Entries by Stephane Van Gelder

Reports of a major resolution failure on the .DE zone are coming out of Germany. It appears that for about 1.5 hours around lunchtime (in Europe) today, there was a problem with the nameservers used to support the .DE zonefile.

As a consequence, many .DE domains became unavailable causing disruptions to websites, email and other domain-related services. The German registry Denic apparently stepped in very quickly to correct the problem (which they may have caused by mistakenly reloading the zonefile with erroneous data), and the .DE zone now seems to be running normally again.

A statement on the problem has yet to be issued by Denic, but there are bound to be consequences. Denic runs the largest ccTLD in the world and this technical problem probably sets a new record for massive domain name disruptions. It is extremely rare, unheard of in fact, for such widespread disruption to occur at registry level on a major TLD.

I suppose it was inevitable that the recent scandal over the rigged domain name auctions at Snapnames would spill over into a major lawsuit.

According to an article published yesterday on OregonLive.com (Snapnames is based in Portland, Oregon), the company's new owners Oversee are suing Snapnames ex executive Nelson Brady for $33 million.

Brady is alleged to have spent years artificially inflating auction prices by bidding under an alias. This fraud is said to have impacted a whopping 36,000 auctions. When the scam became public, Snapnames (bought by Oversee in 2007) was forced to provide refunds to thousands of impacted customers.

Following the confirmation of Cartagena, Colombia for the December 2010 ICANN meeting, the ICANN Board has set aside a budget of US$2.126 million for that meeting, the last of the three ICANN traditionally holds each year in different regions of the world.

The amount, a maximum not to be exceeded, is inline with recent ICANN meeting costs.

Cartagena is scheduled to last for a week, from December 5 to 10, 2010.

ICANN practices regional rotation for the 3 international meetings it holds each calendar year, with the last one of 2010 planned for South America. Several venues were looked at but it now appears that the Colombian city of Cartagena has been selected.

Cartagena promises to be a landmark meeting for ICANN as the final version of the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook is scheduled to be released there. If that happens, then the first round of applications should start in Q1 2011, paving the way for an initial wave of new gTLDs to hit the Net in late 2011/early 2012.

Just been talking numbers with ICM Registry supremo Stuart Lawley, who is addressing the ICANN community in an open letter posted on CircleID.

And whatever opinions you have on the .XXX saga, you have to admit that the costs are simply staggering and show that there's obviously something wrong with the whole process when a business that was initially given a green light has to go though so much time and expense just to get what it was promised.

In saying this, I am merely repeating what ICANN's own Independent Review Panel thought a few months ago.

The costs of that review alone are staggering, for ICM and ICANN (i.e. the Internet community, or you and I if you prefer). "We spent $1 million in the first round in 2000," says Lawley. "Then another $1.5 million to get to the June 2005 approval stage. Then another $1.5 million to get to the Lisbon ICANN meeting. And the IRP review cost us over $5 million… so that's $9 million plus already."

Incredible isn't it. Lawley says that total costs for ICM have now risen above $10 million. "And the clock still keeps ticking," he adds.

ICANN's legal costs on the .XXX review are said to be around $2 million.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse has puzzled me for a long time. They claim to be "dedicated to ending the systemic domain name abuses that plague the Internet today". A very worthy cause on paper, except the CADNA people seem to be confusing constructive criticism with constant ranting.

Their latest is entitled "ICANN's gTLD launch costs businesses $746 million, increases cyber crime". What are these people on? And how do they get major brands to back their coalition's press releases?

Their pitch: new gTLDs will force businesses to defensively register, and therefore cost them. Never mind the fact that the ICANN community has been working for years now on refining a new gTLD program that incorporates powerful new brand protection measures. And so what if said program has been delayed time and time again precisely because the ICANN community, in a responsible and cautious approach, is making sure that it gets as many aspects of the new gTLD launch right as it can.

Innovation always means pushing the boundaries and leaping into the unknown. But the new gTLD program has been in preparation for years and it is being carefully thought out by many talented people. ICANN community volunteers within the GNSO (generic Names Supporting Organization) first drew out a set of recommendations. The ICANN Board (also volunteers) then approved them and asked ICANN Staff (also talented) to draft a model from them. The first iteration of that model came out in October 2008. The 4th is scheduled to be released this June. In between, there has been constant consultation, analysis and drafting. That is not haphazard experimentation. That is careful planning.

The new, ultra-restrictive registrations rules recently introduced by the Chinese authorities seem to be having quite an impact on .CN registrations.

According to Chinese registry CNNIC's latest figures, .CN has gone from around 13.5 million names last December to 9,353,120 names at the end of February.

This steep drop in volume sees Germany's .DE regain its status as the world's best-selling country code domain, with around 13.5 million names registered.

Sex.com was due to be auctioned yesterday, but the proceedings were cancelled. Creditors of the domain's current owner Escom filed for the firm to be declared bankrupt, thereby blocking any sale of Escom assets.

The creditors are thought to have considered that sex.com would not have been sold for a high enough amount at auction. It is now unclear what the next episode in this saga will be.

So intense was the sex.com saga that my good friend Kieren McCarthy, ex ICANN manager of public participation, even wrote a book about it. Will the last chapter of this story be written tomorrow, when the name comes up for auction in New York?

Domain name and Internet watchers around the world will no doubt focus their attention on New York tomorrow, where sex.com is set to come up for auction.

The most famous domain name in the world is more Hollywood than geek. Sex.com was first registered by Gary Kremen (who later went on to launch match.com) in 1994 with what was then the world's only registrar for .COM, Network Solutions.

The following year, Kremen realized that he was no longer listed as the owner of the name. A guy called Stephen Michael Cohen has simply sent a forged fax to Network Solutions asking for the name to be transferred, and Netsol has done so without even checking!

A drawn out legal battle ensued, Cohen even went as far as fleeing the US to avoid getting caught, but Kremen eventually won the rights to his domain back. Sex.com was by then an extremely valuable piece of Internet real-estate. It is said that at one point, the name bringing in $15,000 a day!

In 2006, he sold sex.com to a company called Escom LLC for a reported $14 million, although the actual amount has never been officially confirmed. Escom made the deal with a loan from DOM partners, and was then unable to repay.

To try and get some of their money back, DOM Partners are putting the name up for auction. To take part, potential buyers must stump up a $1 million certified cheque.

How much will the name go for? In today's economy, are people prepared to speculate millions of dollars on a domain name? All will be revealed tomorrow…

ICANN's 37th international meeting doesn't officially get underway until Monday, but for many attendees work has started already. I got to the meeting venue in Nairobi this morning and I'm happy to report that apart from some truly horrendous traffic, the Kenyan capital looks like being a very pleasant place to be in.

But I won't have much time for sightseeing over the next few days. This meeting promises to be challenging. Not just for me, although it will be that as well. The GNSO Council Chair Chuck Gomes is not making the trip over to Nairobi, so his chairing duties should have been split evenly between me and fellow GNSO Vice Chair Olga Cavalli. However I learned this morning that Olga is also unable to make the trip for personal reasons. I will therefore be chairing all the GNSO meetings, including the open Council meeting on Wednesday and the Council wrap-up on Thursday. Talk about being unexpectedly thrown in at the deep end…

But this meeting will also present several challenges for ICANN itself. First and foremost, will the organisation be able to keep this meeting relevant even though many of the usual suspects have chosen to stay away? The Board has some key topics on its agenda, not least a possible reconsideration of the .XXX application and the need to decide whether to okay the proposed Expressions of Interest for new gTLDs. It is imperative that this work not be slowed or delayed because there are less people physically present than usual. Otherwise the whole rationale for having this meeting could be questioned.

One way to ensure this will be to guarantee a high quality of remote participation for those not physically in Nairobi but who still wish to take part. Remote participation hasn't been a strong point at past ICANN meetings. Most of the time, remote participants have been relegated to the role of silent observers due to the inherent difficulties in making themselves heard in a room full of people onsite. For this meeting, the remote participants will definitely want to speak and be active. A lot of them are regular ICANN attendees and they have no qualms at all about speaking publicly. If their voices can be heard, Nairobi will be a more productive meeting.

Following the French government's announcement yesterday that AFNIC had been confirmed as the French registry for the next 7 years, new rules have been announced for .FR.

Currently, .FR is only open to individuals or companies that have a physical address in France.

In the next 2 weeks, AFNIC will open .FR to French nationals living abroad. The address-in-France requirement will therefore no longer be enforced for the domain owner, as long as he or she is a French national. The admin contact will still have to be located in France however.

After that, .FR will be opened up to any individual or business located in one of the European Union member states. This will go a long way towards bringing .FR in line with other major European domains like .DE or .UK, both of which are open to registrants outside of their respective countries.

Unfortunately, AFNIC says it will take it up to 2 years to open .FR to European registrants.

AFNIC, the incumbent French registry, will continue to operate .FR. Minister for Industry Christian Estrosi today signed a 7 year contract with AFNIC to run the French top level domain.

In January 2009, the French authorities started a tender process to determine if AFNIC should be allowed to stay on as registry for .FR. As an AFNIC Board member, I've known for a while that AFNIC would most likely be awarded the contract, but I was sworn to secrecy.

Estrosi says that in order to get the registry contract, AFNIC has had to commit to spending at least 5% of its revenue on strengthening the .FR infrastructure to improve its load and request management capabilities.

During the first half of 2010, AFNIC will also open .FR to French nationals living abroad (right now an address in France is required to register a .FR domain name).

Following a ruling in its favour by ICANN's Independent Review Panel (IRP), would-be .XXX operator ICM Registry is pushing ICANN to honour the 2007 contract which should have allowed it to run .XXX for the last 3 years.

ICM Chairman Stuart Lawley has written to ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush. "I sincerely hope you share (…) the view expressed by so many (…) that the completion of the first ever Independent Review Process following the issuance of the Panel’s recent ruling is a defining moment for ICANN," writes Lawley.

Lawley told me recently that he expects his legal fees alone to exceed USD 6 million. But ICM is not asking ICANN reimburse these or even make reparations for the loss of revenue ICM has undoubtedly suffered from not being able to launch .XXX in 2007. What ICM is asking for, however, is that it be considered a part of the 2004 application round and not be amalgamated into the new gTLD program. "Nothing in the declaration would justify a decision to reconsider the ICM application in connection with the upcoming new gTLD round," Lawley argues. "Nor is there any principled reason to apply new rules or requirements to a proposal that was already determined to comply with the rules and procedures governing the 2004 sTLD round."

Lawley will be making the trip to Nairobi next week for ICANN's 37th international meeting, where he is hoping to meet with Dengate Thrush and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom and to see the ICANN Board revisit the .XXX issue.