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The CENTR Board has submitted a comment on the consultation on enhancing ICANN’s accountability.  See the full text below or download here 


FULL TEXT:
CENTR is the European country code TLD organisation. Its objectives include promoting and participating in the development of high standards and best practices among ccTLD Registries. CENTR has 52 full members who manage the Internet country code for their country. Together, CENTR members are responsible for over 80% of all registered country code domain names worldwide.

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the public dialogue on enhancing ICANN’s accountability. ICANN’s accountability should be guided by accountability principles that are accepted and agreed upon by the ICANN community as a whole. For the sake of enhancing a well-structured accountability framework, we recommend the legal, administrative, financial, representative and social aspects of accountability be taken into account. Therefore, it might be worth considering whether to launch a broader consultation to reach a consensus on what ICANN should be accountable for and subsequently to determine how ICANN’s accountability could be enhanced.

We would like to comment on the following, specific characteristic of the process:

• Any effort to strengthen ICANN’s accountability should not make the current processes more complex than the existing ones. We are confident that changes to the present mechanisms should aim at simplifying the process rather than introducing additional layers without jeopardising the highest possible accountability standards.

• We are pleased with the creation of an ICANN Accountability Working Group to coordinate the community dialogue and acknowledge the importance of external expertise in bringing in new ideas. The identification of external experts should be a joint and balanced effort on behalf of ICANN’s staff and the Community. 

• Knowledge and expertise gaps impact the effectiveness of the current accountability process. These gaps that occur during the input phase and during the evaluation and mapping of the results against the initial input should be carefully assessed and filled by ICANN in a timely manner.

At present, the resources required to monitor the processes, review the outcomes and hold ICANN accountable for the community are too large to be managed by one individual, especially considering the voluntary aspect of this work. Consequently, the aforementioned tasks are divided between different groups and individuals. This contributes to fragmentation and knowledge gaps.

The ICANN staff for the Supporting Organisations and Advisory Committees has done a great job so far, but the independence of their work might be questionable. Therefore, each constituency should consider putting in place a dedicated resource who could take on the advisory and coordinating role for its community. This resource should be funded by the constituency and not by ICANN.

We regret to underline that the timeline for providing input regarding this crucial aspect of ICANN is extremely short. As a matter of fact, despite the minimum requirements being met, it would be much more desirable that this kind of process benefit from a longer comment period in the ultimate interest of the communities that voluntarily participate in ICANN’s work on a daily basis and, above all, of the accountability process itself. The goal of obtaining a fast outcome of the process might imply a severe risk of missing, if not excluding, relevant perspectives that could represent an added value for ICANN and its community.

Today, the new gTLD .club replaced .guru in the number spot in terms of total registrations.  .club now has around 59 thousand registrations and growing around  3-5% per day over the past few days. Pricing of .club (godaddy) starts at 15 USD per year. Below shows the top 5 largest new gTLDs (registrations). 


According the the latest figures as recorded by CENTR the total number of registrations across all new gTLDs is around 830 thousand across 249 strings*.  Growth in the new gTLDs has been fairly consistent over the past few months as the strings are slowly delegated into the root and essentially lead by a group of around 20 strings which have over 10 thousand registrations each.  

*Some delegated strings are not included 

Source: DNS Belgium

From 19 May 2014, the Board at DNS Belgium will be strengthened by the arrival of Baudouin Corl

SIDN’s CEO Roelof Meijer and Registrars’ Association signed a new cooperation agreement between the two organisations. The agreement paves the way for SIDN and the Registrars’ Association to continue working together in the years ahead. Continue reading

Russia’s new country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) and the world’s first Cyrillic domain, .РФ, was registered on May 12, 2010. It is coordinated by the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ.

Since then, 820,538 new .РФ domain names have been registered, of which 651,161, or nearly 80% of the total, are delegated domains, which is 5% more than last year, when the number of .РФ domain names grew by 3.8%.

Functioning websites are located at 185,056 (22.6%) .РФ domain names and another 112,314 (13.7%) are at the design phase. A total of 16.2% (132,972) are parked domain names, and 11.2% (92,238) are used for redirecting.

Individuals registered 76.4% of .РФ domain names and legal entities 23.6%.

A total of 37.4% of .РФ and 35.7% of .RU domain names were registered three or more years ago.

The average .РФ domain is 11.1 characters, versus 9.6 for .RU.

The CENTR Board of Directors has submitted input to the ICANN consultation on Principles & Mechanisms and the Process to Develop a Proposal to Transition NTIA’s Stewardship of the IANA Functions.

The CENTR Board welcomes the opportunity to contribute on the initial consultation on the IANA transition and believes that the NTIA has been an exemplary guardian of the IANA function service.

Download here: The CENTR Board's comments and input on the Process Proposal identified in the ICANN consultation.

Links:

• NTIA Announcement on the Future of IANA - CENTR Background paper

• CENTR BoD input to the ICANN consulation on the transition of the NTIA stewardship of the IANA Functions.

• Call for Public Input: Draft Proposal, Based on Initial Community Feedback, of the Principles and Mechanisms and the Process to Develop a Proposal to Transition NTIA's Stewardship of the IANA Functions.

Exactly 20 years ago, on 5th of May 1994, national Belarusian top level domain .BY was delegated. Today .BY has 102,000 registered domains and has been growing rapidly often the highest in terms of monthly percentage growth among European ccTLDs. 

Thus, growth of .BY for the quarter (November 2013 – February 2014) is 5.7% - one of the highest among European domain TLDs. 

“Domain .BY has truly come to its 20th anniversary at a peak of its growth, - commented the director of hoster.by Sergey Povalishev. – More than 55% of all second level domains in TLD .BY were registered during the last 2 years. From the beginning of 2014 the quantity of monthly registrations has reached a record figure of 3 500 domains. Moreover, before the end of current year Cyrillic IDN .BEL (.БЕЛ) is planned to be launched will be another impulse for the development of Belarusian Internet segment”.

Another remarkable number is a sum of charitable support, that has been sent to orphanages across Belarus, owing to the auctions of .BY domains. At the end of April it has overcome 175 000 USD.

CNNIC has commented on the ICANN draft of transition NTIA stewardship of IANA functions. CNNIC urges ICANN to consider much more involvement of ccTLD registries in the process. ccTLD has symbolic meaning for every nation, and the ccTLD community should play bigger role.

CNNIC comment to the draft proposal http://cnnic.cn/gjjl/gjjlhd/201405/t20140506_46802.htm

Nominet is announcing the departure of Lesley Cowley OBE as CEO. The Nominet Board acknowledges the contribution Lesley has made to establish Nominet as a widely respected domain name registry over the last 15 years.

Rennie Fritchie DBE, Nominet Chair, said: "Under Lesley’s leadership, Nominet has earned a well-deserved reputation for excellent service, and Lesley has played a leading role within the internet sector and wider IT world. The Board thanks Lesley for her dedication and commitment, and for her achievement in making the UK namespace a trusted online home for the millions who use it.”

Lesley Cowley said: "After 15 years at Nominet, it is now the right time to move on. It has been a privilege to lead Nominet for the past 12 years and I am incredibly proud of our achievements in that time. It is the staff team that make Nominet so special and I would like to especially thank each of them for their amazing efforts over the last decade and a half."

Lesley leaves us on the 9th July. Nominet will now begin a search for a new CEO who will lead the company through its next phase of development.

In the meantime, the Company will be run by a leadership team – the Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Technology Officer and the Chief Commercial Officer, working closely with the Nominet Chair.

CENTR has published its latest ccTLD newsletter for April 2014 - this edition includes:

• Article: "NETmundial Produces Outcomes"
• Domain Name Demand and Global Trade
• DNSSEC introduction for domain holders video
• European ccTLD Statistics
• Q&A with Pascal Vella and Cl