This evening, ICANN announced that its ICANN69 event will be held virtually rather than in person due to the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic impacting people throughout the world. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) was scheduled to be held in Hamburg, Germany, but it will be held entirely online instead:
#ICANN announces #ICANN69 to be held as a Virtual Public Meeting. Learn more here >> https://t.co/LJHBHuX0iO pic.twitter.com/XnPvR5cj6z
— ICANN (@ICANN) June 11, 2020
Late last night, ICANN announced that its Board of Directors “made the decision to reject the proposed change of control and entity conversion request that Public Interest Registry (PIR) submitted to ICANN.” A private entity company called Ethos Capital had a deal in place to acquire .org registry operator Public Interest Registry from the Internet Society. The news was shared on Twitter at around 10:30pm Eastern:
After a thorough evaluation process, the #ICANN Board is withholding consent to the request for a change of control of the Public Interest Registry (PIR). Read Board Chair Maarten Botterman’s blog for more information > https://t.co/qz8ub99lOt pic.twitter.com/oFrM0pulyM
— ICANN (@ICANN) May 1, 2020
On Wednesday, ICANN published a blog article, “Relief for Registrants in Response to COVID-19.” The relief described in the statement was in the form of not losing domain names due to expiry as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The statement was vague in what was actually being offered by ICANN to domain name registrants, especially since it is the registrars that would need to provide the relief to its customers.
Here’s an excerpt from the ICANN blog post:
“To ease this burden, ICANN org will be invoking section 3.7.5.1 of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement for the second time. This clause permits registrars to temporarily forebear from cancelling domain name registrations that were unable to be renewed as a result of a natural disaster.
The COVID-19 pandemic once again highlights the potential need for a policy initiative to protect registrants when they are unable to renew their domains as a result of natural disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. In the interim, we encourage contracted parties to take these circumstances into consideration when reviewing renewal delinquencies.”
The ICANN 67 meeting originally scheduled to be held in Cancun, Mexico will be held online instead due to the coronavirus outbreak. The meeting will be held entirely online using Zoom (disclosure, I own ZM stock), and the meeting will begin today. For those who have not attended an ICANN meeting before – or for those who want to understand how this unique set-up will work, ICANN will be hosting a kick-off session at 9am Cancun time (approximately 15 minutes from now):
If you are new to the #ICANN community, What to Expect at #ICANN67 for Newcomers starts at 9:00 Cancún time. Find out more about the virtual session here >> https://t.co/5UJZvrF0Ui pic.twitter.com/XBlC4xUIIO
— ICANN (@ICANN) March 8, 2020
The ICANN 67 Public Meeting, which was scheduled to be held in Cancún, Mexico, has been moved to an online event due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. The event is still scheduled to proceed online from March 7-12, 2020. It is the first time ICANN will be holding a totally remote event. If it goes well, perhaps ICANN can save money by holding future events online.
Verisign submitted a letter (pdf) to ICANN in response to the comments regarding the proposed amendment #3 of the .com registry contract. I want to highlight one aspect of the letter I found notable. In providing an example of domain name speculator activity, Verisign wrote:
“As a recent example, moments before the World Health Organization announced the official name of the coronavirus, Namecheap registered the name (covid-19.com) to a domain name speculator, presumably unassociated with the public health mission of the WHO.”
