Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 6

In this series, I examine past behavior at ICANN, contrasting it with the Expected Standards of Behavior (ESOB), and ask you to decide for yourself whether it has been applied equally to everyone, or instead is applied selectively to achieve different results when different people are involved.

Philip S. Corwin, is Policy Counsel at Verisign (the dot-com registry operator), and one of the co-chairs in the RPM PDP working group that is chartered to review the UDRP, URS, and other rights protection mechanisms.

I previously documented how Mr. Corwin previously publicly rebuked me, in October 2018, for using the term “wish lists”, a term that had been used by others at ICANN.

On April 24, 2019, in a meeting of the Trademark Claims Data Review Sub Team of the RPM PDP, Mr. Corwin said the following in regards to one of the proposals I submitted:

Not to pile on – and I haven’t heard any support for this yet – I
just want to state in a personal capacity I regard this proposal as an intentionally poison pill proposal coming from a former member of this working group who was exceedingly clear that he wanted to sunset most, if not all, of the new TLD RPMs. [page 27 of transcript or starting at 45:40 of the MP3 recording, emphasis added]

So, in one instance, Mr. Corwin rebukes the innocuous term “wish lists” only when I use it (and not when others have used it). But then in another instance, Mr. Corwin feels free to make a far worse statement of his own, using the phrase “intentionally poison pill proposal.” His statement falsely suggests that my good faith proposal was actually made in bad faith (which is an attack on me personally). According to the ESOB, which Mr. Corwin claims must be followed, “Those who take part in the ICANN process must acknowledge the importance of all stakeholders and seek to understand their points of view.” Rather than attempt to do so, Mr. Corwin engaged in an attack against me when I wasn’t even present to defend myself (as I had been unfairly banished earlier that month. That’s the typical conduct of a coward, one who knows he can get away with an attack because the target of the statements isn’t present.

Without going into great length in this post (I’ll save that for future blog posts reviewing all my proposals), I made a serious proposal in good faith which sought to reimburse registrars for their costs (my company is not a registrar directly, although we do act as a reseller of the registrar Tucows mostly for the management of our own domain names) related to the Trademark Claims notices, via a CPM-based method. Some registrars haven’t even implemented the notices for new gTLDs (these notices might even become mandatory for legacy TLDs, depending on the outcome of the PDP), and those that did implement the notices have seen very high abandonment rates when prospective registrants are shopping for their domains. My proposal was a good faith attempt to find an economic solution to an economic problem (my academic background is in economics and finance), and one that is easy to implement (many DNS providers charge usage-based fees proportional to the number of DNS requests, as do other systems that use APIs, and as do many online advertising systems).

Indeed, it’s rich for Mr. Corwin, an employee and representative of Verisign, to attack my attempts to “work to build consensus with other stakeholders” (to quote the ESOB, with the “other stakeholders” being registrars facing burdens due to ICANN’s policies) and to act “irrespective of personal interests” (to again quote the ESOB, as my company isn’t directly impacted by the notices at present), given that section 7.3(d)(ii) of Verisign’s dot-com registry agreement permits Verisign to be directly compensated (through higher prices) if a new ICANN consensus policy imposes new burdens on Verisign. My proposal simply attempts to provide registrars with reimbursement for their burdens, to have similar protections that Verisign enjoys.

Indeed, I made another proposal in a similar vein which sought the provision of open source software examples to be provided to registrars, to once again lower the burden on registrars by lowering their implementation costs. This second proposal read in combination with the other shows my good faith intent to address a real economic problem for registrars. I doubt Mr. Corwin or Verisign would unilaterally offer to remove section 7.3(d)(ii) from their contract without compensation, but his criticism of my proposal would ring more sincere if Verisign did so.

Mr. Corwin, in rebuking me in the past, asserted that one should “refrain from using terms that denigrate the efforts and ideas of other WG members“. But it’s clear that he feels free to use phrases like “intentionally poison pill proposal” and not follow his own advice in his attack on myself, his policy opponent. Indeed, Mr. Corwin’s hypocrisy reminds me of Matthew 7:5:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

In conclusion, this example further illustrates the dangers of the ESOB. It has been weaponized to selectively target and eliminate policy opponents using one alleged “standard” of behavior, but then equal or even worse conduct is permitted. The double standard is clear.

Ten Year Renewal In Advance of Domain Name Fee Increases Is Inadequate Protection

In the past month, one of the most controversial topics in the domain name world has been the proposal by ICANN to permit unlimited fee increases for .ORG domain names, compared to the current generous allowance of 10% annual fee increases (far above inflation). My own submission in the public comment period can be read in a prior blog post.

Yesterday, PIR, the registry operator, wrote an open letter to the .ORG community that can be summarized in 2 words, “trust us.” That is insufficient. Organizations have a tendency to change their minds, especially when it serves their interests. What matters is what’s
in the contracts, as what is allowed to happen often does happen. Continue reading “Ten Year Renewal In Advance of Domain Name Fee Increases Is Inadequate Protection”

My comments to ICANN opposing proposed .org, .info, .biz and .asia contract renewals

Below is a (slightly reformatted) version of the comments I submitted to ICANN today regarding the proposed .org, info, .biz and .asia contract renewals. The deadline for comments on the .org and .info contracts is just a few hours away (longer deadline for .biz and .asia), so hopefully they inspire others to submit comments, if they’ve not already done so.

Submitted by: George Kirikos
Company: Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc.
Websitehttp://www.leap.com/
Date: April 29, 2019

We write to oppose the proposed contract renewals posted by ICANN for the .org, .info, .biz and .asia contracts, as posted for public comments at:

https://www.icann.org/public-comments/org-renewal-2019-03-18-en
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/info-renewal-2019-03-18-en
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/biz-renewal-2019-04-03-en
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/asia-renewal-2019-03-27-en

While our arguments are focused on the .org TLD, to the extent that
the contractual terms are similar for the other TLDs, we repeat the
same comments for .info, .biz and .org. Indeed, while the majority of
the thousands of public comments to date have focused on .org, ICANN
should read those comments as also applying to .info, .biz and .org,
even if the submitters did not explicitly submit their comments to all
4 email addresses.

Continue reading “My comments to ICANN opposing proposed .org, .info, .biz and .asia contract renewals”

Should ICANN staff be fired over the outrageous .org, .info, .biz and .asia proposed registry contracts?

ICANN staff put forth outrageous proposals for the renewal of the .org, .biz, .info and .asia contracts, which are now open for public comment (with the first deadline being April 29, 2019). ICANN is proposing allowing unlimited fee increases for .org domain names, which currently are allowed to increase a maximum of 10% annually. That 10% annual cap of fee increases came about after the huge public outcry that ensued in 2006 when a comparable proposal to eliminate price caps was made, and successfully opposed by the public. It seems that ICANN did not learn from history.

More than 100 comments have been submitted so far regarding the .org contract renewal, with most of them vehemently opposed to the potential for unlimited fee increases.

Should ICANN staff be held accountable for such outrageously one-sided contracts?  Please vote in the poll below on Twitter:

Continue reading “Should ICANN staff be fired over the outrageous .org, .info, .biz and .asia proposed registry contracts?”

Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 5

In this series, I examine past behavior at ICANN, contrasting it with the Expected Standards of Behavior (ESOB), and ask you to decide for yourself whether it has been applied equally to everyone, or instead is applied selectively to achieve different results when different people are involved.

Philip S. Corwin is Policy Counsel at Verisign (the dot-com registry operator), and one of the co-chairs in the RPM PDP working group that is chartered to review the UDRP, URS and other rights protection mechanisms.

On October 23, 2018, Mr. Corwin sent a bizarre email to the RPM PDP working group mailing list in his “capacity as co-chair” rebuking me
for using the term “wish lists”. Continue reading “Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 5”

Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 4

In this series, I examine past behavior at ICANN, contrasting it with the Expected Standards of Behavior (ESOB), and ask you to decide for yourself whether it has been applied equally to everyone, or instead is applied selectively to achieve different results when different people are involved.

Gregory S. Shatan is an attorney at Moses & Singer LLP. He claims
that that the ESOB are “bedrock principles of ICANN participation” and
does his “best to abide by them”.

On August 31, 2017, within the Adobe Connect chat, Mr. Shatan
introduced the “Jane, you ignorant slut” meme into the conversation:

Continue reading “Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 4”

Impact of the URS and Unlimited Fee Increases for Registrants in .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ and .ASIA

I had the pleasure of having a discussion today with several members of the ICANN At-Large community, regarding the proposed contracts for .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ and .ASIA that are now out for public comment. Glenn McKnight, Jonathan Zuck and Eduardo Diaz participated, along with myself, and it was recorded (see YouTube recording here; best to fast forward to 1:40 into the recording, to get to the true beginning of the discussions). I hope you find it educational, and will comment on these proposed contracts. I’ll have more to say about these contracts as we get closer to the deadline for comments later this month.

There’s also an audio MP3 recording of our discussion.

Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 3

In this series, I examine past behavior at ICANN, contrasting it with the Expected Standards of Behavior (ESOB), and ask you to decide for yourself whether it has been applied equally to everyone, or instead is applied selectively to achieve different results when different people are involved.

Gregory S. Shatan is an attorney at Moses & Singer LLP. He claims that the ESOB are “bedrock principles of ICANN participation” and does his “best to abide by them”. Continue reading “Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 3”

Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 2

In this series, I examine past behavior at ICANN, contrasting it with the  Expected Standards of Behavior (ESOB), and ask you to decide for yourself whether it has been applied equally to everyone, or instead is applied selectively to achieve different results when different people are involved.

Recall that ICANN General Counsel John Jeffrey has claimed that there is “zero tolerance” for conduct in violation of the ESOB. The preamble to the ESOB makes it clear that it should apply to ICANN staff.

Those who take part in ICANN multi-stakeholder process, including Board, staff and all those involved in Supporting Organization and Advisory Committee councils, undertake to:

Fadi Chehade, in his position as CEO of ICANN at the time, disrespected a segment of domain name registrants in 2015, accusing them of “hogging” domain names, and equating them to cybersquatters.

Continue reading “Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 2”

Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 1

In a prior blog post, I documented how the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior (ESOB) document is merely an aspirational statement, and not binding. As the ICANN Ombudsman Herb Waye has stated “it’s not a rule with sanction or penalty to it.

However, let’s pretend for a moment that it is binding. Has it been applied consistently and equally?

Continue reading “Double Standards in the Application of the ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior – Part 1”