Author: Kieren McCarthy

ICANN may have ended up in the same spot as when it began its fast-track talks for changes to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) four months ago, but the big question now is: where do we go from here?

ICANN never accepts responsibility for its failures so it is safe to say its strategy will be to a) claim there has been no collapse, just ongoing negotiations b) attempt to blame registrars when criticized, c) point to what little success it has had, and c) overblow the complexity of the situation in order to buy more time.

On the registrar side, there are broadly two camps: those that will resist every change by whatever means necessary right up to the point it happens; and those who accepts that change is inevitable and are willing to look at making a raft of changes so they don't have to spend every few months fighting with governments, law enforcements officials and, when prodded, ICANN staff.

The RAA talks were created in response to an unprecedented level of criticism over the organization's persistent failure to act.

By failing to come good on its promises, ICANN has only strengthened concerns that it is either unwilling or incapable of acting in the broader public interest against a powerful internal group.

Here is a full analysis of why the talks collapsed and who is to blame for it - something that we feel is crucial given ICANN's institutional lack of accountability.

Executive Summary

The talks failed for five reasons:

1. Poor process: closed-doors, bilateral negotiations with an unmovable deadline ignored previous failures
2. Lack of transparency: the negotiations rapidly entered a black box - or black hole as it would turn out
3. Public pronouncements: high-profile letters proclaiming the end result backfired and undermined the talks
4. Hardline: a major misjudgment that registrars needed to reach agreement more than ICANN did

ICANN has suffered an embarrassing and potentially dangerous collapse in its contract talks with domain name registrars.

Having promised to provide a revised form of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) by 15 February, the organization which oversees the domain name system instead put out a "summary of negotiations" two weeks late, on 1 March.

The summary reveals the depth of the failure of ICANN's negotiating strategy, which included a hardline on maintaining accurate registrant data and public declarations of the end result in letters to Congress and the press.

In the end, only 5 of 35 topics have reached agreed wording - every one of which had already been agreed to prior to negotiation (see the full breakdown in the table below). The collapse is all the more stark when you consider that 24 of the points - 69 percent - have been agreed to in principle.

Arriving empty-handed to ICANN's meeting in Costa Rica next week, staff will be faced with governments and law enforcement officials already furious over the organization's failure to introduce basic protections.

Unhappy governments