Second level domains

Update: The NTIA has said it will relaunch the bid process later this year. Full information.

The US government has cancelled the rebid process for the crucial IANA contract, effective immediately.

The unexpected decision, just days before an announcement was expected, was made through an amendment posted to the RFP process. It leaves the way open for ICANN to announce this week that it has retained the contract, due to end on 31 March.

However it remains unclear why the NTIA cancelled the RFP process "in its entirety" rather than simply award the contract through its RFP terms to ICANN - which is what everyone expected.

By canceling the RFP, many of the changes to the contract - including a schedule of deadlines for improvements - may not apply to a rewarded IANA contract, raising the question: why did the US government bother with the process in the first place?

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

GNSO Council Teleconference February 2012

[Copy of transcript, chat transcript and audio available on GNSO Calendar 2012 page]

Coordinator: Please go ahead because now being recorded.

Glen de Saint Gery: Thank you.

Stephane Van Gelder: Thanks very much. Welcome everyone to this council call on the 16th of February. And let's start with just a request for people to join a little bit earlier if they can because we lose a bit of time while were waiting for quorum to be reached.

So if people could try and join a couple of minutes early that would be useful.

So with that being said I will ask Glen to do a roll call please to start this off?

[Roll call: full list of attendees.]

Alan Greenberg: …And may I ask you all to say your name before speaking for the transcription purposes. Thank you very much and Konstantinos is now connected. Thank you Stephane. Over to you.

The most contentious aspect of closed-door negotiations around the Registrar Accreditation Agreement has been the matter of Whois verification.

The issue is dealt with in two of the 16 specific changes that were put forward by law enforcement and have formed the foundation for the discussions (C1 and A1b).

From the start, ICANN’s negotiating team made it clear to their registrar counterparts that "verification" of domain name registrants would be used as a benchmark for the success of the negotiations overall.

Initial discussions moved away from the strict requests made by law enforcement, which include verification of a large number of different aspects from IP address to billing address to email and phone numbers.

Starting this week and ending on 15 February when a revised Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) is expected to be published for public review, .Nxt will take you inside the secret negotiations to update the domain name system's key contract.

In response to a failure by ICANN to provide sufficient openness or transparency regarding the negotiations, despite promises otherwise, we have been in contact with many of those in and surrounding the negotiations, all of whom have spoken on the condition of anonymity.

Signing the last RAA revision in 2009. The smiles are not there in 2012.

Our investigation has uncovered:

• The depth of disagreement between registrars
• That ICANN is willing to "throw registrars under the bus" in order to keep governments happy and look as if it is solving the problem
• The pressure placed on ICANN's negotiating team to force through results dictated from above

The crucial issue of market separation between those that run an Internet registry and those that sell domains underneath it has risen its ugly head again, with both the European Commission and existing Internet registries sending critical letters to ICANN asking for resolution on the issue.

The EC letter responds to a letter sent from ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom back in October that purported to outline the full reasons why the ICANN Board unexpectedly decided to lift all "vertical integration" restrictions late in 2010.

The EC was not impressed by Beckstrom's letter, noting that it "does not contain any information going beyond the already publicly available information" and so it remains of the view that it is still unable "to properly assess the competitive impact of a full removal of vertical separation".