[CPWG] Today's call and the ccTLD/gTLD trends/Following ccTLDs on DNS Abuse

Thu Apr 28 15:06:15 UTC 2022

Hi Holly,

I was deliberately seeking not to be pessimistic (this time!), so much as
to outline the current reality and propose action with a chance of success.

ICANN has very little leverage over ccTLDs and is unlikely to gain
voluntary acceptance of its oversight. Rather than aim for that (IMO)
impossible goal, I am advocating that ICANN play a vital role in public
education, something it is very capable of doing without consent of the CC
registries (though of course it should seek their cooperation, a joint
ALAC/ccNSO effort would be cool). At very least, ICANN has both the mandate
and the capacity to raise global awareness that (and how) .COM is different
from .CO (as the most well-known comparison example). In fact such a
campaign need to counter the existing perception that functionally they're
all the same.

I am not trying to shut down discussion, so much as to request its focus on
a short-term activity -- public education -- that is both fully doable
(should the will exist) and of significant value in service of ICANN's
mission.

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56

On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 6:44 AM Holly Raiche via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
wrote:

> Thanks Evan and Roberto
>
> I think times have changed, an I think it does need discussion.  I”m not
> quite as pessimistic as Evan (yet!)
>
> Holly
>
> On Apr 28, 2022, at 6:11 PM, Roberto Gaetano via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
> wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> Building on Evan’s comment here:
>
> As has been mentioned before, ICANN has no authority over ccTLD policy, so
> talk here of consumer protections for them is a non-starter.
>
>
> As we all know, some ccTLDs have consumer protection mechanisms. I wonder
> whether we can make an effort in involving in At-Large local consumer
> protection bodies that have ccTLDs in their scope. In the early days of
> ALAC I tried this, but consumer protection organisations were not attaching
> any importance to domain names policies. Maybe the time has changed. Or
> maybe we do have such efforts in place and I am not aware of.
>
> Cheers,
> Roberto
>
>
> On 28.04.2022, at 09:28, Evan Leibovitch via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org> wrote:
>
> Interesting data. Thanks John.
>
> I posit that the move to ccTLDs is something larger than ICANN and beyond
> its control, attached to a general global attitude moving from
> globalization to nationalism.
>
> We see it in politics, as recently as the stronger-than-ever nationalist
> support seen in the recent French election. But it's showing up everywhere,
> with the election of nativist politicians and policies (ie Brexit and of
> course Russia). Of course there are other factors, such as the greater
> likelihood that the domain that you want is available in your own national
> ccTLD rather than a legacy generic. This would be especially true in the
> case of registries that impose a local presence by the registrant. And it
> helps that some registries are getting sophisticated and engaging in active
> marketing, for example ads like this one
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L49a-GSGa7k> and this one
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RodN9r6QuPY> being run by the Canadian
> ccTLD.
>
> As has been mentioned before, ICANN has no authority over ccTLD policy, so
> talk here of consumer protections for them is a non-starter. However, ICANN
> (and its community) have both an interest and a duty to have a public that
> is aware of the differences between the domains that it regulates(*) and
> those it does not. I recall trying to sound an alarm some years back when
> Godaddy swas aggressively marketing .CO domains as a "seamless" alternative
> to .COMs, that the public had no idea that one was under international
> rules and one was under Colombian rules.
>
> Nobody cared. So the public remained clueless about the distinction and it
> generally remains clueless to this day.
>
> (Impress your friends with the useless trivia that their use of a public
> URL shortener likely involves Internet traffic to Libya...)
>
> ICANN hasn't made a bad effort of informing the public of the differences
> between Gs and CCs, it has made no effort at all. Not even the minimum -- a
> gap analysis that clearly indicates the policy differences between ICANN
> and the various CC registries.
> If it does exist it's well buried.
>
> Perhaps this remains a public information mandate which ALAC could
> advocate needs to be resourced. Never too late.
>
> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
> @evanleibovitch / @el56
>
> (*) Yeah yeah, ICANN says it's not a regulator. But it walks like a
> regulator and quacks like a regulator; nobody is fooled by this. ICANN's
> lawyers can bite me.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 12:35 PM John McCormac via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
> wrote:
>
>> There has been an ongoing new registrations trend with more new ccTLD
>> registrations than gTLD registrations in many countries. It started back
>> around 2005 but it has been accelerating for the last few years.
>>
>> In some countries, the number of new ccTLD registrations each month is
>> often double that of the gTLDs. The non-core gTLDs (i.e not .COM and to
>> a lesser extent .NET and .ORG) still have their historical shares of
>> country level markets but there is a very obvious shift. There is also a
>> related trend where people register their domain name in the ccTLD and
>> do not bother registering it in .COM or any gTLD. The increasing
>> "uniqueness" of ccTLD registrations is also obvious with some ccTLDs.
>>
>> There are phases for a country's domain name market development. The
>> early phase involves early adopters setting up websites to sell outside
>> the country. Traditionally, the local Internet and hosting
>> infrastructure was not well developed so most sites were hosted outside
>> the country and there are few if any gTLD registrars in the country. The
>> ccTLD, in this phase, often finds it difficult to complete with gTLDs in
>> terms of both registration fee and ease of registration.
>>
>> As the country's market develops, along with the Intenet and hosting
>> infrastructure, companies begin to host locally and local gTLD
>> registrars appear along with more local ccTLD registrars. (The model may
>> shift from a registry as registar one to a more typical
>> registry-registrar one.)
>>
>> With a mature market, the ccTLD dominates the market with there being
>> more ccTLD registrars than local gTLD registrars and new ccTLD
>> registrations overtake new gTLDs registrations each month. Rather than
>> becoming an ICANN accredited registrar, resellers/hosters will decide to
>> become a ccTLD accredited registrar and outsource gTLD registrations to
>> a registrations as a service provider like some of the large gTLD
>> registrars. A lot of the countries with strong ccTLDs are in this phase
>> of development.
>>
>> ICANN's registry-registrar model was great for the 1990s but is out of
>> place in current the global domain name market. This will have a major
>> impact on any geo-gTLD applications in the next round of new gTLDs. If
>> the registrar infrastructure to sell locally is not there, then these
>> new geo-gTLDs will find it very difficult to gain market share. Perhaps
>> an even more worrying possibility for the next round is that the market
>> for some prospective gTLDs does not exist or is much smaller than these
>> applicants expect.
>>
>> Even with .COM, the market is still dominanted by the early markets and
>> countries with large hosting operations. These are the countries with
>> most .COM websites by country resolved IP address. They are also skewed
>> by large DDoS prevention operators like Cloudflare using US IPs.
>>
>>
>> | United States       | 99763877 |
>> | Germany             |  7663915 |
>> | Canada              |  3873167 |
>> | Seychelles          |  3765103 |
>> | China               |  2757786 |
>> | France              |  2487080 |
>> | Japan               |  2028834 |
>> | United Kingdom      |  1786066 |
>> | Netherlands         |  1707633 |
>> | Virgin Islands (UK) |  1330498 |
>>
>> The Seychelles are largely Chinese/Hong Kong sites on Seychelles IP
>> addesses that have been acquired by Chinese operators. The Virgin
>> Islands sites are typically PPC parking and sales.
>>
>> The distribution of .AFRICA sites is interesting in that South Africa
>> leads with the marjority of sites.
>>
>> | South Africa   | 10673 |
>> | United States  |  7936 |
>> | France         |  1943 |
>> | Germany        |  1572 |
>> | Canada         |   864 |
>> | United Kingdom |   741 |
>> | Switzerland    |   232 |
>> | Netherlands    |   192 |
>> | Morocco        |   124 |
>> | Poland         |    90 |
>>
>> The .BERLIN gTLD is one of the better performers of the 2012 round and
>> is closer to being a ccTLD in terms of distribution (as is .AFRICA).
>>
>> | Germany        | 37381 |
>> | France         |  3852 |
>> | United States  |  2699 |
>> | Denmark        |   429 |
>> | Switzerland    |   225 |
>> | Austria        |   215 |
>> | United Kingdom |   189 |
>> | Canada         |   162 |
>> | Poland         |   159 |
>> | Hold/Expired   |   104 |
>>
>> ALAC may not need to comment on the above but it needs to be aware that
>> the market for domain names and websites is continually changing and is
>> much more complex than the ICANN registry transactions reports suggest.
>>
>>
>> Another interesting point was made by Michael Palage about following
>> ccTLD registries on best practice on DNS Abuse, registrant verification
>> and data quality. This is a very good idea and will save ICANN/GNSO/ALAC
>> from wasting time trying to reinvent the wheel.
>>
>> The important thing to remember is that ccTLDs are very different
>> markets to gTLDs and the ccTLD registries are often well ahead of ICANN
>> on some of these issues (Know Your Customer is a big topic at the
>> moment). We should steer well clear of basing any recommendations on
>> that EU DNS report as it is flawed in conflating ccTLD DNS Abuse with
>> gTLD DNS Abuse.
>>
>> Regards...jmcc
>> --
>> **********************************************************
>> John McCormac  *  e-mail: jmcc at hosterstats.com
>> MC2            *  web: http://www.hosterstats.com/
>> 22 Viewmount   *  Domain Registrations Statistics
>> Waterford      *  Domnomics - the business of domain names
>> Ireland        *  https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO
>> IE             *  Skype: hosterstats.com
>> **********************************************************
>>
>> --
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