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.
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.
Continue reading “ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 4”
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.
Continue reading “ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 2”
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.
Continue reading “ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 1”
ICANN delays staff report on Verisign dot-COM contract until after ICANN67 meeting
Over 9000 comments were submitted to ICANN regarding the controversial Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement. The staff report had been due on March 6, 2020, before ICANN67 commenced (see archive.org for proof). However, ICANN has quietly changed the due date for the staff report to March 16, 2020, after ICANN67 is complete.
It is very odd that that they would extend the report’s due date, especially given that they would not extend the deadline for public comments (to ensure that the public had ample opportunity to reply to some of the statements that had been submitted by other stakeholders). ICANN has one set of standards for the public (deadlines are deadlines!), but another set of standards for their staff (deadlines are not really deadlines!).
It appears to me that this is a sign that ICANN intends to ignore the overwhelming opposition by the public to the proposed contract, and they hope to avoid immediate public scrutiny of such a biased report (just like their dot-ORG fiasco) by delaying it until after ICANN67 is complete. Had a biased staff report been delivered on schedule, they’d face difficult questions during their Public Forum. ICANN68 does not happen until late June of 2020, and by that time the ICANN Board may have already decided to rubber stamp the bad deal, making questions at ICANN68 pointless.
Given the above potential for “gaming” by ICANN staff, it’s imperative that ICANN makes no decision regarding the dot-COM agreement until the public has an opportunity to scrutinize the staff report and provide feedback to the ICANN Board. As I pointed out in my own submission (point #17), there is no requirement to complete a “negotiation” with Verisign until October or November of 2020, so ICANN should refrain from making any decisions until at least after ICANN68.
Comments to ICANN Opposing Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement
Below is a (slightly reformatted) version of the comments I submitted to ICANN today regarding the Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement. The deadline for comments is just a few hours away, so hopefully they inspire others to submit comments, if they’ve not already done so. [Note: I submitted a 2nd comment later in the day, which is below the first comment]
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ICANN RPM PDP Co-chair Uses Double Standard To Shut Down URS Debate
People are beginning to realize there is something terribly wrong with the URS policy, as discussed in part 1 and part 2 of my recent series of articles titled “URS: A Failed Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy That ICANN Insiders Wish To Impose On More Registrants”.
One member of the working group attempted to broach the subject today on the mailing list, noting:
Here are 3 example URS determinations that seem very troubling from the public information available.
Rather than allow debate and analysis to continue, however, Kathy Kleiman, writing “as co-chair” (rather than in a personal capacity) wrote that:
At a certain point, you have to draw a line a line (sic) and move on.
However, this is completely opposite to how the URS Individual Proposals have been treated by the co-chairs of the working group. Rather than “drawing a line” and “moving on” after decisions were made in 2018 for inclusion of all individual proposals, they relitigated that entire issue. They even violated the rules while doing so.
This demonstrates the “double standard”, that the co-chairs can go back and redo things when it suits their desires, but others are told they have to “move on” when trying to bring up legitimate topics.
The need to remove the co-chairs and replace them with an independent and neutral facilitator has never been greater.
URS: A Failed Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy That ICANN Insiders Wish To Impose On More Registrants (Part 2)
In this multi-part series, I look at the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) policy, a domain name dispute resolution policy that the RPM PDP working group of ICANN is currently reviewing. In part 1, I gave an overview of the URS, and looked at 6 recent domain dispute decisions to help illustrate why it’s such a failed policy, one that belongs in the trash heap of history.
In this post, I will look at some of the individual proposals for changing the URS that may or may not be published in the Initial Report of the working group.
Currently the working group co-chairs are openly violating the working group rules, relitigating which URS proposals submitted by individual members (including myself, before I was unfairly banished from participation) should be published in the coming report that is open for public comment. Despite this, those remaining members of the working group have not challenged the proposed agenda, which would exclude proposals from the Initial Report.
I will go through the individual proposals in the same order that the working group is doing, in order to illuminate the issues involved. As there are more than 30 of them, I will cover just 7 of them in this post.
URS: A Failed Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy That ICANN Insiders Wish To Impose On More Registrants (Part 1)
In this multi-part series, I look at the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) policy, a domain name dispute resolution policy that the RPM PDP working group of ICANN is currently reviewing. In a fair and unbiased review of the facts, the URS would be abandoned as a failed idea. However, in the ICANN world, that fair and unbiased review doesn’t exist, and instead ICANN insiders wish to impose that flawed policy upon even more domain name registrants.