught with problems. Continue reading “ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 5”

Has ICANN been secretly recording the confidential NomCom meetings?

In a newly discovered document in an obscure ICANN mailing list that isn’t generally monitored by most in the general public, Jay Sudowski, the Chair of the 2020 ICANN Nominating Committee, has made serious allegations concerning ICANN.

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ICANN’s garbage public comment system

Despite my misgivings about the sham that is the comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process which I’ve written about in the past 4 blog posts, I attempted to continue to submit my comments today, which I had already started over the weekend (already more than 20 hours invested, to get to about 25% through the various questions, including background research and reading the report, etc.). However, the comment system is entirely broken.

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 4

The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ends on May 4, 2020, just 7 days from now (which is not sufficient time to do a thorough analysis). I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts here, here and here). However, it continues to be fraught with problems, including coordinated duplicative submissions.

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 3

ICANN actively mistreats stakeholders who don’t understand English when it comes to policy development. While ICANN pretends to consider the global public interest, that cannot happen when non-English fluent participants are treated unfairly as second-class citizens. This is evident in the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process which is now open for public comment, as I’ve been writing about it for the past week (see my prior blog posts here and here).

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 2

In my prior blog post, I wrote about the public comment period for the  Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process. Any comments that are submitted by the public will be analyzed by the working group members. I believe that working group has been captured, and here are some numbers to back up that belief.

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 1

ICANN has an open comment period for the  Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process. It ends in just 14 days, would have a great impact on registrants’ rights and not a single person has submitted any comments to date, as of the time of this post.

To be able to comment, one has to first read the 147 page initial report. Then, one has to contemplate its contents, analyze it, and research related issues, including what its authors removed from it (see below). Then, one has to carefully submit thoughtful comments via an online form that has 192 separate sections!  The document simply describing all the questions in the online form is a whopping 71 pages. To actually submit thoughtful comments would take an enormous amount of time, far more than is available.

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