10 ms·

Regulatory Capture at ICANN

257 points by ohashi 7y ago

rmbryan 7y ago
Here's the brief itself, which is where I started from: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/org-renewal-2019-03-18-en https://www.icann.org/public-comments/org-renewal-2019-03-18...
rasengan 7y ago
> The public interest is at best being represented, in majority, by people tied up in potential conflicts of interest in the given matter. At worst, it looks like special interest groups for VeriSign and The Internet Society(ISOC)/Public Interest Registry have captured multiple groups at ICANN and are trying to use it to line their organizations' pockets. > This appears to be a case study in regulatory capture. Beyond public outcry, there appears to be very little stopping ICANN from simply pushing through these contracts despite overwhelming evidence that the average internet user isn't in favor of these changes. The whole internet naming system in place right now has issues due to this fact. DNS and naming have become a critical part of the internet infrastructure and deserve to be owned, controlled by and/or operated for the best interests of the people.
pteraspidomorph 7y ago
I'm not happy with ICANN's behavior in recent times. Their bylaws and organization seem to be well designed, but I was wondering - is there a deterrent? Is there a mechanism for punishing their executive staff when they act in bad faith? What do they have to lose?
Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
I recommend reading the entire article, the conclusion is particularly scary: >ACT and Comptia have been infiltrating every workgroup, even the one on Open Source (WG 7). They are doing the best they can to drown any initiative that would not only promote OSS in Europe but also that could help Europe create a sucessful European software sector My thought is that outside of high-risk areas like ICANN, they're not having much success. The OSS community in Europe is far stronger than that in America.
- pitaj 7y ago
  > My thought is that outside of high-risk areas like ICANN, they're not having much success. The OSS community in Europe is far stronger than that in America. By what metric?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
    Personal anecdotes. I frequently travel to Europe to collaborate with free software developers or attend free software conferences, and attend comparatively fewer in the US (and they're generally smaller in attendance here, too).
    - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
      IIRC there’s also a much higher rate of adoption at the municipal and state level as well, mostly do to increasing costs and low requirements.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Europe is smaller and more amenable to fast and cheap transportation, I think, which encourages conference participation.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
        That's true, Europe is a lot smaller and denser than the US.
nfoz 7y ago
.pics .pictures .photo .photos .photography ICANN jumped the freaking shark and made an irrevocable mess of internet naming.
- stochastic_monk 7y ago
  .photo and .photos sounds like a domain spoofer’s dream.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Not much different than .com and .co, which already existed before the new TLDs.
    - oarsinsync 7y ago
      The major difference is that ICANN got paid a large sum for both .photo and .photos, while .com is a legacy gTLD and .co is a ccTLD.
      - logfromblammo 7y ago
        I would have added .img, .res, .txt, .src, .var, .dev, .etc, .bin, .lib, .bak, .dir, .key, and (of course) .log, as gTLDs without charging for them. But I guess that's why I don't work for ICANN.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- Avamander 7y ago
  I don't see why impose any restrictions aside from the country TLDs. We have enough letters, we could make TLDs affordable.
  - dean177 7y ago
Proven 7y ago
A lot of text, but no conclusion. Author gets to key point here: > structurally the only people who can invest so much time and money participating in ICANN are the organizations which stand to financially gain the most. It is only logical to conclude that the only solution is to disband ICANN, but he doesn't make it. I haven't spent much time studying this problem but calling for improvements and better management at a monopoly is pointless (just like with the government). I'd rather see completely private and unregulated companies each offering one or more TLDs. If I couldn't afford to pay for myfav.com, I'd gladly pay $0.99/year for myfav.whatever and move on. Would some of the low-end unregulated TLDs be hacked or suddenly disappear? Of course, but you could pick a reputable TLD if you cared. And overall it would be cheaper and better.
snek 7y ago
Everything I read about ICANN as of late is just horrible. There must be something we can do :(
- sprash 7y ago
  Namecoin works.
- zanny 7y ago
  Of all the monopolies in the world conspiring against the interest of the general public ICANN is probably one of the ones most able to be usurped. People only use DNS through public facing DNS servers. You can run your own if you want, whenever you want (and many routers are already doing just that, creating .local domains etc with dnsmasq). Practically anyone can operate as a naming system and you don't even need to hard break with ICANNs canonicity - you can still delegate to full ICANN compliant DNS providers if you want, but you can also go against their name policy where you want too if you are operating the name server. Fixing DNS is probably one of the easiest "sea change" movements possible - many devices get their DNS delegated, so rather than convincing every grandmother to change their phones DNS server they often just need to change the DHCP provisioned DNS servers. Of course, being "one of the easiest" doesn't make it actually easy. You need to convince a critical mass of DNS provisioning routers, devices, etc to stop respecting ICANN as the naming authority and pretty much every large corporation that would have a stake in this has already sunk cost with the ICANN / registrar mafia to get theirs. At this point, the monopoly often benefits them by shutting out competition through exploitative pricing and name restrictions. The only practical way to ever get that critical mass is through automatic changeover systems. Updates to routers, phones, computers, etc that replace their priority DNS servers. Good, uh, luck with that, especially if the replacement you are pushing is going to be incompatible with (some) ICANN registered domains. But anyone can run their own DNS server. And they can advertise whatever names they want. They don't have to listen to ICANN, but a replacement needs to gain enough adoption to displace ICANN's authority, which like with many monoculture monopolist services (Twitter, Facebook, Blink, etc) is extraordinarily difficult even in one of the easiest instances of it to fix.
  - phicoh 7y ago
esarbe 7y ago
At this point in time, it doesn't make sense to restrict tld anymore.
bityard 7y ago
If you look at all of the decisions that ICANN has made over the years, it's been quite obvious that ICANN has always acted in the interests of domain registrars rather than the Internet community as a whole.
jbb123 7y ago
I imagine that once a majority of people are using the google dns servers that everyone seems to advise these days, that google will simply decide to ignore most of this and serve whatever domains they like. I don't know if this is better!
- Y_Y 7y ago
  I do not advise using Google's dns.
dmix 7y ago
The response to his claims of regulatory capture was the worst part for me. This a really bad look for ICANN. Any regulatory organization should constantly be on their toes about possible capture. Anyone who rejects research on the matter with actual data and earnest intentions as "insulting" and "incivility" is very concerning.
neilv 7y ago
There seems to be a progression of MBA-ification of the Internet domain name namespace management. Originally, there was what seemed to be a custodian role, looking after the namespace. Then it seemed to possibly be getting confused as a profit center, with fees. Then ICANN happened. Then there was inexplicably created a bizarre cottage industry of numerous middleperson "registrars", effectively selling or renting domain names they didn't own. And a few big businesses, including Superbowl ads. Plus there were the squatters, of course, since no one was looking after the namespace anymore. Then an explosion of TLDs were sold. So now we have business people talking about "market share" of TLDs, and "consumer" options: > Allowing .org and future domain names to move to market-based pricing makes sense with today’s healthy TLD market, which is populated with many choices for consumers to choose from. The .org domain name is well known as one of the first TLDs in the market available for public registration, but it still only holds 5.5 percent market share, with just over 10 million names in the .org space compared to almost 140 million domain names and 75 percent market share for .com.
- gist 7y ago
  > Plus there were the squatters, of course, since no one was looking after the namespace anymore. Explain how ideally you think this should have been handled then? Specifically someone wants to register a domain name and how should they go about doing so and what specifically should be required of them prior to registering and what should happen if they don't 'use' the domain and how are you going to define 'use the domain exactly' and how you will review fairly whatever the interpretation is? How would you setup an alternate system for doing so and practically implement it? Squatters by the way are a myth that was invented in the 90's by the media and used in an obviously pejorative way.
  - neilv 7y ago
    > Squatters by the way are a myth that was invented in the 90's by the media and used in an obviously pejorative way. How do you mean it was a myth? You remember all the domain name for sale landing pages, the faux SEO (not really) pages, the domain name marketplace sites full of massive numbers never-used domains (sometimes domains with some token SEO-ing done on them to increase the rank they could mention), the registrars who helped automate massive buying of domain names, and all the people (including people you knew personally, not made up) talking about how they were buying up domain names for their value rather than to use (and the people themselves sometimes said they were "squatting")? Are you saying something else?
ynniv 7y ago
ICANN fees should be ten to one hundred times greater than they are in order to reduce the ridiculous hoarding that has occurred. We used to say that fees should be low so that the average person could have their own domain. After all, there is no inherent cost in the sale, so why should ICANN profit? Instead, organizational fees are $0.18/yr for dot com domains, even though the registrars charge at least $8.00. This captures 97% of retail registration proceeds in private hands. Yet at the same time, no domains are available. Who could afford to own so many unused domains at $8/yr? No one, because they establish private registrars and own then at $0.18/yr, covering these meager costs by selling marginally valuable domains for $100 and short dot coms for tens of millions on secondary markets. If there are thousands of votes that ICANN should not be allowed to raise rates, they are certainly from people who are profiting off their sale, and not people using them for the intended purpose of identifying servers on the Internet. If we are concerned about profits, we should push for them to be assigned to a charity benefiting something deserving.
- IceWreck 7y ago
  > ICANN fees should be ten to one hundred times greater than they are in order to reduce the ridiculous hoarding that has occurred. No. Hobbiests and regular people won't be able to afford domains just because some squatters decided to profit off this. You are probably salty just because a squatter grabbed a domain you liked, and yeah thats irritating but that doesn't mean that millions of people should be denied the right of having their internet presence by making prices so high that they can't afford them.
  - Retric 7y ago
    1$ / month per domain would have zero impact on affordability for the average American on .com. With .counrty codes they could have higher or lower fees at their discretion. Instead DNS is basically useless for the average person who uses search engines and bookmarks to find things. PS: The Phone number system oddly enough is far more user friendly in practice.
    - pdonis 7y ago
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
>"Increased competition and choice has been a major benefit for consumers in the TLD market. Moving the .org legacy TLD to a new TLD contractual agreement is also an opportunity to move to more market-based pricing in the domain name space and away from arbitrary price caps.[...]" Honestly, I agree with ICANN on this. But then ICANN contradict themselves when they introduce URS, PDDRP and all of that, which blatantly goes againnst the free market and competition. You can't make IP holders happy and have a competitive market at the same time. ICANN want to have their cake and eat it too.
3xblah 7y ago
The notion of "regulatory capture" mischaracterises the history, IMHO. I think that term implies that the regulation is based in some actual government-backed authority acting in the public interest. But ICANN has no actual source of legal "authority" over domain names. Their position is maintained only through the willingness of authors of DNS software and network adminstrators to use the ICANN root.zone. What keeps the world's DNS resolvers pointing to ICANN's approved root zone is simply consensus. Unchanged default settings and the tacit agreement of network administrators. It could be that the author is currently maintaining a significant number of regsitrations, possibly doing a little "domaining" in his spare time. If so, that is motivation to protest any increase in prices. The truth is that domain names should cost almost nothing. The real cost of maintaining a domain name is not even close to what is being charged by registrars. If I am not mistaken, the story behind the privatisation and commercialisation of domain name registrations can be traced back to President Clinton, certain Clinton staff members/advisors, and an ICANN-precursor, called "NewCo" at the time. "NewCo" is shorthand among lawyers for setting up a private company. I think "regulatory capture" is a misleading way to describe the very old problems with ICANN and its conflicts of interest. There is no governmental regulatory agency acting in the public interest to "capture". ICANN, both the idea and implementation, is a private company. Adept at fending off any legal challenges.
Accujack 7y ago
Most of the people involved with this circus seem to think that they can maintain an artificial scarcity of names, that they can be manipulated like a real resource to gain financial advantage. However, all that's needed to completely obsolete the existing domain name system is for any significant part of the total population of Internet users to agree to use a new one. It's not even necessary to change the software used for DNS or change how the system works. Just agree to change, select new master servers, configure the software and start resolving. Because of the way the system works, the old and new DNS trees can even coexist, all that's needed is to list members of the new system as servers for resolution, to be checked in addition to the ones for the old system. Thinking about it, it's quite likely that this has already been done, and that independent DNS systems are already in use for things like the "Dark Web". The major purpose of having an organization manage the name and number spaces is to organize them and avoid collisions... I don't think the people at ICANN really understand how replaceable their function is.
- oakslab 7y ago
  > Thinking about it, it's quite likely that this has already been done, OpenNIC

257 points by ohashi 7y ago

Here's the brief itself, which is where I started from: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/org-renewal-2019-03-18-en https://www.icann.org/public-comments/org-renewal-2019-03-18...

rasengan 7y ago

> The public interest is at best being represented, in majority, by people tied up in potential conflicts of interest in the given matter. At worst, it looks like special interest groups for VeriSign and The Internet Society(ISOC)/Public Interest Registry have captured multiple groups at ICANN and are trying to use it to line their organizations' pockets. > This appears to be a case study in regulatory capture. Beyond public outcry, there appears to be very little stopping ICANN from simply pushing through these contracts despite overwhelming evidence that the average internet user isn't in favor of these changes. The whole internet naming system in place right now has issues due to this fact. DNS and naming have become a critical part of the internet infrastructure and deserve to be owned, controlled by and/or operated for the best interests of the people.

pteraspidomorph 7y ago

I'm not happy with ICANN's behavior in recent times. Their bylaws and organization seem to be well designed, but I was wondering - is there a deterrent? Is there a mechanism for punishing their executive staff when they act in bad faith? What do they have to lose?

Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago

I recommend reading the entire article, the conclusion is particularly scary: >ACT and Comptia have been infiltrating every workgroup, even the one on Open Source (WG 7). They are doing the best they can to drown any initiative that would not only promote OSS in Europe but also that could help Europe create a sucessful European software sector My thought is that outside of high-risk areas like ICANN, they're not having much success. The OSS community in Europe is far stronger than that in America.

pitaj 7y ago
> My thought is that outside of high-risk areas like ICANN, they're not having much success. The OSS community in Europe is far stronger than that in America. By what metric?
- Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  Personal anecdotes. I frequently travel to Europe to collaborate with free software developers or attend free software conferences, and attend comparatively fewer in the US (and they're generally smaller in attendance here, too).
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    IIRC there’s also a much higher rate of adoption at the municipal and state level as well, mostly do to increasing costs and low requirements.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Europe is smaller and more amenable to fast and cheap transportation, I think, which encourages conference participation.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
      That's true, Europe is a lot smaller and denser than the US.

nfoz 7y ago

.pics .pictures .photo .photos .photography ICANN jumped the freaking shark and made an irrevocable mess of internet naming.

stochastic_monk 7y ago
.photo and .photos sounds like a domain spoofer’s dream.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Not much different than .com and .co, which already existed before the new TLDs.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    The major difference is that ICANN got paid a large sum for both .photo and .photos, while .com is a legacy gTLD and .co is a ccTLD.
    - logfromblammo 7y ago
      I would have added .img, .res, .txt, .src, .var, .dev, .etc, .bin, .lib, .bak, .dir, .key, and (of course) .log, as gTLDs without charging for them. But I guess that's why I don't work for ICANN.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
Avamander 7y ago
I don't see why impose any restrictions aside from the country TLDs. We have enough letters, we could make TLDs affordable.
- dean177 7y ago

Proven 7y ago

A lot of text, but no conclusion. Author gets to key point here: > structurally the only people who can invest so much time and money participating in ICANN are the organizations which stand to financially gain the most. It is only logical to conclude that the only solution is to disband ICANN, but he doesn't make it. I haven't spent much time studying this problem but calling for improvements and better management at a monopoly is pointless (just like with the government). I'd rather see completely private and unregulated companies each offering one or more TLDs. If I couldn't afford to pay for myfav.com, I'd gladly pay $0.99/year for myfav.whatever and move on. Would some of the low-end unregulated TLDs be hacked or suddenly disappear? Of course, but you could pick a reputable TLD if you cared. And overall it would be cheaper and better.

snek 7y ago

Everything I read about ICANN as of late is just horrible. There must be something we can do :(

sprash 7y ago
Namecoin works.
zanny 7y ago
Of all the monopolies in the world conspiring against the interest of the general public ICANN is probably one of the ones most able to be usurped. People only use DNS through public facing DNS servers. You can run your own if you want, whenever you want (and many routers are already doing just that, creating .local domains etc with dnsmasq). Practically anyone can operate as a naming system and you don't even need to hard break with ICANNs canonicity - you can still delegate to full ICANN compliant DNS providers if you want, but you can also go against their name policy where you want too if you are operating the name server. Fixing DNS is probably one of the easiest "sea change" movements possible - many devices get their DNS delegated, so rather than convincing every grandmother to change their phones DNS server they often just need to change the DHCP provisioned DNS servers. Of course, being "one of the easiest" doesn't make it actually easy. You need to convince a critical mass of DNS provisioning routers, devices, etc to stop respecting ICANN as the naming authority and pretty much every large corporation that would have a stake in this has already sunk cost with the ICANN / registrar mafia to get theirs. At this point, the monopoly often benefits them by shutting out competition through exploitative pricing and name restrictions. The only practical way to ever get that critical mass is through automatic changeover systems. Updates to routers, phones, computers, etc that replace their priority DNS servers. Good, uh, luck with that, especially if the replacement you are pushing is going to be incompatible with (some) ICANN registered domains. But anyone can run their own DNS server. And they can advertise whatever names they want. They don't have to listen to ICANN, but a replacement needs to gain enough adoption to displace ICANN's authority, which like with many monoculture monopolist services (Twitter, Facebook, Blink, etc) is extraordinarily difficult even in one of the easiest instances of it to fix.
- phicoh 7y ago

esarbe 7y ago

At this point in time, it doesn't make sense to restrict tld anymore.

bityard 7y ago

If you look at all of the decisions that ICANN has made over the years, it's been quite obvious that ICANN has always acted in the interests of domain registrars rather than the Internet community as a whole.

jbb123 7y ago

I imagine that once a majority of people are using the google dns servers that everyone seems to advise these days, that google will simply decide to ignore most of this and serve whatever domains they like. I don't know if this is better!

Y_Y 7y ago
I do not advise using Google's dns.

dmix 7y ago

The response to his claims of regulatory capture was the worst part for me. This a really bad look for ICANN. Any regulatory organization should constantly be on their toes about possible capture. Anyone who rejects research on the matter with actual data and earnest intentions as "insulting" and "incivility" is very concerning.

neilv 7y ago

There seems to be a progression of MBA-ification of the Internet domain name namespace management. Originally, there was what seemed to be a custodian role, looking after the namespace. Then it seemed to possibly be getting confused as a profit center, with fees. Then ICANN happened. Then there was inexplicably created a bizarre cottage industry of numerous middleperson "registrars", effectively selling or renting domain names they didn't own. And a few big businesses, including Superbowl ads. Plus there were the squatters, of course, since no one was looking after the namespace anymore. Then an explosion of TLDs were sold. So now we have business people talking about "market share" of TLDs, and "consumer" options: > Allowing .org and future domain names to move to market-based pricing makes sense with today’s healthy TLD market, which is populated with many choices for consumers to choose from. The .org domain name is well known as one of the first TLDs in the market available for public registration, but it still only holds 5.5 percent market share, with just over 10 million names in the .org space compared to almost 140 million domain names and 75 percent market share for .com.

gist 7y ago
> Plus there were the squatters, of course, since no one was looking after the namespace anymore. Explain how ideally you think this should have been handled then? Specifically someone wants to register a domain name and how should they go about doing so and what specifically should be required of them prior to registering and what should happen if they don't 'use' the domain and how are you going to define 'use the domain exactly' and how you will review fairly whatever the interpretation is? How would you setup an alternate system for doing so and practically implement it? Squatters by the way are a myth that was invented in the 90's by the media and used in an obviously pejorative way.
- neilv 7y ago
  > Squatters by the way are a myth that was invented in the 90's by the media and used in an obviously pejorative way. How do you mean it was a myth? You remember all the domain name for sale landing pages, the faux SEO (not really) pages, the domain name marketplace sites full of massive numbers never-used domains (sometimes domains with some token SEO-ing done on them to increase the rank they could mention), the registrars who helped automate massive buying of domain names, and all the people (including people you knew personally, not made up) talking about how they were buying up domain names for their value rather than to use (and the people themselves sometimes said they were "squatting")? Are you saying something else?

ynniv 7y ago

ICANN fees should be ten to one hundred times greater than they are in order to reduce the ridiculous hoarding that has occurred. We used to say that fees should be low so that the average person could have their own domain. After all, there is no inherent cost in the sale, so why should ICANN profit? Instead, organizational fees are $0.18/yr for dot com domains, even though the registrars charge at least $8.00. This captures 97% of retail registration proceeds in private hands. Yet at the same time, no domains are available. Who could afford to own so many unused domains at $8/yr? No one, because they establish private registrars and own then at $0.18/yr, covering these meager costs by selling marginally valuable domains for $100 and short dot coms for tens of millions on secondary markets. If there are thousands of votes that ICANN should not be allowed to raise rates, they are certainly from people who are profiting off their sale, and not people using them for the intended purpose of identifying servers on the Internet. If we are concerned about profits, we should push for them to be assigned to a charity benefiting something deserving.

IceWreck 7y ago
> ICANN fees should be ten to one hundred times greater than they are in order to reduce the ridiculous hoarding that has occurred. No. Hobbiests and regular people won't be able to afford domains just because some squatters decided to profit off this. You are probably salty just because a squatter grabbed a domain you liked, and yeah thats irritating but that doesn't mean that millions of people should be denied the right of having their internet presence by making prices so high that they can't afford them.
- Retric 7y ago
  1$ / month per domain would have zero impact on affordability for the average American on .com. With .counrty codes they could have higher or lower fees at their discretion. Instead DNS is basically useless for the average person who uses search engines and bookmarks to find things. PS: The Phone number system oddly enough is far more user friendly in practice.
  - pdonis 7y ago

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

>"Increased competition and choice has been a major benefit for consumers in the TLD market. Moving the .org legacy TLD to a new TLD contractual agreement is also an opportunity to move to more market-based pricing in the domain name space and away from arbitrary price caps.[...]" Honestly, I agree with ICANN on this. But then ICANN contradict themselves when they introduce URS, PDDRP and all of that, which blatantly goes againnst the free market and competition. You can't make IP holders happy and have a competitive market at the same time. ICANN want to have their cake and eat it too.

3xblah 7y ago

The notion of "regulatory capture" mischaracterises the history, IMHO. I think that term implies that the regulation is based in some actual government-backed authority acting in the public interest. But ICANN has no actual source of legal "authority" over domain names. Their position is maintained only through the willingness of authors of DNS software and network adminstrators to use the ICANN root.zone. What keeps the world's DNS resolvers pointing to ICANN's approved root zone is simply consensus. Unchanged default settings and the tacit agreement of network administrators. It could be that the author is currently maintaining a significant number of regsitrations, possibly doing a little "domaining" in his spare time. If so, that is motivation to protest any increase in prices. The truth is that domain names should cost almost nothing. The real cost of maintaining a domain name is not even close to what is being charged by registrars. If I am not mistaken, the story behind the privatisation and commercialisation of domain name registrations can be traced back to President Clinton, certain Clinton staff members/advisors, and an ICANN-precursor, called "NewCo" at the time. "NewCo" is shorthand among lawyers for setting up a private company. I think "regulatory capture" is a misleading way to describe the very old problems with ICANN and its conflicts of interest. There is no governmental regulatory agency acting in the public interest to "capture". ICANN, both the idea and implementation, is a private company. Adept at fending off any legal challenges.

Accujack 7y ago

Most of the people involved with this circus seem to think that they can maintain an artificial scarcity of names, that they can be manipulated like a real resource to gain financial advantage. However, all that's needed to completely obsolete the existing domain name system is for any significant part of the total population of Internet users to agree to use a new one. It's not even necessary to change the software used for DNS or change how the system works. Just agree to change, select new master servers, configure the software and start resolving. Because of the way the system works, the old and new DNS trees can even coexist, all that's needed is to list members of the new system as servers for resolution, to be checked in addition to the ones for the old system. Thinking about it, it's quite likely that this has already been done, and that independent DNS systems are already in use for things like the "Dark Web". The major purpose of having an organization manage the name and number spaces is to organize them and avoid collisions... I don't think the people at ICANN really understand how replaceable their function is.

oakslab 7y ago
> Thinking about it, it's quite likely that this has already been done, OpenNIC