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World's governments emerge enraged from mounds of red tape, screaming at ICANN

Unhappiness with how domain name overseer runs the show

The world's governments have told domain name overseer ICANN that its processes are "complex, lengthy and ambiguous" and warned that they may be ineffective at dealing with domain-name abuse or fraud.

The extraordinary statement comes in the official communiqué [PDF] of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN, published today following a week-long meeting in Singapore.

As well as questioning the levels of bureaucracy involved in the Public Interest Commitments Dispute Resolution Procedure (PICDRP), the world's governments also question the system ICANN has for allowing two-letter second-level domains beneath top-level domains.

In the past, two-letter domains have typically been used to indicate countries, such as "us" for United States or "uk" for United Kingdom. As such, the registration of two-letter second-level domains has been restricted and often banned altogether.

But with more than 500 new TLDs being added to the internet and another 500 in the pipeline, more and more registrars have been asking ICANN to allow them to lift the restriction on two-letter domains – so you would be able to, for example, register "uk.horse" or "no.music".

Yes, you will; no, we won't

The issue is a big one. On the one hand, ICANN wishes to run a lightweight regulatory system for top-level domains. But on the other hand, governments are concerned that new internet extensions may invite abuse. It's not hard to see how scammers or charlatans could doctor up a new domain name with a two-letter component to imply it had greater trust and authority than it was entitled to.

The GAC produced a list of over 100 domains for which it wanted to see additional registration safeguards in place, including ".dentist", ".kids", ".hospital", ".bank", ".mortgage", and so on.

Despite the GAC's concerns, however, ICANN has repeatedly refused to introduce verification requirements for the top-level domains. Instead it has introduced a self-regulation approach, where registry operators can add "public interest commitments" (PICS) to their applications that outline what they will do to limit or prevent abuse. Naturally, the GAC isn't happy.

"The GAC believes that its advised affirmative requirement for verification of credentials at the time of registration goes much further to meeting the goal of mitigating consumer harm and fraud than an after-the-fact complaint system," the group said in its communiqué.

But it is even more irritated that the Public Interest Commitments Dispute Resolution Procedure (PICDRP) that ICANN has developed to hold companies to account on their policies is based on existing and poorly functioning processes that ICANN already runs, the details of which are frustratingly vague.

"At present, the GAC considers the PICDRP to be complex, lengthy, and ambiguous, raising questions as to its effectiveness in addressing serious threats," the group wrote.

Similarly, the world's governments complain that ICANN's processes, which have previously really only been used for highly technical matters, are so obscure that they go largely unnoticed by the broader internet – and as a result, governments have frequently been caught unawares by applications to start selling two-letter domains.

To address these concerns, in its communiqué the GAC asks for two further changes:

  1. That a much better notification system be put in place so government are aware that the request has been put in; and
  2. That the comment period associated with such an explanation is extended to 60 days, giving governments time to respond

You can read the full communiqué here [PDF]. ®

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