18 December 2013

The 2013 Annual Report for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been published online today.

The report highlights the organization's achievements and progress from 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013, including:

• Continued accountability and transparency efforts.
• Opened new offices to increase ICANN's internationalization.
• Completed evaluation of more than a thousand new gTLDs and preparations to place them in the root.
• Finalized new Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
• Establishment of Trademark Clearinghouse.

Further content includes:

• Audited financial statements for fiscal year 2013.
• Biographical details on each of the Board of Directors.
• Messages from the CEO and Chairman.

The complete annual report is available online at: http://www.icann.org/en/about/annual-report/annual-report-2013-en.pdf [PDF, 6.69 MB]

16 December 2013

A call for Expressions of Interest (EoIs) is now open through December 26, 2013. This Call for EoIs is part of the process through which the user community within ICANN will appoint one voting member of the ICANN Board. While acting in a personal capacity as a member of the ICANN Board, this member must be able to reflect the users' point of view and interests in the debate and decision making undertaken within the ICANN framework.

In seeking candidates for this post, ICANN's At-Large Community is looking for an individual with a broad international perspective and a background in Internet users' interests, consumer policy and/or civil society worldwide.

Information about the At-Large Community:

"At-Large" is the name of the community of individual Internet users involved in ICANN's policy development process. It currently consists of over 160 active At-Large organizations (called "At-Large Structures" or "ALSes"), representing the opinions of the global community of Internet users. At-Large provides a means through which individual end users of the Internet worldwide can participate in the matters on which ICANN works, such as:

• Guidance on how to run Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs);
• How to introduce new gTLDs (such as .eco, .green and IDN TLDs); and
• How to implement a stable and fair transition from IPv4 to the next Internet addresses generation, IPv6.

The At-Large Board Candidate Evaluation Committee (BCEC) now calls for Expressions of Interest (EoIs).

For more information regarding the BCEC, including member details, please see the At-Large Board Candidate Evaluation Committee Web page (https://community.icann.org/display/ABMS/Board+Candidate+Evaluation+Committee+%28BCEC%29+2014).

How to apply for consideration:

To apply, please complete and submit the Expression of Interest (EoI) available at https://www.bigpulse.com/p26527/register. The form can be submitted online or printed and either:

• Posted to At-Large Director Applications, ICANN, c/o Heidi Ullrich, 12025 Waterfront Dr. Ste 300, California 90094, USA; or
• Faxed to +1 310 823 8649.

To be considered, EoIs must be received by 26 December 2013 at 23:59 UTC.

Please feel free to e-mail the BCEC with any questions regarding the SOI or the application process at BCEC-Request@icann.org. The BCEC will respond to all inquiries.

Additional information is available on the At-Large Board Director 2014 Selection Workspace (https://community.icann.org/display/ABMS/At-Large+Board+Member+2014+Selection)

To watch a video of Roberto Gaetano, Chair of the Board Candidate Evaluation Committee explain the Board member search, go here: http://www.icann.org/en/news/press/kits/video-alac-call-candidates-lo-16dec13-en.htm

To view Tijani Ben Jemaa, Chair of the Board Member Process Committee speak about the process, go here (in French only): http://www.icann.org/fr/news/press/kits/video-alac-call-candidates-lo-16dec13-fr.htm

17 December 2013 Forum Announcement: Comment Period Opens on Date: 17 December 2013 Categories/Tags: New gTLD Auctions Purpose (Brief): To gather community input regarding the detailed rules and processes for Auctions to resolve string contention sets in the New gTLD Program. The preliminary auction rules were originally published 1 Nov 2013, they have since been updated based on feedback and will be finalized based on the input of the community from this comment period. Public Comment Box Link: http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/new-gtld-auction-rules-17dec13-en.htm

13 December 2013

LONDON – The Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms—a diverse group of global stakeholders from government, civil society, the private sector, the technical community and international organizations—held their first meeting in London to discuss global Internet cooperation and governance mechanisms. The Panel expressed strong support for a multistakeholder approach to the future of Internet governance. The conversations held at the London meeting were facilitated by a team of Internet governance experts. The discussion will be taken online in the coming days at 1Net.org.

"The world relies on the Internet for economic, social, and political progress. It is imperative to ensure emerging issues are properly addressed in a global context, without individual governments or intergovernmental organizations developing their own solutions," said Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and chair of the Panel.

"The success of the Internet is rooted in a distributed and bottom-up model, with openness and collaboration at its core," said Vint Cerf, vice-chair of the Panel. "The inaugural meeting of the Panel brought together a diverse set of perspectives on the future of the Internet, and through this diversity I'm confident we can chart a course to protect the core of the current ecosystem, while evolving its methods, accessibility, and universality to meet the opportunities and challenges of the future."

In keeping with its mission, the first meeting of the Panel addressed desirable properties for global Internet cooperation, administration and governance. The Panel will conduct two additional meetings in the coming months. The next meeting, scheduled for late February 2014 in Rancho Mirage, California, will be hosted by The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. Sunnylands is partnering with the Panel in its substantive work. Following this meeting, a high-level draft report will then be released for open consultation. A final meeting will be hosted by the World Economic Forum in May 2014 in Dubai. During this meeting, the Panel will consider community feedback and discussions at forums including the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in Brazil and the Freedom Online Coalition's conference in Tallinn, Estonia. A high-level report will be published at the conclusion of the May meeting, and is expected to cover the following areas:

• A brief overview of the current Internet governance ecosystem
• Opportunities and challenges facing the current ecosystem
• Desirable ecosystem properties including:
  • Ecosystem legitimacy
  • Effective and inclusive multi-interest and consensus-based system
  • Ensuring global participation including from the developing world
  • Co-existence with other governance systems (national and multi-lateral) ensuring a stable system that is not prone to attack, mismanagement, and manipulation

Panel members are working in their personal capacity. Members consist of:

• Mohamed Al Ghanim, Founder and Director General of the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority; former Vice-Chair, UAE Information and Communications Technology Fund; Chairman of WCIT-12
• Virgilio Fernandes Almeida, Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences; Chair of Internet Steering Committee; National Secretary for Information Technology Policies
• Dorothy Attwood, Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy, Walt Disney Company
• Mitchell Baker, Chair, Mozilla Foundation; Chair and former CEO, Mozilla Corporation
• Francesco Caio, CEO of Avio; former CEO, Cable and Wireless and Vodafone Italia; Founder of Netscalibur; broadband advisor in UK and Italy; Government Commissioner for Digital Agenda
• Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google; former Chairman, ICANN; Co-Founder of the Internet Society
• Fadi Chehade, CEO and President of ICANN; Founder of Rosetta Net; technology executive
• Nitin Desai, Indian economist and diplomat; former UN Undersecretary General; convener of Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)
• Byron Holland, President and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority
• Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia; former diplomat and journalist; former Minister of Foreign Affairs; former Member of the European Parliament
• Ivo Ivanovski, Minister of Information Society and Administration, Macedonia; Commissioner to the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development
• Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe; former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Norway
• Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communication Technology of Nigeria
• Olaf Kolkman, Director of NLnet Labs; "Evangineer" of the Open Internet; former Chair of the Internet Architecture Board
• Frank La Rue, labor and human rights lawyer; UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression; Founder, Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH)
• Robert M. McDowell, former U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner; Visiting Fellow, Hudson Institute's Center for Economics of the Internet
• Andile Ngcaba, Chairman and Founder, Convergence Partners; Executive Chairman, Dimension Data Middle East and Africa; former South African Government Director General of Communications
• Liu Qingfeng, CEO and President of iFLYTEK; Director of National Speech & Language Engineering Laboratory of China; Member of Interactive Technology Standards working group
• Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society; telecoms and IT executive
• Jimmy Wales, Founder and Promoter of Wikipedia; Member of the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation
• Won-Pyo Hong, President, Media Solution Center, Samsung Electronics

London Panel Agenda

December 13

09:00 – 11:00

Backgrounder

Expert presentations on Internet Cooperation and Governance to cover:

• History of Internet cooperation and overview of current ecosystem
  Speaker: Vint Cerf
• Nature and scope of global Internet governance
  Speaker: William Drake
• Current system opportunities and challenges: ( this includes legitimacy and mandate challenges, challenges for global participation and inclusion)
  Speaker: David Gross & Bertrand de la Chapelle

11:00 – 11:15 Break 11:15 – 12:00 Backgrounder Q&A Session 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch 13:00 – 14:30

Developing Desirable System Properties

Panel is split into the following four proposed tracks, each moderated by an Internet Governance expert:

• Desirable properties for ecosystem legitimacy
  Moderator: David Gross
• Desirable properties for an effective and inclusive multi-interest & consensus-based system
  Moderator: Sally Wentworth
• Desirable properties to ensure global participation including from developing world
  Moderator: William Drake
• Desirable properties for co-existence with other governance systems (national and multi-lateral) ensuring a stable system that is not prone to attack, mismanagement, and manipulation.
  Moderator: Wolfgang Kleinwachter

14:30 – 14:45 Break 14:45 – 17:30

Joint Observations

Panel members, moderated by experts, coalesce around a set of overall joint observations on the desirable system properties

17:30 – 17:45 Break 17:45 – 18:30

Wrap-up

Panel members discuss next steps, timelines/dates, communication rules and modus operandi for panel

About The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands

The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, which operates The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California, is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating entity. The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands hosts high-level retreats that address serious issues facing the nation and the world, including the recent official meeting between President Obama and President Xi of the People's Republic of China. In addition, Sunnylands offers programs through the Sunnylands Center & Gardens to educate the public about the history of Sunnylands, its architecture, art collections, cultural significance, and sustainable practices.

About ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organised, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes. For more information please visit: http://www.icann.org.

About The World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Incorporated as a foundation in 1971 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests (http://www.weforum.org).

Editor's Note: The Panel was previously referred to as the Panel on the Future of Global Internet Cooperation.

For more information on the Panel, please contact: Pearson Cummings at Pearson.Cummings@edelman.com.

12 December 2013

Registration is now open for ICANN's 49th Public Meeting to be held in Singapore from 23-27 March 2014. The meeting site will be the Raffles City Convention Centre. To register, please visit https://registration.icann.org/.

To make a hotel reservation, visit https://resweb.passkey.com/go/venue.

ICANN holds three public meetings each calendar year in different regions of the globe. Usually comprised of more than 200 different sessions, these week-long meetings are the focal point for individuals and representatives of the different ICANN stakeholder groups to introduce and discuss issues related to ICANN policy.

Participants may attend in person or remotely. Meetings are open to everyone and registration is free.

For more information, visit http://singapore49.icann.org/en/about.

6 December 2013

ICANN is posting today for public comment a proposal requested by the Brand Registry Group to incorporate a new Specification 13 to the new gTLD Registry Agreement, which would be available to a Registry Operator that operates a TLD that ICANN determines qualifies as a ".Brand TLD".

The proposed draft of Specification 13 [PDF, 80 KB] and the concepts reflected therein have not been approved by the New gTLD Program Committee of ICANN’s Board of Directors. ICANN is seeking public comment on all aspects of the proposal.

ICANN is also posting with the proposed draft of Specification 13 a position statement [PDF, 83 KB] of the Brand Registry Group in support of the proposed draft.

6 December 2013

ICANN today issued comprehensive advice to IT professionals worldwide on how to proactively identify and manage private name space leakage into the public Domain Name System (DNS) and thus, eliminate the causes of name collisions as new Top Level Domains (TLDs) are added to the DNS. In a report titled Name Collision Identification and Mitigation for IT Professionals [PDF 228 KB], ICANN explains the nature and causes of name collision and proposes a range of possible solutions.

View All Name Collision Resources Now »

Domain name collisions are not new. However the report addresses some concerns that a number of applied-for new TLDs may be identical to names used in private name spaces.

The report explains how DNS queries leak into the global DNS from private name spaces and how these leaks can have unintended consequences. The report shows that private networks will consistently, stably, and reliably perform name resolution when they use Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) and resolve them from the global DNS, and proposes methods to migrate to FQDNs.

"While it appears that name collisions won't affect significant numbers of corporate network operators or Internet users, ICANN considers it essential that it does everything possible to minimize potential impact and to offer clear advice on dealing with the issue," said Paul Mockapetris, Global Domains Division Security Advisor.

The report recommends that every organization that is not already using FQDNs from the public DNS should consider the following strategy:

• Monitor name services, compile a list of private TLDs or short unqualified names you use internally, and compare the list you create against the list of new TLD strings.
• Formulate a plan to mitigate causes of leakage.
• Prepare users for the impending change in name usage by notifying them in advance or providing training.
• Implement your plan to mitigate the potential collision.

The release of today's advice to IT professionals is the result of several months of diligent work by ICANN's staff, subject matter experts, the ICANN Executive Team and the Board of Directors.

"The report we've issued today offers IT professionals, whether they work in large organizations or small companies, comprehensive advice and suggested remedies that can be simple to implement," said Dave Piscitello, Vice President of Security and ICT Coordination. "While other interim or makeshift solutions may exist, migration using FQDNs has lasting value – once you've done this, you are good to go for now and future new TLD delegations."

The report, along with additional useful information and resources, can be found at:

http://www.icann.org/en/help/name-collision

5 December 2013

Montego Bay, Jamaica - In the context of the recent Caribbean ICT Week, Fadi Chehadé, ICANN President and CEO, and Ms. Bernadette Lewis, Secretary General of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding to increase cooperation and coordination among both organizations.

The signing took place in the presence of Government Ministers of CTU member states including the President of the CTU, Hon. Philip Paulwell, Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining of Jamaica; the signing ceremony was followed by a press conference facilitating widespread communication of news of the event to the Jamaica public, and wider Caribbean through electronic media.

In her remarks at the signing Ms. Bernadette Lewis remarked that "The Internet has become entwined in the fabric of our lives therefore we must take an interest in its development and participate in the fora that chart its course. The continued and equitable growth of the internet is a collective responsibility and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) is prepared to play its part in taking an active role in determining the future of the Internet. This MoU is the demonstration of the CTU's commitment to work in collaboration with ICANN to increasing awareness and usage of the Internet and its resources in the Caribbean."

On his part, in the spirit of collaboration, Fadi Chehadé ended his remarks by quoting the African Proverb "If you want to go fast…go alone. If you want to go far…go together."

Mr. Chehadé and Ms. Lewis committed to make this a workable framework by getting their respective teams to start implementing concrete actions in the upcoming weeks. Actions are planned to include capacity building, partnering for outreach events and fostering multistakeholder dialogue at the regional and national levels.