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.

As Russia opens up its .?? (.RF in Cyrillic) domain to foreign (non-Russian) applicants (the new rules apply from November 11, 2011), comes another reminder of the country's incredible success with its IDN ccTLD (Internationalised Domain Name country code Top Level Domain).

Registration in the Cyrillic domain opened on November 11, 2010. Today, more than 900,000 domains have been registered! An incredible number, underlined by the fact that 68% of those names have been delegated (i.e. they are ready to be used on the Internet) and 25% are linked to working websites.

Russia's sense of national pride remains as strong as ever, as shown by the fact that the TLD has proven most popular with individuals. They account for 70% of registrations, businesses covering the remaining 30%.

One leading Russian registrar polled its clients and found that a whopping 90% of private individual domain owners plan to renew, and that 62% of registrants consider that the Cyrillic domain is easier to use and understand for them than the equivalent ASCII domain.

The forces of resistance to change and innovation are stepping up their fight against the rollout of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).

Never mind the fact that the program itself is the result of:

• 21 months (from 2005 to 2007) of intense work by the GNSO resulting in a consensus vote to approve the program's guiding principles from the various groups that make up the GNSO – ICANN's manager of policy development for gTLDs.
• 7 draft versions of the program's Applicant Guidebook, documented and augmented by 47 comment periods during which over 2,400 comments were received and analysed by the ICANN team in charge of implementing the GNSO's new gTLD policy recommendations.
• 55 explanatory texts or independent reports were produced during this implementation phase which lasted from June 2008 to June 2011.

Since the ICANN Board vote to approve the program on June 20 2011, America's Association of National Advertisers is the driving force behind a new movement to stop new gTLDs, teaming up with businesses and companies to create the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight, or CRIDO.

On November 10, CRIDO sent a letter to the department of commerce to express its "strong concern with respect to the June 2011 decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers".

The letter mentions "troubling conflict of interest questions" which can no doubt be read as references to Peter Dengate Thrush's move, just after the June 2011 Board vote and as soon as he stepped down from his position as Chairman of the ICANN Board, to a gTLD consultancy firm.

In its letter, CRIDO seems happy to forget that ICANN is no longer under US control and calls on the DoC to postpone the January 12, 2012 application window. The letter is signed by 40 companies, including Amex, Adobe, Coca Cola, Dell, Ford, HP, Kellogg, Nestle USA, and Samsung.

Valeri Borisov, Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications watches on as ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom attempts to explain his organization's refusal to allow Bulgaria's 2 character Cyrillic domain. Photo Domain Forum.

Taking part in the Domain Forum in Bulgaria is turning out to be an extremely interesting experience providing a unique insight into other communities' concerns and issues with Internet governance in general, and ICANN in particular.

The big issue here is ICANN's refusal to grant Bulgaria a Cyrillic IDN .BG TLD. In March 2011, ICANN turned down the country's request, made under the IDN ccTLD fast track program, citing possible confusion problems between the requested TLD and Brazil's ASCII ccTLD .BR.

This was the second time Bulgaria had submitted the request, after being snubbed by ICANN a first time in May 2010.

Debate today has centered around this issue, with local Internet users obviously still smarting at the ICANN decision and both government officials in attendance mentioning the issue in their respective panel appearances as obvious criticism of ICANN.

ICANN's IDN ccTLD fast track is considered non transparent by Bulgarians, who do not feel they have had adequate rationale from ICANN on why they are not being allowed to use the Internet in their own script and language.

Valeri Borisov, Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications, in attendance at the Domain Forum event, explained that his country would most likely make a third request for the IDN TLD to ICANN, but perhaps not under the fast track program. Borisov said he hoped to see Cyrillic Bulgarian websites with a couple of years.

I'm at the Domain Forum in Sofia, Bulgaria, today doing a couple of presentations on new gTLDs. The first is an introduction to the program itself and the following panel I'm on is looking at what registrars will have to face as many new gTLDs come online and they are asked to connect to them.

The Domain Forum itself is a great opportunity to get outside the usual "ICANN bubble" that those of us who are used to attending ICANN meetings and working in that community tend to live in month-in, month-out.

It's a clear reminder that for some people, the acronyms "new gTLDs", "IDN, "GNSO" or GAC" don't mean anything. And yet, the GNSO's recommendations for the new gTLD program were clear: there needs to be enough communication ahead of launch so that as many potential applicants as possible are aware of the program.

Events like the Domain Forum in Sofia are an important part of achieving that aim. Looking around the room, this is clear. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom is here in Sofia speaking just before me as part of ICANN's outreach efforts on the new gTLD program. In attendance here in Bulgaria are the country's minister for IT, the country's GAC representative, and many people just wanting to learn more about the program itself.

Find out more about the Domain Forum here.

Did former ICANN Board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush damage the organisation by joining a new gTLD consultancy firm as soon as he left the Board?

If calls by a US Senator for more ethics at ICANN are anything to go by, the answer may very well be a resounding yes.

Ron Wyden, a democrat representing Oregon, has sent a letter to Acting Commerce Department Secretary Rebecca Blank and NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Agency) boss Lawrence Strickling in which he warns about the possibility for favouritism the "Dengate precedent" sets.

Obviously, the IANA contract that is currently up for renewal is the US government's main mechanism for putting pressure on ICANN. "I urge you to put in place guidelines that ensure any future IANA has clear ethics rules and conflict of interest requirements in place," Wyden wrote in his letter.

The Senator's press release also talks about his "concerns about the potential for bias and unfair favoritism stemming from a revolving door between internet regulators and the multi-million dollar domain name industry they formerly regulated."

So does ICANN have an ethics problem? In my opinion, it's the way the Board works at the moment that's the real concern. 

Perhaps current research into whether the Board should be paid might help...

As part of its drive to make sure its new gTLD program has maximum visibility, ICANN has opened a FAQ and general guidance site on new gTLDs.

The site provides help and information for potential new applicants, including useful links to the latest version of the applicant guidebook.

Video guides to new gTLDs and a calendar of upcoming gTLD-related events also feature.

As the program itself ramps up, the site will provide data on actual applications and stats for the first application round.

ICANN has published the latest version of the Applicant Guidebook. This September 19 version brings only limited changes compared to the May 30, 2011 guidebook.

The first and most noticeable is the inclusion of an actual first application round start and end date, and time!

Quoting from the new guidebook: The user registration and application submission periods open at 00:01 UTC 12 January 2012. The user registration period closes at 23:59 UTC 29 March 2012.

The new AG also takes into account the June 20, 2011 ICANN Board resolution which officially gave the new gTLD program a green light but included extra instructions. For instance, module 2 of the guidebook now describes how key terms associated with the Red Cross and the Olympic Committee cannot be requested as gTLDs.

These rules are subject to change however, as ICANN community work continues on issues such as whether the aforementioned organisations should also benefit from having their names protected at the second level, and how support can be provided (financial or otherwise) to needy applicants.