Send At-Large mailing list submissions to
        at-large@icann.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or
body 'help' to
        at-large-request@icann.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
        at-large-owner@icann.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of At-Large digest..."Today's Topics:

   1. Re: ICANN bows to Trump (Evan Leibovitch)
   2. Re: ICANN bows to Trump (Seun Ojedeji)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com>
To: John McCormac <jmcc@hosterstats.com>
Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Bcc: 
Date: Wed, 21 May 2025 06:13:18 -0400
Subject: [At-Large] Re: ICANN bows to Trump

On Tue, May 20, 2025 at 1:01 PM John McCormac via At-Large <at-large@icann.org> wrote:

 

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between ICANN management and the industry despite the best efforts of ICANN staff and ALAC.

ICANN, which regularly reminds us all that it is not a regulator, asserts its policies through contracts with registries and registrars. As far as it's concerned, nothing further down the supply chain matters, beyond whatever influence the non-contracted-party constituencies can assert through GNSO (such as trademark protection). Certainly there is no heed paid to the non-registrant Internet user which is completely outside the revenue chain.

As for ALAC having made "best efforts" ... I'll leave that one alone.

Remember the convulsions ICANN went through over "vertical integration", the idea that an organization could be both registry and registrar? ICANN's registrars fought so incredibly hard against the concept that a registry could cut them out and sell direct to the public. Whether they had value to add to the transaction was irrelevant, registrars insisted on being part of the chain whether they were needed or not. The only other industry where resellers similarly have forced themselves into the transaction whether they are needed or not, as far as I can tell, is auto dealerships.

 

One of the issues that has come up again and again in the At Large/CPWG discussions is the importance of resellers in the market. Despite ICANN paying lip service to the reseller issue, to be diplomatic about it, ICANN really doesn't understand the whole registry-registrar-reseller model.

Please demonstrate why ICANN even needs to acknowledge this model, let alone understand it.

To me it's the registrars that are the domain resellers in a practical sense. What you call resellers are to me simply authorized sales agents of the registrars, and I personally don't see the need for ICANN to care about them. Even moreso I wonder how ALAC and CPWG think that the existence of resellers matters to the global public interest. Sales agents of registrars are bound by ICANN registrar agreements. The agreements govern how domains may be sold, and I don't understand why it matters whether sales are made by registrar employees or contracted agents. The agents are still bound by the agreements. What more is worth wringing hands over?

(Disclaimer: In the early 2000s I was a principal in a consultancy that was one of Tucows' first OpenSRS domain resellers. I'm very familiar with the model, which is how I know that it's existence is benign and has minimal need of ICANN's attention. Registrars are accountable for the actions of their agents.)

The ICANN registry-registrar model was great for the 1990s but it has not evolved.

Plenty about ICANN has not evolved. But since the DNS itself is a legacy technology, I am challenged to understand why it needs to evolve any more than we need new innovation in faxes or wired Ethernet. The only innovation here that matters to be is in scaling and reliability, which are technical issues.

Sure the Internet still needs to translate names to numbers. But in a world where access to Internet services is increasingly handled in the foreground by search engines and now AI, the world cares less and less about the need for memorable or indeed even human-parsed domain names.

ICANN loves to talk about the diversity and proliferation of TLDs as evidence of "competition", while willfully ignoring the big-picture competition between all "memorable" domains and other methods through which Internet users connect to the services they seek.

 

The standard upgrade path of web developer - web hoster - ICANN registrar no longer exists in the same way as it did in the early 2000s.  What is happening now is that the upgrade path is web developer - web hoster - ccTLD registrar. The ccTLDs, as they develop, are overtaking the gTLDs in their home markets and the legacy gTLDs are becoming less relevant.

Perhaps that's the case relative to each other, but I suggest that all TLDs are legacy -- even the ones being created in future rounds. To me this is little difference from the the fact that we're still creating new area codes even though POTS is a legacy tech too.

The reseller market is *the* market in many countries with no accredited ICANN registrars because many web hosters in these countries outsource their registration activity to ICANN registrars in other countries.

To me that evokes a massive "so what?"

Becoming a reseller means having a relationship with a registrar.

Becoming a registrar means having a relationship with ICANN.

If you're only selling a few hundred domains a year the choice is clear, even if both relationships have similar rules for selling.

 

Despite the whole DEI thing and the aspirations about developing countries, the local infrastructure either isn't well developed or the local web hosting industries have gone off and focused on their ccTLDs at the expense of the gTLDs.

I see this as a feature not a bug.

ccTLDs may have policies that are tuned to local sensibilities in a way that ICANN's can't.

Then again they may not, but that too is a local choice.

While ALAC does a lot of good work, the reality is that it is a very complex landscape of bungalows and skyscrapers. ICANN doesn't seem to understand it. ALAC barely understands it. And the market seems to be moving away from the gTLDs and thus away from ICANN.

ALAC's role is not, to me, the probing of business models and domain supply chains. It's ensuring that the public is served by a DNS that is reliable and resistant to abuse. Indeed, I assert (and have asserted for a long time) that the rampant mission creep that has ALAC getting involved into issues irrelevant to the broad public interest have retarded its ability to fulfill its actual bylaw mandate.

If there are deficiencies in the domain-name supply chain that lead to the DNS being unreliable or untrustworthy from the public PoV that is most certainly ALAC's business. Generally those issues may lead to suggested changes in contract language and/or enforcement. To me anything more is beyond scope. And if some of the problem can be traced to realms beyond ALAC's influence (ie, the ccTLDs), there's not much that can be done to address that beyond public education programs.

Mind, you, such public education programs could be very useful. Imagine if all the resources wasted to date on Universal Acceptance were used instead to inform the public about the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, and how .co runs under different rules than .com ...

Cheers,

Evan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com>
To: Lutz Donnerhacke <lutz@donnerhacke.de>
Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Bcc: 
Date: Wed, 21 May 2025 08:37:30 -0500
Subject: [At-Large] Re: ICANN bows to Trump

Hi,

This is indeed a concern, however I was a bit relieved when I checked through the bylaw and found that since 2016 post transition till date, the occurence of word "diversity" for instance slightly moved from 19 to 20. 

I am of the opinion that ICANN statements/texts in various fora should continue to reflect the bylaw and if that is no longer the case then perhaps it's good to hear from our ICANN Board Rep if the various changes are done inline with the ICANN bylaws.

For instance ICANN core values has diversity included in it as per the bylaws, while representation is non-existent. So I am not sure why ICANN would decide to water that down, perhaps this was done to be "politically correct" but how far can that go without mis-representing the actual/intent of the bylaw.

Regards 

On Mon, 19 May 2025 at 07:21, Lutz Donnerhacke via At-Large <at-large@icann.org> wrote:

https://domainincite.com/31049-icann-kills-off-diversity-and-inclusion
It's a pity.

ICANN establishes the trust in its function of govern the global rules for
the Internet by representing the whole community of all stakeholders.
By dropping the representation, ICANN could lose its standing, and
eventually lose the trust in the rules generated.
This is the way into meaninglessness.

Lutz

_______________________________________________
At-Large mailing list -- at-large@icann.org
To unsubscribe send an email to at-large-leave@icann.org

At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________
By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

--

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seun Ojedeji,

Bringing another down does not take you up - think about your action!

_______________________________________________
At-Large mailing list -- at-large@icann.org
To unsubscribe send an email to at-large-leave@icann.org
_______________________________________________
By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.