https://www.centr.org/article/reputation<http://www.facebook.com/l/FAQFQRXz_/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.centr.org%2Farticle%2Freputation> Reputation is an idle and most false imposition oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. (*) Created: Monday, March 25, 2013 - 10:45 Author: Peter Van Roste Since a few weeks, ICANN's CEO Fadi Chehadé has been travelling the world even more intensely than he did before. Participation in APNIC, APTLD, IG meetings in Paris, CEO roundtables across the world... At every single one of those occasions he underlines that he is serious about his commitment to implement much needed changes at ICANN. And he walks the talk. To turn ICANN into a truly international organisation he plans operational hubs across the regions and relocation of his exec team. To improve end-user experience the registrants will benefit from a charter outlining their rights and obligations. To understand better the perception issues his organisation faces, the ICANN community will be asked for its opinion. The trigger for more than a few of these changes is a reputational study that ICANN commissioned with Echo Research. The study isn't publicly available yet and therefore this might seem like taking a blindfolded swing at a piñata. But it isn't really. Comments from Fadi and ICANN staff and information that was circulated by participants of the roundtables give a pretty good idea of what to expect in Beijing. The study looked into the media reporting about 'DNS industry as a whole' and evaluated how favorable those reports were. The study looked into the industry's reputation across the different regions, the volume of the coverage and how that reputation changes - i.e. declines over time. And it also looked into the factors that drive that trend. So far for what is in the study. But what isn't in it is equally important. What it doesn't do - at least from the reports I received - is make a distinction between gTLDs and ccTLDs, between registrars and registries, between policy and implementation, between ICANN and its thousand community members. The image that results from it ("The Domain Name Industry has a bad reputation") has been painted with a very thick brush. And that doesn't allow for much needed detail. The comments made by Fadi and the reporting that followed (http://domainincite.com/11717-its-official-people-hate-the-domain-name-indus...) trigger questions and raise eyebrows in government (and other) offices around Europe. In particular as this doesn't match with what studies on country code TLDs have been showing for the last few years: registrants have in general a very positive opinion of their ccTLD and local registrars. Actually, studies on the Dutch, Swedish and Italian (http://www.nic.it/everything-on.it/domini-.it-e-imprese) domains have shown exactly the opposite from the Echo Research findings. It is undoubtedly a positive thing that ICANN is serious about understanding the industry's reputation, fixing what is wrong and share the positive stories with the world. But messages should be delivered with caution and nuance otherwise they are bound to be counterproductive. (UPDATE: Last week it emerged that ICANN commissioned an additional study which does look into the reputation of ccTLDs. The results seem to be much better than the overall numbers. Where the overall study shows that 12% of the coverage of the industry qualifies as negative, this number would be as low as 3% in the ccTLD specific study. I am looking forward to a full update on both studies at the ICANN meeting in Beijing.) (*) Quote attributed to William Shakespeare, but the 'oft' probably gave that away already. Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal Virtualaw LLC 1155 F Street, NW Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20004 202-559-8597/Direct 202-559-8750/Fax 202-255-6172/cell Twitter: @VlawDC "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey