This just in...

Statement by Akram Atallah, COO

8 May 2012

ICANN is targeting 22 May 2012 as the intended reopening date for the TLD Application System. It is anticipated that the system would remain open for five business days and close on 30 May. This takes account of the 28 May Memorial Day holiday in the United States.

We took TAS offline following a technical glitch that may have allowed some users to see some file names and user names of other users. We have seen no evidence that any TAS user intentionally did anything wrong in order to be able to see other users' information.

We have met our commitment to provide notice to all users on or before 8 May 2012 by sending out notifications today.

The large majority of users are unaffected by the glitch. We continue to review the extensive database of system logs and system traffic, and any new and relevant information that emerges from this analysis will be shared with applicants in a timely way.

Even as late as yesterday, 7 May 2012, our packet-level research uncovered a new set of instances (in addition to those previously announced) where another applicant might have viewed a set of system-generated file names. It is possible that further analysis will also show that some of the parties that we have notified were not affected, but notice was provided out of an abundance of caution.

We thank everyone for your patience and apologize for the inconvenience the delay has caused.

As of today, April 20, 2012, ICANN's TLD Application System (TAS) remains offline, and no restart date has been given.

So 8 days after the scheduled close of the first new gTLD application window on April 12, the programme remains in limbo. Initial criticism at ICANN's decision to take the system offline has now made way to stunned silence, as everyone wonders just how long this can go on.

I personally take a small measure of consolation from the fact that ICANN has apparently followed my advice and decided to be as communicative as possible. Updates have been posted nearly everyday, and today a video interview with ICANN Chief Security Officer Jeff Moss offers an honest response to what evidently remains a difficult technical problem.

Highlights of the Moss interview include:

• System glitch allowed some applicants (a minority) to view other applicants' file names, but NOT data contained in those files;


• No evidence of TAS being hacked;


• ICANN's new gTLD team working 24/7 to fix the problem;


• Bug has been identified, ICANN now taking the time to sift through its logs to identify all the affected applicants AND all those who might have had access to another applicant's file names;


• An candid rationale for the system still being down, and for its restart date not having been set yet.

What happens if "significantly more" than 500 TLDs are applied for in the first round of new gTLDs? ICANN Staff have been pondering this conundrum for many months. The answer: batch the applications. The reason: ICANN's processing capabilities do not allow it to realistically deal with more than 500 applications at any one time.

ICANN has always said that there would be no first come, first served for new gTLDs. So some kind of random selection process would have made sense if the number of TLDs applied for was greater than 500. How much greater? ICANN's Kurt Pritz told the GNSO Council at the recent Costa Rica meeting that anything much over 510 applications would force ICANN to adopt a batching solution.

But random selection has been deemed a no-go due to the dangers of ICANN being seen as a lottery operator. So what to do? Especially as an auction type selection process was deemed unacceptable (for the obvious reason that richer applicants would then be put at a significant advantage).

The solution ICANN has adopted (the Board signed off on it on March 28) is dubbed "digital archery". The idea is to set a target time for applicants and ask them to click on a button as close to that target time as possible. The closer you get, the better your chances of being in the first batch.

The process is explained in detail here. It was first shown by ICANN Staff in Costa Rica, where it was not well received. Nonetheless, it looks like applicants need to sharpen their digital bows and begin practicing hitting a virtual target. With 839 registered users in ICANN's application system 4 days before its March 29 cut-off date, it is now a mathematical certainty that batching will be needed.

ICANN's application system for new gTLDs (TAS) closed to new registrants yesterday (March 29) as planned. The total number of registrants on the system isn't known yet, but ICANN has indicated that there were 839 registered TAS users on March 25.

In the run-up to the April 12 cut-off date for the first new gTLD application window there's been a real surge of TAS registrations. Each registered user can submit up to 49 TLD applications, so the latest numbers put the total potential number of new gTLDs that could come out of this first round at 41,111!

Final TAS user numbers should be higher than the 839 figure and could in fact be close to a thousand. It's clear that most users will never get anywhere near applying for the total number of TLDs their TAS slot would entitle them to, but some will definitely apply for more than one.

So total number of TLDs applied for? My guess at this stage would have to be somewhere in the region of 1,500.

In a surprise move just ahead of the Costa Rica ICANN meeting, the US government has cancelled its RFP (Request For Proposals) on the IANA function. A statement from the US government reads: "The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) reached an agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to continue performing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions until September 30, 2012. The IANA functions are the key technical functions supporting the Internet Domain Name System."

Reasons for the cancellation are unclear, but a statement from the Department of Commerce seems to imply there was dissatisfaction with the ICANN response to the RFP. "We are cancelling this RFP because we received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community.  The Department intends to reissue the RFP at a future date to be determined so that the requirements of the global internet community can be served."

ICANN was expected to be retained as the IANA function administrator until the surprise cancelation.

Dot Africa has ambitious plans to develop a TLD by Africans and for Africans. "Around 1.3 millions US dollars has been invested in making the TLD a truly representative label for the continent of Africa," Koffi Djossou, Africa Liaison for the project, told me as we were both flying to Costa Rica for this week's ICANN meeting.

The initiative sounds impressive, because it has been thought up as a way to stimulate Africa's domain industry. So the seed money and the registry systems are African. "There is so much potential in Africa," Djossou says. "This is a way to highlight that potential and group the continent behind its own online identity. It's also a good opportunity to boost the domain name industry in Africa, and to develop use of the name system by Africans. We see this as a great opportunity for Africa."

A press release published on the Net says that privatejet.com has just been sold for $30.18 million in cash and stocks!

If it's true, it's an impressive transaction that completely overshadows the previous record for a pure domain sale set by sex.com and its $13 million.?

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!

Laurence Strickling, US Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and the NTIA's (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) Administrator has sent a letter to ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker on the new gTLD program.

The letter is dated January 3, 2012. Nine days before the scheduled launch of the program on January 12.

I am very impressed by the letter.

The US government clearly gets the unique multistakeholder governance model that ICANN embodies. The letter is a statement of staunch support for that model, right down to the constructive criticism of the new gTLD program it puts forward.

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.