Icann President Paul Twomey talks to DomainesInfo.fr about Vice President Paul Verhoef departure from Icann, the Dot NET reassignment process… and a new bulk registration and deletion technique.
Icann CEO and President Paul Twomey
Icann CEO and President Paul Twomey was in Brussels, Belgium, last week and that's where DomainesInfo.fr caught up with him. This setting was the perfect opportunity to talk about the recent departure of Icann's vice-president Paul Verhoef, on loan to Icann from the European Commission, where he's gone back to head Europe's Galileo GPS project.
Verhoef's rather sudden departure from Icann has stoked the ever-ready rumour mill. Is the European Commission distancing itself from Icann? Ahead of the upcoming second phase of WSIS, is this a bad omen for an Icann already fighting to prove its legitimacy in the face of increasing pressure from other would-be Internet regulators like the ITU?
We put these questions to Twomey, before moving on to discuss the recent Dot NET decision, the price of gTLDs in general… and a new trend that registrar INDOM's monitoring tools have helped us identify in recent weeks: bulk registrations of potentially IP rights infringing domain names that are then released in a matter of days, before they can be permanently added to the registry database. Icann is obviously aware of this and Paul Twomey was able to shed some light on the matter.
Can you tell us a little bit more about Paul Verhoef's departure from Icann? What's been said already is pretty much the story. It's a case of too good an opportunity to miss I think, him being offered the position of the head of that project. There were some timing issues from the European Commission that meant that it had to be the end of June. I think all of us, Paul myself and others, would have preferred it be later because there's work he's been involved in at the moment, WSIS and other things… We're disappointed and I think it's a little bitter sweet for Paul as well.
But we'll keep the linkage. I was just meeting today to Fabio Colasanti (the EC's Director General for Information Society) in Brussels talking about reinforcing our relations. We'll keep talking to each other.
It was obviously important for Icann to have people working in Brussels so close to the European Commission… We've still got people working in Brussels. We're not looking at changing any of that arrangement.
So no truth to the rumours that Paul was getting fed up with the Icann processes? No I don't think there's any truth to that. We all know that there are frustrations you've got to work through in this environment. But he's made it very clear to me that this was just an opportunity that was too good to miss.
Let's go through the myths. It's not a question of him being frustrated with the Icann processes. It's not a statement of the European Commission stopping its support of Icann. Fabio's letter which we posted was pretty clear on that I think. It's not any indication that Icann's future is endangered. Far from it. Good people will join us and good people will leave us to go elsewhere. I think it's the sign of a good organisation actually.
No Icann tax on Dot NET
Some people are surprised, given the patchy history between Icann and Verisign, that they've been awarded the Dot NET contract. What's your take on that? We play an important public role here and when you're doing that you've got to follow good processes. People who said we should make this or that decision based on this or that past event need to think much more carefully about how such decisions need to be made.
The process for Dot NET has gone on for more than twelve months. Importantly, a few of the people who have complained haven't taken the time to read the previous contract for Dot NET. It was not like the contract for Dot ORG. It was not a contract that said that this was pretty much going to go from Verisign to somebody else. The process was prepared. There was a process followed very carefully for the selection of an outside party. The outside party had many years of experience. They delivered a report. There were questions asked by the participants about that report. There was clarification done. But the evaluator came back with one candidate that they thought was the first. We followed the process.
Some people would come up to me and say that we couldn't possible give it to Verisign, or that we had to give it to Verisign. My answer was always the same. The process is the process. We all go through it. It doesn't matter what happens at the other end of the process. You've got to follow the process and that's what we've stuck to.
Verisign has in the past sometimes behaved in ways that have bothered Icann, Site Finder for example. Was there any contact between you and them on Dot NET to ensure this wouldn't happen again? We've made it clear in the draft contract of a new process whereby new registry services in Dot NET could be introduced. There's specific time bound processes for the approval of new services. Both to protect competition and security and stability. They are very clearly laid out and specifically designed to ensure that you cannot end up with the sudden introduction of things that may well destabilize the Internet. That contract was out for comment and Verisign signed up on that contract.
The contract seems to include an added tax which goes to Icann for each Dot NET sold… It's not a tax of any sort. That's ridiculous. From the very beginning, the RFP included a provision that whoever would run the registry, there would be a contribution to Icann's costs. Key constituencies like the registrars have been calling for the registries to contribute more to the Icann funds. Icann has an amazingly transparent budgetary process. Things have to be posted. There's a discussion in the community. We have a budgetary advisory group from across the community that we have to go through and justify our costs and what we spend our money on. That feeds to the board. The board has to approve the budget. The registrars have a role in reviewing the budget. So it's very transparent. It's not a budget that can be sorted out in dark rooms by the CFO.
Would Icann like to work towards stabilizing the price of high profile extensions like Dot COM or Dot NET? Setting of prices is something that we've got to be quite careful about. In terms of stabilizing, I think the thing we're very interested in, and you'll see this in the contract for Dot NET and also for some of the new TLDs, is allowing people who operate in those domains as businesses to innovate and make business decisions about offering new services but at the same time protecting competition and ensuring that whatever gets introduced doesn't effect the security and stability of the Internet.
Bulk registrations… and deletions
Can I ask you about something we've observed lately whereby one registrar seems to be registering a large number of names only to delete them the next day. We've heard some registrars have complained about this and that Icann might be preparing new rules to prevent this… There's actually deleting the names within five days. We've certainly had people complain but I can't confirm that we're looking at a response.
This comes out of a requirement to protect registrars and the registry itself. A registrar is able to purchase a domain name and renege on that purchase within five days if they themselves have not been paid. The origin of this was to deal with the problem of they take an order from a customer with a credit card and they find out the credit card bounces. They don't want to get stuck with something that they've paid for but haven't received money for from the customer. So there was this five day "redemption" put in place. Well it would appear that some people are gaining those five days. They're actually taking the domain name on day one, seeing if the secondary market is interested in that domain name. If there does seem to be some interest then they pay for the name and sell it on, eventually using some auctioning tool to do that. But if there is no interest they let the registration fail and don't pay for the name.
I think we've taken notice of this. This is a very sophisticated market with a lot of very sophisticated players who have shown themselves to be very adept at gaining and finding market opportunities in nearly any set of principles or rules that determine how the market works. We're certainly conscious of it, but I couldn't make any comment about whether we're considering anything in response.
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