The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, published it’s annual report,
The report puts a bright face on what ICANN calls the “organization’s achievements and progress during 2008″
The report highlights the three major initiatives ICANN has undertaken this year: the process for introducing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to the Internet; the introduction for the first time of internationalized domain names (IDNs); and an extensive Improving Institutional Confidence consultation, to enable the conclusion of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the United States government in September 2009.
Reports from the chairs of ICANN’s Supporting Organization and Advisory Organizations are included alongside detailed rundowns of each department by the organization’s staff.
Also included in the report are:
• Biographical details on each of the Board of Directors
• Highlights of the organization’s Strategic and Operating Plans
• An in-depth look at the New Delhi, Paris and Cairo meetings
• Messages from the CEO and Chairman
• The audit report for ICANN, 2007-2008
• ICANN’s compensation practices and salary structures for the corporate officers.
“I am delighted to announce the release of our third annual report,” ICANN’s Chairman of the Board of Directors Peter Dengate Thrush said.
“In this our tenth year ICANN and its community either accomplished or made significant progress toward many goals for the Domain Name System,” he added.
“The Internet is growing and evolving at an accelerating pace,” Dengate Thrush continued.
“The next billion users will demand more innovative products and services, will access the Internet largely through mobile devices, and will expect to be able to do so in their own languages and language scripts. ICANN’s efforts are geared towards developing policies and technologies that will satisfy this next-generation Internet,”
However our annual report of ICANN would be not as kind.
In proposing the new gTLD’s, ICANN has placed the stability of the internet at risk for their own financial gain. There are so many reasons the roll out of hundreds or thousands of new extensions in a short period is bad idea, I will not repeat it here, but you can read my comments I submitted to ICANN on this proposal here if you want.
ICANN failed to solve or even address the problem of the current status of the drop of expired domains, leaving us with a wild, wild west situation where each registrar does whatever the hell they want including just keeping the domains for themseleves.
ICANN did make one positive move this year when they basically ended domain tasting.
However, when your big move for the year was to create a vast money maker for yourself, at the expense of all current domain holders, trademark holders and users of the internet, how great of a year did you have?
Yeah — nice to see the tasting changes.
I still keep asking myself why a non-profit needs so much money that they want to release all these new extensions. Clearly domainers + most corporations are against it, yet ICANN doesn’t seem to want to take no for an answer.
Maybe Obama will make some changes to how they run *fingers crossed*.
I can understand releasing IDN.IDN, can’t really understand there being any need for much else.
If Icann was a stock company, I would buy shares in the company.
If you look at their revenue minus expenses, they are definitely recession proof.
As you read Icann’s annual report, they are making the case and counting on getting away from U.S. control.
And, that would be disaster. Then, they would do whatever they wanted without any oversight.
Unfortunately, Obama (because he has other major problems to deal with) might screw up and let them leave.
If he does, history will not be kind to him. I wonder if he could blame it on Bill Clinton?
I am going to give you funny revelation.
In domaining.com I noticed that as soon a post have the “ICANN ” word in the headline you can be sure the volume of clicks he gets is extremelly low and sometime null.
I have the feeling because it’s something most found annoying.
There are others subject like these…
That’s interesting.
So the “body” that governs domains has get no interest in the domaining community.
Maybe if domainers cared more about ICANN they would have more influence.
I agree with you MHB – domainers should care much more about ICANN that they do now. No matter we like or dislike ICANN – we should look at their hands and at least give comments to what they do. Otherwise we have no influence and are 100% dependent on their decisions.
Yes, it’s far to be a joke and we are not talking about just less clicks but sometimes near zero clicks after several thousands domainers read the headline.
Something similar happen with CcTLDs, legal stuff.
Now have a Latona post to tell a joke and it’s a clicks jackpot!
This is why ICA has a so low amount of members and it should be a real challenge when renewal date will be here…
Francois
That is really interesting.
I think you should prepare a guest post on this and submit it to me for publication.
It’s important that domainers are not reading articles about ICANN and legal stuff, the things that really effect them, in favor of entertainment.
Send me over something like domaining looks at 2008, what people read including this info and I will take it from there.
Thanks
MHB – Your take on ICANN is perfect. I appreciate that someone has the balls to not tippy-toe around ICANN’s failures and self-serving policies.
Posting about it here will get the attention of those who are not yet educated on how domain investments are put at risk by ICANN’s proposals. Domainers have rallied around the important issues, and now corporate America see that their interests are at stake as well. Better to keep ICANN under a microscope, or they’ll have their hand in everyone’s pocket.
Mr. Menius
Since I own 75K domains, ICANN is already in my pocket for $15,000 a year already.
Domainers don’t seem to realize that we put money in ICANN’s pocket everytime we register or renew a domain, and as large domain holders we are collectively putting a lot of money in their pockets.
ICANN
ICANN HAS CHEEZBURGER
Are these two companies related?
no
Mike, reckon someone else will go ahead and register those so called premium names when new gtld’s are released, if we wont get ’em.. that being said I fail to understand why ICANN is on releasing spree of hundred’s of gtld’s.
Do we even need that many .blah’s when almost 60%-70% of already released are just lying there for nothing.
Very rightly said, one of the notable reasons why ICANN doesn’t care is because we as domain investors don’t voice our opinion in front of them and in a proper manner..
Another great post MHB. I can see that you already having a great time in 2009 😉
Best
–
Jay M
ParkingFirm.com
This motive that is ascribed to why ICANN is creating new generic top-level domains – to make money – simply isn’t true.
ICANN is a not-for-profit organization. The whole process has been specifically and explictly set up to ensure that it is “revenue-neutral” i.e. that ICANN as an organization doesn’t make money from it.
ICANN’s budget is reviewed and agreed to by its community – and you – any of you – are entitled to comment on it each year, as well as define what ICANN should spend the money on.
When ICANN recently took in more money than was in the budget, it responded by lowering the per-domain fee it charges registrars.
It is perhaps only natural when a large chunk of the domain name market is now focussed on making profit with the product itself (the domain name) largely irrelevant beyond its value, that ICANN will be judged to be following the same pattern.
It is not the case however. The new gTLD process was devised by the Internet community itself over several years. ICANN as an organization is carrying out the wishes of a consensus policy arrived at through discussion with businesses, governments, the technical community and civil society.
In short: ICANN is demonstrably not in it for the money.
Cheers
Kieren McCarthy
General manager of public participation, ICANN
Kieren
Thanks for your response, but when you say this new gTLD process was devised by the Internet community itself, where was the demand for these new gTLD’s demonstrated?
I have been to every domain conference since the first TRAFFIC show years ago, meet with large domain holders, parking companies, representatives of Google and Yahoo, and I never heard one person ask for or discuss the need for any new domains, (other than .xxx) much less hundreds or thousands of new extensions.
If ICANN is not “in it for the money” will the new gTLD’s be revenue neutral to ICANN?
Will the fees generated by the new extension in either application fees or registration fees paid to ICANN per new gTLD registrations, not increase ICANN budget?
How can money not be an issue when the proposal will raise so much of it?
Hi MHB,
> where was the demand for these new gTLDs demonstrated?
It was demonstrated in the previous two rounds of gTLD extensions in 2000 and 2003.
In both those cases, the number of new Internet extensions was purposefully limited so that their impact on the Internet could be carefully assessed. In both cases, despite everything knowing there would be a tight limit, there were many more applications that applications approved.
The 2000 round details are here: http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/app-index.htm
The 2003 round details are here:
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/stld-apps-19mar04/
It has always been the case that ICANN is going to expand the Internet domain space in line with its remit to promote competition on the Internet. But things were done slowly and carefully.
The difference in 2008 is that with the lessons learnt from the two previous rounds that a new system was developed in which there would be no arbitrary limit on new gTLDs.
The policy took roughly two years to develop, and then the implementation of that policy has taken around one year. It is that implementation process that is currently out for review by the whole Internet community.
> will the new gTLD’s be revenue neutral to ICANN?
The application process will be. But that leads to your next question:
> Will the fees generated by the new extension in either application fees or registration fees paid to ICANN per new gTLD registrations, not increase ICANN budget?
It depends. ICANN has estimated that there will be 500 applications. If there are fewer, ICANN will be out of pocket. If there are more ICANN will have extra money.
Will the extra fees paid for by the new gTLDs increase ICANN’s budget? Yes. But at the same time there will be greatly increased costs in administering those new registries.
If, even with the extra costs, ICANN makes more money than its budget, it will do one of two things (both of which are explicitly stated in the Applicant Guidebook for new gTLDs).
ICANN will either lower per-domain fees; or it will consult with the community on what should be done with the extra money. It may do both.
Why “consult with the community”? Because ICANN is a community and it is the community that ultimately decides what to do. If ICANN’s staff was to say “we will do this with any extra funds”, we would be asked to explain how we had come to that decision without consulting the community.
So, assuming ICANN does have more money at the end of this process – which is probable but nowhere near definite – we will have to ask people to come up with ideas on how to use the money.
One idea that I personally like – although it can be expected that parts of the community will not like – is to set up a foundation similar to that which Nominet has set up in the UK and disperse funds on community-based programs that expand Internet use.
I would also like to see extra funds going to charities that promote Internet use and I would like to see funds going to getting people online – in Africa in particular.
And I would like to see a greatly increased budget within ICANN for expanding participation in our processes – because that would make my job 1,000 times easier.
But there are personal preferences. It will be for the wider community to decide.
I hope that answers your questions.
Kieren McCarthy
General manager of public participation, ICANN
Kieren,
Reckon that this question I’m going to ask makes enough sense – Why do we or ICANN feel the need of launching more extensions?
Every day I as a domainer go through list of thousands of expiring or dropped names and I guess about 60% of domain names out there in all major extensions are just lying their unregistered or parked somewhere used for nothing. Which makes me wonder, at times, that isnt ICANN just creating mess for self & us by launching new extensions left right n center when most of the previous ones didn’t fair well?
Mess for self because they will have to do more work managing new extensions and process related to it.
Mess for us because competition will rise and value of other extensions will drop, because people will have hundred or thousands of extensions available.
If ICANN is not for profit organization then I dont think they need to focus too much on “making money” by launching new extensions every year and this issue needs to be discussed, addressed properly by seeking input from public.
We should put more effort into promoting previously launched extensions, along wit carving out a plan to get more people to register what for what is already there rather then making way for new extensions to hit the internet world frequently & disappear in no time.
Just my two bits!
–
Jay M
http://www.ParkingFirm.com
We have made a new post on Kieren comments here:
http://www.thedomains.com/2009/01/15/icann-responds-to-our-post-on-new-gtlds-were-not-in-it-for-the-money/
@ParkingFirm.com: One of the difficulties with talking about the Internet and the domain name system is that it is so fast-moving and fluid.
So, for example, you are looking at the DNS from the perspective of domaining. Well, domaining didn’t exist in any real form until just a few years ago. In terms of the DNS it is a very recent arrival.
Now I am assuming we can agree that the domain name system is going to continue to change significantly – we have not reached a final state here – and with every change comes advantages and disadvantages; opportunities and risks.
The Internet itself can be pretty much be defined as something that has consistently created opportunities and risks. The reason we all love it is because those opportunities have consistently massively outweighed the risks.
I believe that exactly the same will be true for new generic top-level domains. It will open up a whole world of other possibilities. Because we don’t yet know what they are (who foresaw Google, eBay or Facebook?) it is all too normal for us to look at the risks they present to the current system.
The only rule – if you can have a rule with the Internet – has been that the more space you give people to try things out on the Internet, the greater the reward. Do new generic top-level domains provide that extra space? You better believe it.
I think we are going to see some extraordinary things when the DNS is expanded further.
As to why ICANN is doing it – because the organization’s job is increase competition in the domain name system. It was recognised by the Internet’s original designers that competition – or, more accurately, the ability for people to try out new things – was what gave the Internet its life.
It is also worth noting here that ICANN doesn’t create these extensions. It simply puts the process in place – it is up everyone out there to come up with their ideas and apply.
If you start thinking about it, would having an arm of the DNS be useful to you? What about .parking? What about .domain? Can you see any possibilities in these? If you can’t, many, many people across the globe can.
Kieren