SK-NIC, part of Team Internet, says it plans to auction off all 36 single-character .sk domains over the coming months. The auction plans also include releasing all the 200-odd two-letter domains that match existing ccTLDs, as well as .com.sk and .net.sk, which have all been registry-reserved to date. The registry said it plans to hold […]
The post All the one-character .sk domains to be auctioned first appeared on Domain Incite.
ICANN is to ban new gTLD applicants from paying each other off if they apply for the same strings, removing a business model that saw tens of millions of dollars change hands in the 2012 application round. But, in a twist, applicants will be able to submit second-choice strings along with their main application, allowing […]
The post Big twist as ICANN bans new gTLD auctions first appeared on Domain Incite.
ICANN plans to ban private auctions in the next new gTLD application round, chair Tripti Sinha has told governments. The board of directors plans to accept the Governmental Advisory Committee’s recent advice to “prohibit the use of private auctions in resolving contention sets in the next round of New gTLDs”, Sinha told her GAC counterpart […]
The post Private auctions to be banned in next new gTLD round first appeared on Domain Incite.
ICANN is planning to give $5 million of its auctions war-chest to new gTLD applicants from less well-off nations and wants community feedback on the idea. The Org is sitting on over $200 million raised by auctioning gTLDs from the 2012 application round, and thinks some of it could be well-spent on subsidizing applicants in […]
The post ICANN to earmark $10 million for new gTLD subsidies first appeared on Domain Incite.
Company pitches a model that provides an incentive to place bids. Picture this: you’re bidding in a domain auction. It goes on for hours, and you end up capitulating to some other domain investor. But you don’t walk away empty-handed. That’s the idea behind GBM’s auction model. The company’s auction technology incentivizes people to bid […]
Post link: Would this incentivized auction model work in the domain name business?
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Governments have upped the stakes in their opposition to new gTLDs being auctioned off privately, now calling for an outright prohibition on the practice. ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee today published its formal advice coming out of last week’s public meeting in Kigali, calling for ICANN to “prohibit the use of private auctions in resolving contention […]
The post Governments call for new gTLD auctions ban first appeared on Domain Incite.
The GNSO Council has started discussing bringing in the lawyers over ICANN’s recent handling of issues related to its $200+ million auction fund and Grant Program. The Council today raised the possibility of deploying the never-before-used Community Independent Review Process, which would involve every major community group ganging up on ICANN’s board in a protracted […]
The post GNSO mulls lawyering up over auction fund dispute first appeared on Domain Incite.
Parts of the ICANN community have revolted over ICANN’s move to make it easier to turn off the mechanisms used to appeal its decisions.
Both registries and registrars, along with their usual opponents in the business and intellectual property communities, have told the Org that a proposal to change its foundational bylaws are overly broad and creates new powers to diminish ICANN’s accountability.
Meanwhile, the Intellectual Property Constituency seems to have escalated its beef with ICANN related to the proposals, entering into a Cooperative Engagement Process with ICANN. CEP is usually, but not always, a precursor to an expensive, quasi-judicial Independent Review Process case.
The row relates to the Grant Program, which launched a month ago and will see ICANN hand out $217 million it gained from auctioning registry contracts during the 2012 new gTLD program application round.
The rules of the program were developed by the Cross-Community Working Group on New gTLD Auction Proceeds.
The CCWG was afraid that ICANN might wind up frittering away most of the money on legal fees unless unsuccessful grant applicants, and third parties, were banned from appealing grant decisions they didn’t like. So its Recommendation 7 proposed a bylaws amendment that would prevent the Independent Review Process and Request for Reconsideration process from being used with reference to the Grant Program.
What ICANN came up with instead is a bylaws amendment that could be applied not only to the Grant Program, but also potentially to any future activities.
Specifically, ICANN’s proposed amendment gives future CCWGs, assuming they have sufficient community representation, the ability to recommend exceptions to the accountability mechanisms, which ICANN could then accept without having the amend the bylaws every time.
But almost every constituency that has filed an opinion on the proposals so far thinks ICANN has gone too far.
The IPC said says ICANN’s proposal is “unacceptably broad and exceeds what is necessary to give effect to Recommendation 7” adding:
The IPC is also concerned that making such a broad Bylaws amendment could have the consequence of normalizing the idea of removing access to accountability mechanisms, rather than this being an exceptional event. This is not something that should be encouraged.
The Registries Stakeholder Group said the proposal “creates an alternative path for amending the Bylaws that contradicts the existing amendment processes”
“The Accountability Mechanisms are foundational to ICANN’s legitimacy. Access to Accountability Mechanisms should be prevented only in rare circumstances with the clear support of the Empowered Community,” it added.
The Registrar Stakeholder Group concurred, writing:
Robust Accountability Mechanisms are a lynchpin of ICANN’s broader accountability structure. They should only be disallowed, if ever, in very specific circumstances, and as a result of the full bylaw amendment process. The proposed bylaws amendment vests CCWGs with the power to disallow Accountability Mechanisms which we believe is inappropriate.
Several commenters pointed out that CCWGs are less formal ICANN policy-making structure, with fewer checks and balances than regular Policy Development Processes.
The only dissenting view came from the At-Large Advisory Committee, which said it “strongly supports” ICANN’s proposed amendment, writing:
Although any limitation in accountability is potentially onerous, the ALAC is comfortable that the three conditions proposed in the amendment only allow such limitations in situations where a more specific Bylaw limitation would also be approved by the Empowered Community.
In a related development, the IPC has taken the highly unusual move of entering CEP with ICANN, suggesting it is on the IRP path.
The IPC had filed a Request for Reconsideration late last year, at a time when it appeared that ICANN had outright rejected Recommendation 7 (having previously approved it), but ICANN’s board threw it out mostly on the grounds that the IPC could not show it had been harmed, which the IPC found curious.
If the IPC were to go to IRP, it would be unprecedented. The mechanism has only ever been used by companies defending their commercial interests, never by one of ICANN’s own community groups on a matter of principle.
The post Community revolts over ICANN’s auction proceeds power grab first appeared on Domain Incite.
With too many auction winners failing to hand over the loot, the .ai registry has changed its auction terms to make being a deadbeat more expensive.
The registry has increased its deposit requirement from 2% to 5% for bidders considered “high risk”, which basically means new customers, or $100, whichever is higher. The deposit is forfeit if the buyer fails to pay.
The move comes because too many winners are currently failing to pay. On Twitter, registry manager Vince Cate wrote yesterday:
On http://auction.whois.ai we have had too many cases of people not paying for domains they bid for so we are increasing the deposit requirement to 5% and the non-payment fee to 5% effective immediately.
The registry conducts monthly auctions of expired inventory on its own platform using park.io software and is mirrored at Dynadot. The highest-interest names regularly attract five-figure bids, due to the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence.
Sometimes, the same names show up in consecutive auctions because the previous winner didn’t pay up. In January, for example, dog.ai and insure.ai, which had both attracted bids over $20,000, returned to auction.
The post .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules first appeared on Domain Incite.
