ICANN director and African internet pioneer Barrett dies

Alan Barrett, a member of ICANN’s board of directors and an internet pioneer in his home of South Africa has died, according to ICANN.

The Org said that Barrett died of recently-diagnosed cancer yesterday, May 28. An online memorial is being planned, but his family have requested privacy in the meantime, ICANN said.

Barrett was involved in setting up the first internet connections to universities in South Africa and the launch of the first commercial ISP there in the 1990s, according to his biography.

He also served as CEO of AFRINIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, from 2015 to 2019.

“Alan was a kind man, who listened to others,” ICANN CEO Kurt Lindqvist wrote on social media. “When Alan spoke you listened as he was always well read, balanced and would suggest a path forward on thorny issues.”

He was the Address Supporting Organization’s two-time appointment to the ICANN board and his second term was due to expire at the conclusion of the 2027 Annual General Meeting.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN

Government to put the squeeze on .me registry partners

In what looks like bad news for GoDaddy and Identity Digital, Montenegro appears to be the latest government to demand a bigger share of revenues from its national ccTLD.

While already formally delegated to the government, .me is currently managed by doMEn, a partnership between the two American companies and local firm ME-net, but Montenegro is planning to grab much greater state control over the ccTLD.

And it seems to want more money too, according to an official document published this week.

Machine-translated, the document states:

The “.me” domain management model provides stable revenues for the state, but at the same time generates significantly higher overall economic benefits for the private agent and its (predominantly foreign) owners, with a relatively limited state participation in the total profit (about 35–36% of total revenues and about a quarter of the profit through the domestic partner [ME-net]).

The document states that .me generated €114 million ($132.7 million) between its 2008 launch and 2025, but that the government only received €41 million ($47.7 million), about 35-36% of the total.

The government reckons its share should be at least 50%.

The document says that doMEn has made €47 million in net profit over the same period, an amount in excess of what the state, which gets 33% of regular reg revenue and 70% of premium sales, received.

doMEn’s revenue in 2025 was almost €10.1 million ($11.75 million), having grown consistently every year since 2008, according to the document.

The document floats three options for a future registry model, ranging from full state ownership to a joint ownership with its back-end providers. All three options would give the government ultimate control over the TLD.

The government also explores three options for how the registry should be managed in future, from bringing it fully in-house to the current model of outsourcing all technical functions to a third party.

It concludes that the current model is probably the least risky right now, but notes that it could be used as a stepping-stone to a “hybrid” model where a state-owned registry handles key functions such as the registry of domains while key functions such as DNS are outsourced to specialists.

So in the short-term it appears that Montenegro is sufficiently risk-averse that doMEn’s owners may not lose the .me deal any time soon — a 2023 RFP for a new operator has been cancelled, the government said.

But it does appear they’re looking at a different regulatory regime in future, one in which more than half of their revenues go to the state, rather than into their own coffers.

Comment Tagged: .me, domen, godaddy, identity digital, me-net, montenegro

More cheap new gTLD applications approved

ICANN has approved 18 more requests for reduced-fee new gTLD applications under its Applicant Support Program.

As of last week, the Org said it has conditionally approved a total of 16 requests, up by 13 on a month earlier, and fully approved 27, up by five. “Fully approved” means ICANN has received payment from the applicant.

Only one request has so far been rejected, because the applying entity was found not to be eligible for the program.

There are now a total of 44 applications that have been processed, with 32 more in the pipeline.

The ASP offers up to an 80% discount on the $227,000 base new gTLD application fee, along with a range of other perks, to non-profit organizations on tight budgets.

Comment Tagged: asp, ICANN, new gTLDs

Nominet outsources cybersquatting disputes to WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organisation has tightened its stranglehold on domain name disputes worldwide, taking over administration of .uk’s Dispute Resolution Service.

Nominet said today that WIPO will start to manage DRS, which is similar to UDRP and has been around almost as long, from July 7. It said that the policy, fees, and panelists are not changing.

WIPO already handles cybersquatting complaints for scores of ccTLDs — some of which use standard UDRP, some of which have their own tweaked versions — as well as being the leading provider of gTLD dispute resolution.

Nominet said the move to outsource came as part of its .UK Registry Standardisation program, which is seeing it retire several non-core services.

Any DRS cases filed with Nominet before the July 7 cut-off will be processed to completion in the Nominet system.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, drs, nominet, udrp, wipo

Whois about to get even more useless

Trying to get hold of a domain registrant via their Whois record? It could be about to get even more difficult following an ICANN advisory that gives GoDaddy a pass for its current practices.

The advisory could make it harder for domain buyers to contact the owners of domains they are interested in, and easier for registrars to sell their domain brokerage services.

There’s a strict requirement under the current ICANN Registration Data Policy that registrars “MUST Publish an email address or a link to a web form to facilitate email communication” in their RDAP/Whois output.

The web form option is pretty much the de facto standard; the registrant’s email address is publicly redacted, but the registrar offers to forward communications to the address it has on record.

But there’s been some controversy about what “facilitate email communication” means.

If you query a domain sponsored by the likes of Tucows or 101domain, you’ll get a form that allows you to submit free text much like you would with a regular email.

With the likes of Markmonitor or Porkbun, you’ll get the same type of form, but only after you’re verified your own email address. Namecheap provides a proxified email address in its RDAP output, no web form required.

But some registrars, notably GoDaddy and Dynadot among the largest providers, do not give a free text option. You can only select from one of three options — abuse, IP infringement, or a “research” catch-all — and hope the registrant agrees to reach out to you on that very vague basis.

If you’re a domainer, there’s no way to use the GoDaddy form to say “Hey, I like your name, I’ll give you $5k for it.”

ICANN has now clarified that the GoDaddy model is perfectly fine under the policy, which “does not include an explicit requirement that registrars provide a free text option or forwarding capabilities as the means of facilitating the communication”.

What GoDaddy and Dynadot are doing “does not violate current requirements under the Policy”, ICANN stated.

This clarification could mean that other registrars could begin to copy the GoDaddy model, if they believe it will benefit them in some way, such as by making an expensive brokerage service the most efficient way for domainers to contact prospective sellers.

Comment Tagged: dynadot, godaddy, ICANN, rdap, registration data policy, whois

Agentic AI has ICANN in a pickle

Imagine you’re in a Zoom meeting, discussing policy that will govern the future of the domain name industry, when you suddenly realize not everyone in the room is human.

Some are AI agents.

That’s the certainly intriguing, and possibly worrying, scenario under discussion in recent correspondence between ICANN and a leading community member.

ICANN currently bans, as a matter of practice rather than policy, AI agents from participating in Zoom calls. But consultant Michael Palage, a seasoned veteran ICANN tire-kicker, recently requested a waiver.

Revealing that he is living with hearing loss, Palage said (pdf) that AI agents could enable him to “participate more meaningfully” in ICANN and that the current de facto ban “places an unreasonable burden” on him and others.

General counsel John Jeffrey, responding (pdf), did not rule out carving out an exception to the current ban for community members with disabilities, but requested clarity on what specific tools Palage has in mind.

ICANN’s Zoom sessions already include one AI-based tool, the regularly incorrect and frequently hilarious transcription feature, which is useful to a limited degree for getting the gist of a conversation without having to actually go to the trouble of listening to it.

But ICANN is hesitant about allowing participants to bring their own agents to the party, judging by Jeffrey’s response, because it could quite easily bring the integrity of the entire multistakeholder policy-making process into question.

Jeffrey wrote that the agent ban is to “ensure the transparency, accountability, and integrity of discussions”, but:

ICANN’s concern is not with accessibility tools used by individuals to support their own participation, but with AI tools that may independently appear, record, transcribe, summarize, or contribute in ways that create uncertainty about identity, consent, data use, or accountability.

ICANN has for a couple of years seen its public comment periods stuffed with responses that — to this observer at least — appear to be AI-generated. Sometimes, I suspect, such comments have been generated to tick a box that secures future travel funding for a participant.

That’s one thing — emailed comments are part of an asynchronous discussion — but what if an AI agent participates in a live chat as part of a policy development process? Who would be responsible for its contributions?

As Jeffrey puts it:

Unmanaged or insufficiently governed third-party AI tools, including those that independently attend meetings, generate or submit interventions, appear as participants, or create recordings or transcripts outside ICANN-approved systems, may raise legal, privacy, and ethical concerns. This includes the processing of personal data without appropriate safeguards, lack of transparency in data use, risks related to accuracy, uncertainty regarding participant identity, concerns regarding accountability for contributions, and risks related to the preservation of meaningful human participation in ICANN’s decision-making processes.

Or, as I put it:

What if the agent misunderstood its brief and directed the conversation in completely unintended directions, either wasting everybody’s time or steering policy-making onto dangerous or idiotic paths?

What if the agent went batshit and started espousing Nazi ideology, calling the host a bitch, doxxing its opponents, or ranting about goblins? We all know how much AI loves goblins…

Comment Tagged: accessibility, ai, ICANN

.pay sunrise going gangbusters

Amazon’s .pay gTLD is seeing defensive sunrise registrations selling far in excess of what you’d normally expect from a new gTLD launch.

.pay went into sunrise April 14, with an expected 30-day window for trademark owners to register their brands, but Amazon recently extended the deadline until July 20.

As of yesterday, the .pay zone file contained 683 domains, almost all of which were added after April 14.

While modest compared to sunrises carried out 15 to 25 years ago, that’s far ahead of average, and .pay seems to be adding a handful of new domains every day.

Official ICANN figures tracking gTLD launches through August 2018 show that the mean average sunrise regs per TLD was roughly 137, with a median of just 77 across 491 sunrise periods.

I see two primary reasons why .pay is ahead of the average.

First, the sensitivity of the string. Any gTLD that invites trust and the transfer of money would likely be a prime target for phishing and other types of abuse.

Second, .pay is not on commercial domain blocking services, such as GoDaddy-led GlobalBlock, meaning the only sure-fire way to protect a brand right now is to engage with sunrise.

Amazon says it plans to offer a Limited Registration Period from July 20, during which domains can be registered by those “that conduct payment transactions online using an approved Payment Service Provider or Third-Party Payment Processor.”

General availability is pencilled in for February next year.

Comment Tagged: amazon, globalblock, pay, sunrise

Nominet dodges millions in member refunds

Nominet UK has managed to avoid having to pay out millions in refunds to its registrars and members after a lawsuit filed by one member was dismissed by a British court.

A spokesperson for the .uk registry said this statement was circulated among members today:

The claim made by a Nominet member for a refund of fees paid for membership was dismissed by the Court in Cardiff on 21 May. Costs will be determined later. We do not have the written court order yet – we will wait for that before commenting further.

The member in question is Curon Davies, represented by lawyer Jim Davies, a long-time critic of Nominet, who had claimed that the registry had been violating its own rules by charging membership fees for over a quarter of a century.

Davies and others from the WeightedVoting.uk campaign obtained an opinion from a top lawyer in 2022, stating that Nominet’s Articles have not permitted it to collect membership fees since 1997, not long after it was founded.

With first-year fees of £400 and annual renewals of £100, that would have meant Nominet obtained many millions of GBP that it had no right to, this opinion said, though the statute of limitations would have limited its exposure to about £1.5 million.

Jim Davies said he disagreed with the judge’s ruling, saying “Nominet won on a narrow issue of how its articles should be interpreted”. He added in a statement that an appeal is planned:

We are preparing an application to appeal against the judge’s ruling, which seems to reward Nominet’s board for their ongoing failure to do what is required of them under the company’s governance documents. We respectfully disagree with the Judge’s conclusion on that point. We believe it is wrong in law and is inconsistent with the plain meaning of the articles.

Comment Tagged: .uk, lawsuit, nominet, weightedvoting.uk

Identity Digital takes over 25-year-old TLD

Identity Digital’s recent acquisition spree has continued, with the company recently taking over as registry operator for a sponsored gTLD that made its debut in 2001.

The registry’s affiliate, Jolly Host, has taken over .aero from aerospace trade group SITA, the Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautique, according to ICANN records.

.aero was one of the original “test-bed” new gTLDs that prevailed in the 2000 application round.

It’s a little different to a normal gTLD acquisition — .aero is a sponsored gTLD designed to serve a specific community, and there are registration restrictions in place.

The main barrier to registration is the requirement to be a member of the industry and have a SITA Membership ID, obtainable from the registry web site, before you can go to a registrar to get your name.

As such, SITA is not washing its hands entirely of the TLD. It will continue as .aero’s “Sponsor”, responsible for setting policy, with Identity Digital now contractually designated as “Registry Operator”.

.aero is cheaper to run that your typical gTLD. The registry contract calls for annual payments to ICANN of just $5,000, rather than the standard $25,000, as long as it has fewer than 50,000 domains under management.

It currently has about 13,000 domains in its zone file and renewals retail starting at about $40 per year.

The fact that .aero is currently sponsored and restricted doesn’t necessarily mean it will stay that way. There’s plenty of precedent, from .xxx to .med, of sponsored registries casting off their roots to broaden their appeal.

It’s the sixth gTLD contract Jolly Host has taken over so far this year after, .safety, .dot, .jot, .circle and .onl.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, identity digital, jolly host, new gTLDs, sita, sponsored

Ask.com hits the market as Jeeves breathes his last

Some are saying it could be one of the most expensive domain sales ever.

The killer name ask.com is currently for sale, after InterActiveCorp closed down Ask Jeeves, the once-pioneering search engine, at the start of May.

According to broker Andrew Miller of ATM Holdings, he’s partnered with fellow broker Larry Fischer to market the domain, which he said is “one of the most valuable domains ever to come to market”.

For 20 years, the domain was used as the successor to askjeeves.com, the original character-based natural-language search engine that, with hindsight, looks in many ways like a conceptual precursor to AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

Ask Jeeves was one of the many search engines to come out of the mid-to-late 1990s to have their breakfast, lunch and dinner voraciously consumed by Google in the noughties. It plodded on regardless, before closing down for good two weeks ago.

ATM Holdings has brokered some of the biggest category-killer .com sales of all time, including club.com, which sold last month for $10 million. Fischer of GetYourDomain helped ai.com sell a year ago for $70 million.

Correction: this article was corrected May 16 to reflect the fact that ai.com was brokered by GetYourDomain.

Comment Tagged: ask.com, atm holdings