Written by Bea Guevarra, Paribhasha Pradhan, Pavithra Madushanka (Edited by Jenna Fung)
The last training session of NetMission Academy 2023 was held successfully on February 16, 2023, with great moderation by Stella Teoh and co-moderated by Siriracha Kaeoyong. The session consisted of a brief presentation on how ICANN Meetings work which was delivered by the NetMission Buddies, Stella Teoh and Qurratulain Nisar, Speakers’ Sharing, Q&A and Breakout Room Discussion.
The session started off with the NetMission Buddies giving a brief description of what ICANN is which is a not-for-profit public benefit corporation established in 1998. The organization is made up of three parts, ICANN Community, ICANN Organization, and the ICANN Board. ICANN Meetings are compromised of at least 100 volunteers from ICANN’s Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs). Within these two organizations, are stakeholders that play an important part within different areas represented for developing and improving policies, three examples that were provided were GAC, GNSO, and ALAC.
ICANN Meetings are held three times annually in various regions around the world and during this discussion, various topics concerning the many aspects of the Internet and its governance are introduced. The buddies shared that anyone can join these meetings and encouraged the fellows to attend the upcoming hybrid event ICANN 76 in Cancun, Mexico. Lastly, TLDs or Top-Level Domains were mentioned, describing the different kinds such as gTLDs, ccTLDs, and IDNs. The fellows were also informed about the new gTLD program, and as of January 31st, 2023, over 1,930 applications had been made, demonstrating a significant increase in interest in the creation of new gTLDs over previous years.
After the presentation from the buddies, there was a session of the guest speaker’s sharing. At the very beginning Manju Chen, Researcher at NIIEPA talked about DNS Abuse and its discussion at ICANN. Manju Chen discussed the main 3 questions “What is DNS abuse”, “What can/should ICANN do about DNS abuse?” and “What is ICANN currently doing about DNS abuse?”. Firstly, She mentioned that there is no exact definition for DNS abuse as it can be an abuse of the protocol and DNS infrastructure itself or intentional deceptive activities that use DNS or the use of domain name in abusive activities or phishing, malware and many more.
She mentioned that in ICANN there is no community consensus on the definition of DNS abuse, but everyone agrees on dealing with it together. Secondly, she noted that ICANN can be ‘org’, ‘community’ and ‘board’. As for her sharing, ICANN can do more and the contracted parties should do more by adding specific requirements to the contracts and enforcing the contracts more rigorously. The mission of ICANN is to ensure the stable and secure operation of the internet’s unique identifier. It cannot be the go-to place for combatting all sorts of crimes. Finally, there are several things ICANN is doing to care about DNS abuse. They have different programs, white papers, ACID tools, DNS abuse small groups, a standing committee, a DNSAI compass and many more. Thus, these programs are those which care about DNS abuse.
The second session was with Maarten Botterman, Director of the ICANN Board who talked about DNS Abuse and its latest state of affairs. He stated that the internet is for the good and for the bad and what we stand for is to stimulate the good, and mitigate the best or as much as it is within our mandate. He also mentioned the unique identifier system in a stable, secure, reliable way that is really resourceful around the world. The system that actually works, not because it was designed to be secure but because together we make it work. And we make it safer and more secure all the time.
This is the registries that registrars are doing, and they are doing according to the policies that have been agreed upon by ICANN. This also means that there is some kind of limitation in it, and they are seeking to improve that constantly together. He also noted that everyone has a role in fighting DNS Abuse and being aware of the issues. Developing and improving policies, in the contracts of Registries and Registrars, and agreeing on the fight against DNS Abuse and ICANN actions can help and obligation enforcement. To get there on stopping DNS Abuse, voluntary actions are taking place with different measures. They have helped provide information to the communities on understanding instances such as Phishing and other DNS Attacks.
The third session was with Mary Wong, Vice President of Strategic Community Operations, Planning and Engagement of ICANN, who talked about the new gTLD program and the objection process & WHOIS and privacy issues. She mentioned that the ICANN mission is limited to coordinating the unique identifiers of the internet in the DNS and to doing so in an open, transparent and bottom-up way. What this means is that ICANN is not a government agency or a regulator, so cannot take down content. She said that their bylaw specifically says that they cannot act outside of our mission. Within the ICANN context, DNS abuse is viewed as much more limited. For example, phishing malware, and botnets, are the kinds of mechanisms that, when used to perform DNS abuse, could be considered within their remit to act.
She noted that the DNS abuse ICANN deals with is really about enforcing the obligations in the contracts that we have with registries and registrars. Also, she noted that there is only one other way in which contracted parties, the registries, and the registrars, can undertake binding obligations outside of the contracts, and that is through the ICANN consensus policy. She then mentioned that the world of gTLDs is large, ranging from dot coms and dot nets to dot Asia as well as 1000 of gTLDs were launched during ICANNs last expansion.
After the guest speaker’s sharing there was a breakout room discussion where the participants would propose a unique gTLD. The breakout group 1 was facilitated by Bea, Paribhasha and Nimrah where Paribhasha proposed a Gtld as “.accessnet” which meant the ability of differently-abled people and people in rural areas to access information and the internet online. Secondly, breakout group 2 had Stella, Siriracha, Harisa, Amasha and Ananya where the gTLD proposed were “.youth” by Fatima which is for youth-related topics that focus on the youth community. Ananya proposed “.sdg” related to SDGs.Harisa proposed “.iot” and “.npo” was proposed which are directed to non-profit organizations. In the breakout group 3 facilitated by Annie, Bhubon and Ayesha some queries to our guest speaker like what are some of the most common objections that are filed during the new gTLD application process and what happens during the objection process and also how will the new technologies like Blockchain and Decentralized systems
Finally, there was a summary of what was discussed in the breakout rooms in the main room where Maarten mentioned that the gTLDs should be something of public interest where funding them would be easy. He also raised a question that why would someone want a new gTLD and any applicant has to be very clear as to why it’s necessary and why it’s there and what it’s used for.