ICANN operates on a multi-stakeholder model, where every internet community has a voice in developing policies. However, it also relies on contractual instruments negotiated between ICANN and the contracted parties. These contracts include the Registry Agreement, the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, and the Registry-Registrar Agreement, which are negotiated directly between ICANN, registries, and registrars. The following focusses on the recent amendment to these agreements, which requires contracted parties to take reasonable and appropriate action to mitigate or disrupt domain registrations engaged in DNS Abuse.

The ICANN community is trying to start the next round of new gTLD applications, but their quest for perfection has caused delays. They have initiated several policy development processes to ensure the next round is flawless, but this has led to setbacks. However, the Subsequent Procedure working group has acknowledged this issue and proposed a model where new gTLD procedures would be handled in rounds, allowing policy development to continue without halting the program.

Last week in Berlin the 14th Internet Governance Forum of the United Nations annual meeting was held. The IGF’s goal is to bring people together to discuss public policy issues relating to the Internet. However, there is no negotiated outcome at the IGF; it serves only as a place for policy-makers to discuss, exchange information and share good practices.

Last week, the 66th ICANN meeting took place in Montréal, Canada. While GDPR compliance has been the main focus of the community for the past five meetingsy, this past week leitmotiv was "DNS Abuse". While this concern is a priori legitimate and straight forward, the fact that some community members (purposefully?) fail to understand what comes within the legal and technical competency of DNS operators is causing frictions.

WHOIS data access took centre stage at ICANN 63, held in Barcelona from October 20 - 25th. While other issues, such as the future of new gTLD applications, were discussed, post GDPR privacy concerns were, unsurprisingly, the focus of most discussions. Here are the key takeaways.

Data privacy es el nuevo negro! At least for the domain industry who, while at ICANN 63 in Barcelona, reviewed the consequences of the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data. Meant to buy ICANN time as it works on making the WHOIS database GDPR compliant, it hasn't exactly proven a seamless stopgap.